05/31/09 I had a ball last night at the White House News Photographers Association’s 88th Annual Awards Dinner. The audience was as loud as I predicted in my previous post but they did quiet down for the President’s video tribute to photogs. There was some grumbling about the Prez not being there but everyone is confident that he will show up for one of these shindigs before his time in office passes.

A couple of my friends were award winners and it was cool to see them get their due. You can see all the winning entries here.

Here’s the group I was hanging with at one of the Reuters News Agency tables.

05/30/09 Medium format photography gives you a big square negative instead of the rectangular one you get from 35mm film. Shooting square is a different way of looking at things. Composition changes drastically. I usually print borders on mine to show the image has not been cropped but is in fact square.

San Francisco Bay 1997

OK Corral Tombstone, AZ

Most of these images were taken with a beautiful 1940s twin reflex Mamiyaflex camera my uncle Thomas gave me. It used to belong to the Hollywood producer/agent Leland Hayward. Tom was one of his lawyers. Hayward was an avid photographer (among other things). I’ve seen his work and he was talented. He photographed most of the major stars in tinsel town in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s at one point or another. They were his friends and clients. It’s an odd feeling to look at his pix and think that they were likely taken with the same camera I’m now using.  At some point though he got tired of photography and gave all of his equipment to my uncle. I have Hayward’s darkroom which includes a magnificent German enlarger with a mirror inside that must be 2 inches thick.

Ellis Island Ferry

Ruined Bridge, Rock Creek Park

05/29/09 Looking forward to this:

Always great swag (usually photo gear with the White House Photographer’s logo stamped on it) and it must be one of the most raucous black tie events in DC every year.  The Correspondent’s Dinner is much more placid, for example. The audience is so loud that no one can hear the speeches. Watch it on C-SPAN.  I just tried without success to find on YouTube the video of Joe Scarborough hosting the event a few years back. Hilarious. He gets more and more angry at how noisy the crowd is as the evening wears on. At the finish of the program,  he said something like “Good Riddance!” or “I’m never doing this again!” I can’t quite remember what he said because I was loudly talking to people at my table.

The other very funny thing about the evening is the slideshow that plays during dinner with the award winning images. Without fail, every table of photographers will have one or two or ten people say “I shot that same exact image” or “I have a better version of that photo.” Hah!

05/28/09 Busy week! Wednesday night I took part in “Art Buzz Fully Fotographic”,  an event designed to “showcase the works of DC’s top artists” and raise funds for the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative’s Arts for Every Student (AFES) program. The event was held at The Source Theater at 14th and T which is a really cool space for a group show. It appeared to me to be a very small venue for a theater. Someone told me that it seats 100 but I’d be shocked if it did. My brother Mike works around the corner on U Street and came along to help me set up. It would have been very hard to do by myself and it was great to have another set of eyes. Thanks Mike!

I was torn about what to show but eventually decided on 3 portraits and two “travel” images.  Two of the portraits I had printed 24 x36 by master printer Gerard at the Photography Center of Bethesda – he did them on a metallic sheen paper which really made them pop. I cannot recommend Gerard highly enough. He runs the best photo lab in the entire DC/MD/VA region. Finally, I had them framed in a rush job by the always reliable  Allen Custom Frame. Here’s one:

Portrait of Roxana.

The model came out for the event with some of her friends and was happy to hear viewers “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” over her likeness.

Portrait of Christie. I shot this only a couple weeks ago at one of my Open Studio shoots but it may be my favorite image of 2009 thus far.

I also had t-shirts made with the image of Roxana printed on back.  Everybody likes a great t-shirt, right?

Here’s my niece Fiona modeling one.

Here’s one of the travel images I had on display:

It doesn’t do it justice to see it on the computer screen. The colors look faded here to me but the important thing about the print is that it’s HUGE.  I tell people that it is “sofa-sized.”

The best part of the show was the fact that a lot of friends I have not seen in a long time showed up. I handed out a lot of business cards and promo material; was interviewed by a reporter from I’m not sure where; schmoozed; drank wine and also got some job proposals for future work. Fun evening. I have to close by saying thanks to my friend Jade Floyd who organized the whole thing and roped me into participating.

05/26/09 I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. I spent it at my favorite place on earth – my family’s farm in the Hudson Valley with a bunch of my nephews and my brother Tim. Besides chores, it was a weekend entirely filled with boy-approved activities like fishing and looking for frogs down by the pond, driving fast on twisty country roads, fireworks, dinner from the local pizza joint and shakes from Del’s Dairy Creme.

Wide-mouthed Bass my nephew Paddy caught in our pond.

A turtle that was taken home.

And now it’s back to work! Today I’m picking up prints at the framer’s and getting prepared for tomorrow’s night’s group show:

ART BUZZ – Fully Fhotographic @ Fourteenth and T

where I’ll have 5 of my photographs up for sale and about which I’ll write more later today.

