Category: Storyboard

Inequality

Flux.1

I’ve been having some trouble figuring out how to photograph the scenes I had in mind for my Inequality project. When I learned about the Flux.1 image AI the other day, I decided to give it a whirl. I made several attempts at contrasting Jeff Bezos’ wealth, estimated at $200 billion in 2022, with that of the median Black family in America that year ($45,000). The above is the best one (I added the amount labels in Photoshop, as image-generating AIs are notoriously bad at text. Of course, this doesn’t really begin to show the actual scale of the gap. Below, a number of earlier attempts.

Next, I’ve photographed some bills on m own and will attempt to duplicate them in Photoshop more precisely to scale. We’ll see if that works…

Sydenham Artists Trail

If you’re in London either of the next 2 weekends you can come see some of my new works as part of Sydenham Arts’ Artists Trail 2023. Here’s a link to their artists page (I appear in alphabetical order by my first name with full details of times and venue) and the event main page. Below are images from the series that will be presented at the show. (Unfortunately, I’ll be in the US over both weekends so I won’t be there myself.) Click on any of the pictures below to see them full-screen (you may need to click through via the post-title, above, if you’re reading this in an email or on social media).

from the series Modern Romance
from the series Word

Modern Romance

I had an idea for a series of photos on insomnia. I thought of images of a woman lying in bed, in the dark, unable to sleep, eyes wide open, staring straight up. And I imagined another with a couple lying in bed, each on their own with no connection, both stuck in their own insomniac mental wanderings. Setting it up I would ideally have liked the camera looking straight down at the bed. The best I could manage was an awkwardly contrived tripod with one leg up at about an 80° angle, propped on a suitcase, with the other 2 legs pushed up against the bed. I left the room lights off but allowed street light in through the window behind the camera and room light through the door at the opposite side of the room. I used the Fuji’s base ISO of 160, resulting in exposures ranging between 2½ and 4 seconds, using a remote. Here are a couple more from the shoot, which in the end I decided was more about anomie than insomnia.

Hommâge à Gregory Crewdson

  • Manhattan
  • New York

Observing the desolation of dust and tarpaulins wrought by plumbers and contractors in their reconstruction of my apartment in search of a leak in the ancient plumbing, I was reminded of Gregory Crewdson’s upstate portraits of anomie. No massive stage sets or smoke machines in this tableau, however.

Resistance Revival Chorus

Last month I went to see the Women’s Resistance Revival Chorus, that grew out of January’s Women’s March, at City Winery with family and good friends and have finally gotten around to working on a few snaps from the evening. You can read all about it here. And you can see the images full-sized by clicking on any one of them.

Pride Week

Just happened to pass the tail end of this parade during Pride Week at the corners of Greenwich Avenue, Christopher Street and Sixth Avenue. Click any image to see them all larger. Once again, you can see the graininess (digital noise) that I’m fighting with by shooting hand-held at 1/320th of a second at really high ISO (12,800) at night.