Category Archives: photography

Paper Airplanes

On Sunday at one in the afternoon, a local Grand Rapids guy named Rob Bliss and a handful of friends started to dump paper airplanes off of downtown buildings. By the time they finished, one hundred thousand planes had descended on the nearly 20,000 people crowding the streets below…

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Election Day in New York City

In mid-October I received an email from a friend of mine, asking if I could fill in for him at the Future of Web Design conference in New York City. He was scheduled to lead a workshop on November 3 and give a presentation the next day, Election Day.
Of course, I jumped at the chance. And, of course, I panicked soon thereafter. The workshop (3 1/2 hours) and presentation (30 minutes) required a lot of preparation in a short amount of time. But somehow I managed …
…Here are a few pictures I took during my brief visit.

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Album-Human Hybrids

I just saw a page full of photographs that people have taken of themselves with album covers obscuring parts of their bodies to make the pictures on the albums look like extensions of themselves. Some are amusing, some hilarious, and some downright creepy.

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A Slew of New Pictures

Actually, some of the photos are not exactly new, but they’re new on the website, and I like how “slew” rhymes with “new” in the same way that I like how “slough” rhymes with “enough,” so enough already with the lengthy introduction and on to the photos…

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Fall Photos

Last week I took my camera to Calvin College and snapped a few photos on campus. It was a lovely day, and the leaves were peaking, so I thought I’d share a few of the pics on this here blog…

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Recovering the Photographs

On Thursday night my family and I attended a beautiful wedding on the beach of Lake Michigan. The bride was a former student of mine, our kids’ babysitter, and a dear friend, so I was especially anxious about being entrusted with the role of “official” photographer. I wanted to make sure that the bride and groom had a photographic record of the event that at least approximated what they remembered.
The night before the wedding I recharged the digital camera’s battery and packed a film camera and an extra set of batteries, just in case something disastrous happened. I unloaded all the photos from the 6GB Hitachi microdrive and set it carefully back into the camera. Two 256MB CF cards would serve as backup. I felt pretty confident that everything would go smoothly.
The beach setting was gorgeous, and the bride and groom and all the attendants and families were gracious as I took some formal shots before the ceremony. Other than a few drops of rain, everything went off without a hitch–unless you count the one involving the bride and groom. The reception, too, was lovely, even during the 30 minutes or so of rain when the guests scrambled back to the cottage for cover.
But then something strange happened…

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San Francisco Photos

The most vexing advantage of digital photography is that it allows me to take 400 pictures on a six-day vacation. One day I will be able to sort through all of them. For now, here are a few snapshots of our trip to San Francisco and environs…

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Signs and Wonders

“Signs” as in street signs or store signs; “Wonders” as in one wonders what the person who wrote that or painted that was thinking, or if the person was thinking at all…

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Fall Colors

Grand Rapids can be really gorgeous this time of year, with an eyeful of yellows and oranges and reds wherever you look. It’s hard not to take pictures these days. Maybe in a way I’m trying to store up some color for the long, bleak winter that lies ahead…

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A Walk to Work

Yesterday I took my camera along to work in the off chance that I would have time to snap some pictures of people milling around outside during lunchtime with all the booths set up for Celebration on the Grand, the last hurrah of the summer in downtown Grand Rapids.
But since the bus dropped me off a half hour before work started, I decided to slow down the usual 10-minute walk and snap a few on my way to the office. Here is what I came up with…

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