iPhone 12 mini

Pleasant Gap Fire Company Parade and Carnival 2022

 
An open-topped red vintage fire truck in a parade. Children are in the back of the truck, and parade spectators can be seen on the curb across the street.

Fire Truck
July 28, 2022
Main Street, Pleasant Gap, PA
Kalimar Spirit SP, Fuji C200

A parade. Two women in flowing renaissance-style gowns ride two horses. A man is on foot beside each horse.

July 28, 2022
Main Street, Pleasant Gap, PA
Kalimar Spirit SP, Fuji C200

Tractor
July 28, 2022
Main Street, Pleasant Gap, PA
iPhone 12 Mini

The back of a school band in red t-shirts as they walk towards an intersection with a red light. They are backlit by the sun.

Crossing College Avenue
July 28, 2022
Main Street, Pleasant Gap, PA
Kalimar Spirit SP, Fuji C200

Left: cotton candy stand at a fair. Right: parking lot. Partly cloudy above; sun in upper right creating lens flare effects around the edges of the photo.

Flare at the Fair
July 30, 2022
Carnival grounds, Pleasant Gap, PA
Kalimar Spirit SP, Fuji C200

Rhinebeck, NY

 
A three-story Victorian home at dusk. Golden lights on in the bottom right two windows.

A home in Rhinebeck, NY
December 4, 2021
iPhone 12 Mini

Four persons in colorful costumes strut down the street. Smiling spectators and bare trees in background.

Parade
December 4, 2021
Rhinebeck, NY
Ricoh GR II

Black and white. Parade on a town main street, from behind framed windowpanes of a shop. Musicians walking by on stilts, crowd along sidewalk.

Parade, Framed
December 4, 2021
Rhinebeck, NY
Ricoh GR II

Starr Institute
December 4, 2021
Rhinebeck, NY
Ricoh GR II

Looking onto the water
December 5, 2021
Staatsburgh State Historic Site, Staatsburg, NY
Ricoh GR II

Fall 2022

 
Bell tower of a central college campus building appears between trees with bright orange and red leaves.

Old Main
October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

Sackett Building
October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

October 24, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Ricoh GR II

Birch tree with golden and green leaves. Background: partly cloudy sky. To the right: Maple tree branches with green leaves.

October 16, 2022
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

A campus mall, tree-lined. Fallen leaves on green grass, and golden and green leaves in the trees above.

October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

Tree with golden and yellow leaves, framed by the window opening of a parking deck.

Framing Fall
October 26, 2022
Nittany Parking Deck
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

Blue and Yellow
October 26, 2022
Penn State, University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

COVID-19 Signage Project: Wear and Tear

 

To view all COVID-19 Signage Project posts, click here.

Worn down red social distancing floor marker. Rectangular shape. Legible words in white text: Stay here to be …. Feet apart

June 27, 2022 | CVS on South Atherton Street, State College, PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Worn down blue social distancing floor marker. Circle shape. White text at center: PLEASE STAY 6FT APART. Above: PHYSICAL DISTANCING IN EFFECT. Yellow arrows pointing forwards, backwards, left, and right.

May 30, 2021 | Penn State Berkey Creamery | iPhone 12 Mini

1. Worn down social distancing floor marker, a red square, on a tiled floor. At center, white icon of a pair of shoes. Above, white text: PLEASE KEEP AT LEAST 6FT. APART. To the left and right of shoes: STAY SAFE. Towards bottom of photo, legs and fe

February 10, 2022 | Cove Pizza, State College PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Worn down social distancing floor marker, a red square, on a tiled floor. The marker is heavily scuffed and scratched. At center, white icon of a pair of shoes. Above, white text: PLEASE KEEP AT LEAST 6FT. APART. To the left and right of shoes: STAY

August 26, 2022 | Cove Pizza, State College PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Concrete floor with worn black social distancing floor marker with white she icons and text. A doormat covers the right half. Photographer’s sneakers and jeans visible in lower left.

August 5, 2021 | The Cheese Shop of Portland (ME) | iPhone 12 Mini

Scuffed hardwood floor. Blue circle social distancing floor marker, heavily scratched. Black shoe icons at center. Above in white: SOCIAL DISTANCING. Along the circle’s edge: STAND HERE, with 6 FEET repeated all along the edge.

December 7, 2021 | Tait Farm Foods, Boalsburg, PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Dark grey painted concrete floor. Bare concrete revealed towards the bottom of the frame due to foot traffic. A circle of bare concrete is visible at center, where a floor marker’s removal peeled off paint. Photographer’s shoe at bottom center.

August 5, 2021 | The Cheese Shop of Portland (ME) | iPhone 12 Mini

April 19 to June 9, 2022: Spring, Self-Portraits, and a Chair in the Stairwell

While social media platforms have their uses, I don't love the notion of them being the only repository for those odds and ends photos that I take and feel the impulse to share. So, here's a compilation of my Facebook/Instagram/Twitter photo posts from April through June, on my own little corner of the open web.

Close-up of blooming magenta azaleas. Snow falling in the background.

Hello, Spring.
April 19, 2022
iPhone 12 mini

Black and white, college campus. A blossoming tree on the left, brightly lit by the sun. A sidewalk on the right.

Springtime
April 29, 2022
Penn State University Park

Photo of double doors. Left door: reflection of left half of photographer facing glass. Right door: large window decal of a lion’s face.

