oyster bar

Shaw’s Crab House (and oyster bar), Chicago, Illinois, 2010.

An older photo that jumped out at me for some reason, so here it is.

miss murder

Miss Murder, Hard Knox Roller Girls.

One of my favorite portraits from the Honky Tonk Stomp last year.

butterfly

car

exchange

I-65, I-440, and Franklin Road. Nashville has more than 80 miles of interstate. I don’t know if that’s a lot, but it sounds like it.

snowmen

Building snowmen. Centennial Park in Nashville, TN.

2010

2010, a year in review. Click above for a slideshow of my 2010 project 365 (a picture a day for a year). Yes, there are only 333 pictures. Finishing stuff is overrated, anyway.

stairs

Parking garage, Philadelphia, PA. An odd splash of color in an otherwise drab parking unit.

the great white south

An unusual December snow in Nashville this week, and now freezing rain on the way. Bundle up and drive carefully!

popcornopoly

Popcornopoly. Corner of 2nd and Broadway, Nashville, TN.

lightning encore

Lightning in the Encore, 2008

An oldie but a goodie. The night this was taken, I was peering out of my window (I did this a lot when I lived downtown) at the storms blowing through. Suddenly a couple of fire engines came tearing down the streets headed for the Encore building, which was newly completed but not open yet. They flanked each side of the building and started doing their thing — including raising the ladders on each truck to the side of the building. I wasn’t sure if there was a bomb threat or a hostage situation, or a localized fire on an upper floor or what.

Naturally, I grabbed my camera. Because that’s what photographers do during tragedies, apparently: they set up a tripod and kick back. So I had my camera all setup and I was just taking longer exposures to see if I could capture anything — and it ended up being lightning reflected in the front moving in behind me. Goes to show that you never really know what you’re gonna get.

I found out later that this was actually a test drill. Any time that there’s a new high-rise building, the fire department deploys their trucks and raises the ladders to make sure they know how high the ladders will reach from various points around the building. Pretty cool.

melrose billiards

Melrose Billiards, 2010 — a few days after the flood.

Yesterday I posted about the Melrose Theatre. Located in the same building, Melrose Billiards (sometimes called Chandler’s) sits in the basement, a few doors down. In the face of the more serious destruction of the flooding in Nashville this year, it was hard to get too upset about the smaller casualties — but they were sad, nonetheless.

Melrose Billiards was among them — it took a pretty bad soaking in the floods, with water nearly up to the ceiling (I’d guess around 7-9 feet, judging from the floodline). This is surprising, because it’s nowhere near any major body of water. There is a small drainage creek behind it that terminates north in the river, but I suspect the flooding mostly came from runoff on the hill, and the bar just had the misfortune of being in an unusually deep basement. But I digress. Fortunately, due to the owners’ determination and a grassroots community effort, the bar was quickly drained, dried and renovated and is back in operation. (and by “renovated”, I mean “looks pretty much the same”, i.e. 40 years old and vaguely smelly).

The bar keeps a relatively low profile, with nothing but the above door/sign indicating there’s anything present. Although it can get packed on the weekends, it still mostly serves regulars and other assorted locals. Melrose Billiards was opened in 1969 by the Chandler brothers (hence the alternate name and the sign above the bar), who also went on to open or buy many other Nashville establishments including the Sportsmans’ Grilles, and the Gersthaus. This is the reason you can still find $3 Gerst on tap — a nice perk. While I do love the bar, it has its downsides quaint charms: foremost among them, a nearly impenetrable haze of cigarette smoke that probably dates to 1969 itself. You don’t go to this bar wearing anything you don’t plan on immediately washing or drycleaning. What can you do? The bar is a throwback to a different era in more ways than one. Check it out sometime. It’s a Nashville establishment worth protecting and patronizing.

dusk

Nashville at dusk. A late-night post for all you night-owls, while I sip some tea and relax to Bill Evans before bed.

melrose theatre

Melrose Theatre, Nashville, TN.

Built in 1942, the Melrose theatre was one of three grand theatres in Nashville that shared a similar design — the other two being the Belle Meade Theatre and the Inglewood Theatre on Gallatin. Sadly, the Inglewood theatre was closed in 1977 and demolished sometime thereafter — a shuttered drugstore now occupies the spot. The Belle Meade theatre fared much better, operating as a theatre well into the late ’80s before Bookstar turned it into a book store, with minimal remodeling. Sadly, in a move so crass and lacking in historical sensitivity that it could only happen in Nashville, the Belle Meade Theatre was recently gutted and turned into a grocery store by Tony Giarratana, leaving (I believe) only the facade and the projector room intact.

