Easter 2006. After running around in the backyard in search of plastic eggs, the festivities die down and the simple act of blowing bubbles entertains us for a half hour. I knew I wanted to get a shot of my wife Gretchen blowing a bubble, but I had no real ideas about the image that I was trying to capture.
Looking back on it now, I’m surprised to see that I actually took 71 frames before I finally arrived at the winning shot below.
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Vegas, September 2005: I’m newly married and on the first leg of our honeymoon tour. The Canon 350D is very new in my hands and I’m still trying to understand why I would ever bother shooting RAW images. After living for five years in New York City, the New York, New York casino at the bottom of the strip fascinates me to no end. A completely generic version of one of the greatest cities in the world, complete with a mini skyline and a scale model of the Statue of Liberty.
I wonder if people are ever aware that something they’re creating has mass-market appeal. I don’t mean “mass-market” in the sense of a deliberate and methodical effort to appease the widest possible audience, but rather a universal charm that is the unintended result of creativity. Certainly one must expect that an artist is often thrilled at their own creations, but is there ever a point when one can step back from something they’re creating and say with accuracy “this is going to be big”?
I started shooting originally with a Fisher-Price 110 camera. It was blue with rubber ends and a break-away neck strap and you could stick one of those vertical flashbulbs in the top for indoor shooting. From there I graduated to my father’s Nikon FE with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 prime lens.
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