05/16/09 What a thrilling 134th running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore on Saturday! A filly named Rachel Alexander came across the finish line ahead of the field – the first female horse to win the race in 85 years. But the bigger story was the question a lot of spectators had on their minds: will this be the last time the 2nd Jewel in racing’s Triple Crown will be held in the state of Maryland? The syndicate which owns Laurel and Pimlico racetracks is bankrupt and an offer has been floated to turn the property into a shopping center. The downturn in the economy has certainly taken a toll. I noticed a couple major financial institutions in the state that had had tents in the VIP area of the infield last year were not around this year. Attendance in the decidedly non-VIP section of the infield was down drastically because of a ban on containers. The track banned alcohol from being brought in and the resulting crowd, which often swelled to 90,000 rowdy and sun burnt souls, was off by maybe half that number.

Rachel Alexander in the post parade before the race.

The finish.

Jockey Calvin Borel on board Rachel Alexander celebrates after winning the 134 running of the Preakness Stakes.

ZZ-Top Concert

When I think of horse racing . . . I think of beach volleyball?

Mud spattered jockey Mike Smith – who finished 2nd in the Preakness on board KY Derby winner Mine That Bird – describes his run in the Preakness immediately after the race.

Stakes barn hours after the race.

05/15/09  I got up very early Friday morning and drove an hour North to Baltimore to see the horses who intend to run in tomorrow’s Preakness Stakes do their morning workouts. I am not a morning person but this is a very fun thing to do. It’s like being backstage at a play before opening night. There is tension and expectation in the air. Everyone looking at these animals is trying to figure out who will win the big race. The multi-million dollar horses are handled like nobility. I heard two grooms washing a horse after his morning run and one said “This horse gets treated better than I do. I’d like to get a hand bath sometime!” and the other groom said “Too much information, OK?”

Pioneerof the Nile* running an early morning workout at Pimlico racetrack.

[*Pioneerof the Nile? Is that a typo? No, it’s run together purposely to conform with thoroughbred naming rules laid down by the Jockey Club. The Jockey Club registers approximately 37,000 thoroughbreds annually in North America and records their names, pedigrees and identification number (tattooed on the inside of the upper lip) in the American Stud Book. Thoroughbred names are submitted by the owner of breeder and assigned by the Jockey Club, which limits them to 18 characters, including spaces and punctuation. That forced breeder and owner Ahmed Zayat, to run “Pioneer” and “of” together when naming the son of Empire Maker.]

Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird gets a bath after his morning workout.  My friend, the great Reuters photographer Molly Riley, has her eye to the camera in the background.

Preakness contender Papa Clem gets a bath following his workout.

Trainer Bob Baffert chats with the exercise rider on board his horse Pioneerof the Nile after an early morning workout at Pimlico racetrack.

05/14/09 “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” premiere at the National Air and Space Museum.

Owen Wilson

Amy Adams plays Amelia Earhart

Robin Williams

Mizuo Peck plays Sacagawea

Ricky Gervais

Christine Taylor with her husband Ben Stiller who stars in the film.

05/13/09 Game 7 of the Washington Capitals vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins was Wednesday evening and I wanted to see the game so my coverage of the 2009 Newsbabes Bash for Breast Cancer to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation at Lotus Lounge was brief. I got there early enough to catch everyone outside posing for pictures with signage (although the liquor store next door was somewhat distracting) and did a quick drive-by shooting. A bunch of friends who arrived later angrily demanded my return via text messages, but by that time I was watching the hockey game with my brother Tim and our buddy Tommy at a hotel bar around the corner.

That’s Channel 9′s Angie Goff with Teddy Roosevelt.

It was a bad night for local sports as the Caps sadly got thrashed and the National’s Ryan Zimmerman’s hitting streak was snapped at 30.  We left the bar and headed up 14th Street for a birthday party at Cafe Salsa for my friend Jeff Dufour.  Jeff co-writes a gossip column in The Washington Examiner called Yeas and Nays.  We used to work together at The Hill Newspaper where I was Photo Editor for a number of years and Jeff wrote a Capitol Hill centered gossip column called Under The Dome.

Jeff gets a kiss from his lovely girlfriend Jayne.

Not a surprise for a gossip columnist’s party, but I spent most of the party swapping gossip from the last campaign with a well connected lobbyist of the Democrat persuasion who had some funny Hillary v. Obama stories I’d never heard before.

05/11/09 8th annual Sweet Charity event at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel where award-winning chefs demonstrated their mastery of cocoa and couture with wearable creations at the Des Alpes Chocolate Fashion Show featuring 15 models dressed in chocolate and edible accessories.

Proceeds from Sweet Charity will go to help the Books From The Heart program to provide books to children living in poverty who have few or no books of their own.

My friend Kate was wearing a giant 15 pound cake on her head for the second year in a row and looked a tad uncomfortable backstage but no one seeing her on the runway was any wiser. She’s pictured below with my friend Staci.