For its part, the Melrose Theatre has been remodeled a few times, but still remains relatively intact as a theatre (at least on the outside). I recently saw it all lit up for an event recently, and it was quite spectacular — sadly, I didn’t have a camera with me (weird, I know). This picture from 1984 (when the theatre was still in operation) will give you some idea of what it looked like. I don’t know the state of the interior, but perhaps the Melrose can be revived as a theatre some day.

second ave

Second avenue, Nashville, TN. It’s around this time of year that downtown gets very photogenic.. hoping to get out there for some quality time with my tripod this year.

storm

A spring stormfront rolls in over the cumberland river and the gateway bridge. May, 2008.

on prints

So, over the past few years, I’ve had a lot of people ask to buy prints of my photos. It’s incredibly flattering to know that people appreciate my photos enough to want to hang them on their walls at all, much less pay me for it. As such, I’ve always felt compelled to do my best to fulfill these requests, despite the fact that I know very little about the actual printing industry, much less matting, framing and decorating. To be honest, though, it’s become a hassle. The industry is changing daily due to the digital revolution, and the frequency of people asking me for prints is relatively rare. Thus, every time it happens, I have to re-evaluate the vendors, and then negotiate a price (read: pull one out of my ass), which always felt a bit disingenuous (more below). Plus, again, I’m often asked to provide expertise in an area (printing, framing and decoratin) that I know nothing about. I actually once had someone ask me which of my photos would work best in their living room, and gave me a rundown of the furniture and color scheme. At the end of the day, I’m a photographer, not an interior decorator.

To that end, I’ve decided to start offering prints for free. Of course, I don’t mind if people want to compensate me for them, naturally, but it’s easier for me to just handle that via donations. This gives people the flexibility to get whatever they want, and frees me to focus on what I do best: taking pictures. I’ve put up instructions and details, but I felt like some elaboration was necessary — hence this post:

Most photographers protect their images rigorously. They watermark them. They only upload smaller resolutions. They market their pictures as an exclusive or “fine art” product, and only offer prints in limited, expensive runs. Why don’t I do that?

Well, my demure response is that there’s never been any such demand for prints of my pictures, and I think it’s silly to try to artificially create it. This is my response to the modest demand for prints of my photos that I’ve seen. It’s not enough to make a living, and I don’t suspect it ever would be.

If you’d twist my arm a little, I might go on: A lot of photographers are stuck in a mindset that hasn’t yet caught up with the modern world we’re living in. Limited/numbered runs are a comically archaic way to distribute your photography. It made sense in an age when the material costs of the actual print-making process were a limiting factor. It’s ridiculous to expect that someone would pay a premium for a print of a photo because you only made 50 when they know perfectly well that you took the photo with a digital SLR and could very well make 50,000 if you wanted. Let’s not delude ourselves. Very few photographers are good enough that this sort of artificially generated demand will work. Nonetheless, every aspiring professional photographer on the planet attempts to frantically “protect” their images against barbarian hordes that simply don’t exist. You have to be a pretty amazing photographer for someone to still want a print of your photo when all they can see is a 500×500 watermarked thumbnail. And trust me, you’re not that good. I’m not that good.

Secondly, the process by which prices are negotiated in the market for art always left a bad taste in my mouth. When people asked me how much my photography cost, I was always forced to pull a number out of thin air. There are no physical constraints that would factor in my setting a price for the actual prints, and the attempts by some photographers to artificially create some (as mentioned above) struck me as dishonest, or at the least, overly-arbitrary. I think that’s why this solution feels so good: aside from the fact that it caters to my laziness, it’s also very honest.

I want people to see my photography. I’m vain, what can I say? And I want people to see my photography in a clear, unobstructed, large format. In a digital age, this means simple, large, unaltered, high-res digital images. Does this mean that, really, anyone with a lick of sense could snag a high-res copy of my photos and print them on their own? Absolutely. Am I worried about throngs of malicious people doing so in high volume without paying for it? Hardly. Most people that want to buy my photos are honest people that like my photography and want a modest print of it, and/or want to support my photography, which, again, they are most welcome to do!

Lake Pontchartrain

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway — one of the longest bridges in the world.

special operation

Downtown Nashville, 2007. 1984 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a .. uhm.. “special” trim package. Heeeeell yeah.

THE Nashville Roller Girls

This year, I had the honor of photographing the Nashville Roller Girls through their 2010 season. I skulked around in the background through practices, scrimmages, bouts, and, begrudgingly, afterparties, where I was forced, against my will, to cavort and socialize with all of my subjects. It was hard work, but in the interest of journalistic integrity, I felt it was necessary, to give you, dear readers, the real deal. Seriously, though: I met a lot of truly, truly amazing people, and made lots of great friends. I also, surprisingly, found myself the fan of a sport. No, really! I know the rules and everything! I’ve even found myself yelling alongside other belligerent individuals at other sporting events. Roller derby is apparently the true gateway drug.

I witnessed a team of young, raw recruits training their asses off, while a tireless group of individuals worked behind the scenes to keep things running. I witnessed that team face the uncertainty of their entire league’s future, with their former home at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds uncertain. I saw the team bent low by injury and relocation, but not broken. I watched the same team rise to the challenge and emerge victorious — eventually heading to the national championships. A true accomplishment. I understand Atlanta wanted to be there, but they couldn’t make it.

So, I’ll probably be featuring a lot of the 8 brazillion photos I’ve taken over the last year on this blog, but I have actually made an effort to edit all those photos into a coherent set, which you can find here. See you all at the next bout!