A long month and a short newsletter.
As this heading suggests, September wasn’t a favorite month of mine. The struggles of live & grief were weighing me down. Picking up my camera and shooting usually would help, but this time it didn’t, so I only shot a little bit.
Paloma lost her job this month. OM laid off ~25% of their staff. This new reality compounded with the grief that’s still present from my dad’s death made September a long one.
Despite all of that, there’s been some beauty to September, particularly the changing weather. It’s a very welcome change.
Okay, now that all of the bad is out of the way 😅, let’s get into this month’s newsletter.
More New York. Lots more.
Paloma and I spent the beginning of this month all over NYC. We took our friends into the city (they were in town to go to NYC) and we let them loose in the Big Apple. From there, Paloma and I had a lot of time to kill. So we wandered. And wandered. And wandered. Maybe a bit too much for Paloma, oops!
As I’ve mentioned over the past few months, the images I find myself making in New York keep feeling more and more “whole.” These images keep feeling like they contain the essence of New York.
Here’s a small handful of the images that I made this month in New York. I know that I shared two of these last month. I shot them on the 31st of August, so I’m letting them slide for now 🫣
New York is New York because of the deep human experience that happens on those streets. The collection of buildings is nothing special. Dozens of cities all around the world have infrastructure like New York.
What sets NYC apart from places like LA (a place with some of the same infrastructure) is 1) the people and 2) what it takes to live here. There’s so much hope and possibility here, yet there’s also so much pain around the next corner. New York is the bonding agent for humans of all walks.
This last frame is my favorite from the month. It’s also the print I am sending out this month. The empty ferry cabin, composed through a variety of leading lines makes this frame feel reminiscent of a Jason Kummerfeldt composition.
If you haven’t subscribed to the paid level of this newsletter, here’s my shameless plug for that level. You’ll get this print in early October and one each month after that. All for the price of a coffee each month.
Rural North Carolina
I grew up visiting small churches every Saturday, walking around their cemeteries, documenting the names of the people buried there. More often than not, this would turn into a journey deep into the woods behind a church, trying to find someone who was buried a few centuries prior.
It was a project that my dad started for his library. I guess it stuck with me, albeit in a new form.
When Paloma and I were in NC this past month, we stopped in my old hometown on our way to Wilmington. In both Laurinburg & Wilmington, plus on our roadtrip back, I found a few little churches similar to the ones I’d visit each Saturday growing up. Here’s a few of them…
My camera roll from this trip may include an irregular proportion of churches & cemeteries, but sprinkled in there are a few images like the following: small scenes in rural America that tell of a different way of life.
The Rest
Early in the month, we played mini golf on this super rad course on a huge lake in Northern NJ. It was genuinely the best mini golf experience of my life. Here’s a set of three photos from our time there.
We also spent a little bit of time visiting my mom in Lynchburg (hi mom 👋). While we were there, I pulled my camera out once or twice and grabbed a few frames. Here’s one from a little adventure up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Final Thoughts
I am feeling myself come out of my creative slump as I write this. It’s quite possibly due to the changing leaves all around me. This month, I’ve got at least three sets of flights across the country (Michigan, Denver, and San Diego), so I’ll have plenty of fun chances for documenting fall across the country.
One final thing. I started another Substack. It’s about Formula One, featuring tons of science and data. You can subscribe (for free) to it here:
F1 Newsletter: Ferrari Delusion Syndrome
*Warning: I yap a LOT in this newsletter. It’s extensive and funny, hopefully.
Things that have inspired me or that I like (more official name still TBD):
Here’s a preset that ChatGPT made for me. My friend & I wanted something to mimic VSCO’s A6 look. So I asked ChatGPT and got this. Download the .XMP, compress it, and install it into Lightroom or ACR!
If you do marketing of any sort, these two AI tools are game-changing. Surfer for SEO and Relume for quick website wireframes.
The Buffalo Bills are on a roll this year (TBD about week 4, I’m writing this on 9/27). Either way, I’ve been remote editing photos for them some. Here’s a batch.
I’ve been eyeing these pants for a long while. If you’re a Gen-Z-er living in Bushwick, they might be your next buy.
This camera might be my last camera ever. I’ll sell a kidney for it.
