I spent 10 days in São Miguel Island in November of 2016. During part of my stay, I was in a small village, Porto Formoso, for several days. All the houses are brightly painted in an incredible pallet of colors. Many of the houses use indigenous volcanic rock material for architectural decoration.
Take a look by clicking on the tab above.
Sea Wall. Praia Grande, Portugal
The mobile device sure has put the post card industry to sleep. Everyone is a photographer now. It’s amazing that traveling during the past three or four years, I find everyone is on their mobile device, no matter where they are. Everyone is proclaiming “I am here” with an ubiquitous selfie. I’ve always felt that I lived much of the places where I’ve traveled through a camera view finder or behind the ground glass of a view camera. The phenomenon of the mobile device camera goes way past what I imagined twenty years ago, that the future of photography might be. And yes, I use an iPhone to capture images as well.
The Silver Coast. Foz do Arelho, Portugal
The afternoon light and the dramatic cliffs of the Portuguese coast offer unparalleled visual opportunities. The wind comes up late in the afternoon, blowing sea mist into the cliffs. The light changes very quickly as does the color of the ocean. This is the third time I’ve spent time in Foz. Last week, I was there for a week, and this was the view from the house I rented.
Break Water. Îles de la Madeleine. Qúebec
Oculus Transportation Hub. World Trade Center, New York
The east entrance to Oculus, the transportation hub at the financial center in lower Manhattan. The architect, Santiago Calatrava, has designed many train stations, however, Oculus is by far his most ambitious, and inspiring. It was a real pleasure to photograph it on a Sunday afternoon with the light changing from minute to minute because of the unsettled weather.
2 Cabins. Snaefellsnes Peninsula, Iceland
I have made a lot of photographs since I last posted to MBPP. I’ve been involved in two residencies, one in Portugal and another in Ólafsfjördur, Iceland. I’ve been in about ten different countries, and I’ve returned to exposing black and white film. Additionally, I’ve been in almost two dozen shows in five countries. So, with so much going on, I only feel slightly guilty in not keeping MBPP more current and up to date. With that in mind, I’ve been working on an upgrade to the site starting with the Iceland tab. More to come in the near future.
Two Women in a Doorway. Rajasthan, India. 1992
I’m faced with the daunting task of scanning color negatives, and then digitally making prints from the scans of a large body of work dating back to 1992. The problem? Most of the C-prints have faded or have significant color shifts. Back then, no one said that C-prints were archival, everybody said they wouldn’t last 10 years. Well, that’s not necessarily true. I have a lot of color C- prints from that era that seem alright. The blatant culprits are prints that I made at a rental darkroom in NYC. Once, I opened my own color lab in 1994, the prints seem to display less signs of color shift. I owe that to the fact I was mixing my own chemistry. Glad I don’t do that anymore: 25 gallons of developer and 25 gallons of bleach/fix at a time.
This is an iPhone capture using a wide angle Moment lens mounted on my phone. The location is Bodega Ysios in Laguardia, Spain, in Rioja. This place has been on my bucket list for years. The architect is Santiago Calatrava of whom I am I big fan. What’s cool about the image is that during the conversion from RGB to grayscale, those strange artifacts popped up in the upper corners, For me that’s a positive, not a negative.
The interior courtyard of the Palacio Carlos V in Granada, Spain. The architect was Pedro Machuca, and construction started in 1527. It is an architectural gem just begging for black & white photography.