Self portrait (50% actual, 50% aspirational)
May 4, 2022
State College, PA
iPhone 12 mini

Busy casual restaurant dining room in black and white. Back of a patron to the left, full tables and family at center.

Tarrytown, NY
May 7, 2022
iPhone 12 mini

Headshot photo of 38-year-old Asian male. Brown eyes and black hair with gray streaks. Blue blazer and blue shirt.

Took a portrait for this particularly fussy and meddlesome client.
May 10, 2022
Burrowes Building, Penn State University Park
Canon 60D | Canon 85 mm F/1.8 USM

Headshot photo I took of myself for work. If in early May you spotted someone outside the Burrowes Building setting up a camera, hitting the timer, jumping in front of it, then frowning at the results and doing it over and over again for about forty minutes, that was me.

Interior of a train dining car. Green countertop, bright orange seat. Light from platform passing through the car's venetian blinds. Platform and another train outside.

Throwback Thursday: May 10, 2013
Parade of Trains, Grand Central Terminal
New York City
Canon 60D | Sigma 30 mm F/1.4

black and white photo taken through a window. Row of city homes, framed by windowpane frame lines.

Windowpane Frame
March 19, 2022
From the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA
Canon 60D | Sigma 30mm F/1.4

Back of a film camera. A slot in the back contains a cut out side of a film carton for Ilford Delta 400 film.

May 29, 2022
iPhone 12 Mini

Looking forward to seeing how this roll comes out. I’ve shot with HP5 before, and it came out a little grainier than I’d like, so I thought I’d try this. Also mis-cut this box end.

Black and white. Small park building (restrooms) on a sunny day. Three surrounding trees cast harsh shadows on the pavement.

May 30, 2022
Tudek Memorial Park
State College, PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Stairwell, trimmed with metal, glass, and wood. Bank of windows to the left. Wooden commemorative chair at center on the stair landing.

June 9, 2022
The Chair
Burrowes Building, Penn State University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

I do have more blog posts and social media series in the pipeline. These include, among others, various sets of COVID-19 signage, a collection of photos of control panels and buttons that I'm pretty excited about, and photos from our France 2018 trip that I'm still slowly editing.

What keeps this held up is that I've made a concerted effort to keep up with editing the photos that I take. This includes iPhone photos, so that means that every night or two I'm churning through a batch of new pics, and there's precious little time to put together other content into a form that's worth sharing.

Still, I want to eventually get to sharing these other projects, it may just be a few weeks or months until I get there.

Some Light Geometry

I was on campus mid-afternoon today to run some errands and get a look at the classroom that I’ll be teaching in starting next week. I was struck by the long shadows cast by the buildings and the trees. After a week of mostly dreary weather, it was refreshing to see such sharply defined areas of sunlight and shadow.

The following were all taken on an iPhone 12 Mini and edited in Apple Photos.

Black & white. An archway over a sidewalk. Light passing through casts a semicircle shadow.

January 3, 2022, 2:49 p.m.
Penn State, University Park

January 3, 2022, 2:53 p.m.
Penn State, University Park

Black & white. Side of a building, w/ short evergreen tree in foreground. Light casts a diagonal shadow on the ground and wall from lower left to upper right.

January 3, 2022, 2:55 p.m.
Penn State, University Park

Black & white. Along the side of a building. A sharp diagonal shadow on the wall, along with shadows of sparsely leaved tree branches.

January 3, 2022, 2:57 p.m.
Penn State, University Park.

Black & white. Front of brick academic building with many steps, two large white columns, and sign above in stone that says "Forestry Building."

January 3, 2022, 2:18 p.m.
Penn State, University Park

Black & white. Parking garage. Rectangular window openings across the center; shadows and light cast through them onto garage floor in foreground.

January 3, 2022, 2:59 p.m.
Penn State, University Park

State College in Black and White: Day Before the Game

Haircut day equals street photography day, so here are a bunch from Friday morning.

My original goal with this project had been to shoot on the street downtown and largely avoid the campus itself. I was interested most in seeing what I could photograph in a city much smaller than the one I’d moved from years ago. While I do think downtown could use a bit more attention as a city all its own, though, I realized more recently that to cut the campus out entirely from a project that’s about documenting downtown is to ignore much of what makes downtown what it is, at times for better or worse. So, though I’ll try to maintain my focus on the areas outside the gates, I do think it makes sense to shoot on campus now and then.

Friday was the day before Penn State’s ”White Out” game against Auburn, so there was a bit more activity on and around campus than usual, including the setup and supporting vehicles for Saturday’s ESPN Game Day broadcast on the lawn in front of the iconic Old Main administration building.

Large patio, lawn, with ESPN Game Day broadcast setup in the distance.

The following are from inside a classroom building in the middle of a class period. As with any college campus, there’s an ebb and flow of pedestrian traffic depending on the time of day. Below is a quiet scene, but when classes are changing, it’s just seas of humans moving everywhere between and within buildings, as if it were the world’s biggest game of musical chairs.

The following doesn’t fit into any particular category, except, perhaps, that it exhibits the type of shot more easily done with a phone than with a standalone camera. Though I am occasionally happy with the close in street shots I sometimes get, I do feel like I aesthetically gravitate more towards wider compositions that more purposefully place the subject in relation to the surrounding area, such as the shot of the persons crossing in front of the bus above.