At midnight, the youngish bartender leaves for the evening, and the owner’s wife takes over behind the bar. She’s an old woman, hard of hearing, but likes to converse. Above her head hang coffee mugs from across the known world, a collective gift from unknown people, and under the cash register they keep an entire drawer of playing cards.

I didn’t shoot much while I was there. I spent most of the night trying to convince Matt to join Twitter, and to actually use it. All I got out of it was a handful of images of Matt resisting my efforts.

To me, the hardest aspect of portraiture is controlling the situation. The night before a portrait shoot, when I set up my lights and test the various settings I will use the next day, the light is always good. The light can be reproduced. But throw in the subject as variable, and the whole equation becomes skewed. Now I am trying to maintain a dialog with a person I have just met while recreating the perfect light of the night before. I worry that my conversation sounds superficial, while I focus my attention to the light. I worry my light will suffer, while I focus my attention to the conversation. I worry. And I hurry. And I stumble on the loose bricks I never bothered to notice, the night before, while I had that perfect light in my perfectly controlled test.

The question I face is not how to focus the camera, or what ratio to set my lights on. It’s not even how to extract that expression from my subject for which I am aiming, not how to control the people I shoot. No, for me the question becomes how to control myself.

These are a handful of recent portraits that I think worked.

Say what you will about the Huffington Post, and its, um, interesting way of gathering news, but you have to admit they have made a brand of themselves. Is that why pro contributors are willing to work for a $200 million-plus company for free? The Chicago Reader (who pays their contributors) did a story on one such pro writer. http://tinyurl.com/7yruqd

Personally, I think working for free is horseshit, but I’d like to see what some of you others think based on this woman’s take on it. A good business move? A way to stay busy in a stagnant economy? A hobby? Is her take even relevant to the photo business?

To see the series, click here or on the image.

In the meantime, I spent last night testing a simple light setup—with my most favorite model—to use on a series of dining guide photos I am shooting tomorrow. When I say simple, I mean simple. One SB-600, snooted, to the left and back, and a large silver reflector, front and center, just above the frame.

Here’s a few from the take that I liked.

“I don’t know. What was the address again?”

“I don’t remember. Funk said it was at Wabansia and Elston. Right across from the Hideout.”

“That’s the Hideout.”

“That’s the Hideout? “

“Yeah. But there’s nothing across from it. Call him again.”

Turns out the party, a Pitchfork Festival afterparty, was diagonal from the Hideout, in one of those warehouse-to-loft conversions, with a rooftop deck. On the deck, it was nice and coolish, for a balmy summer night with little breeze in the city supposedly famous for its wind. But inside, on the building’s second floor, where three bands played to a BYOB crowd of 200-odd twenty-something hipsters, it was really fucking hot.

To see the series, click here or on the image.

I haven’t been up north since my ski racing days in college. I forgot the sheer beauty of the middle of nowhere. My mistake.

To see the series, click here or on the image.

To see the series, click here or on the image.

So different than the Mississippi valley of my childhood, oak and limestone covered in an Iowa snow. I took comfort in the difference. I found fascination with the differences. I saw nothing else.

By summer I began to notice the rest.

The drive from Ukiah to Eureka is desolate, rising out of the Ukiah valley vinyards, irrigated grapevines green and alive against the brown desert of the hills, towards Willits, and the mountains in the north. The mountains become the redwoods, where the moisture comes back to the air, before the sea materializes among the logging operations, and Eureka appears out of the drizzle.

I drove this stretch of U.S. Highway 101 with more frequency, the longer I lived in Ukiah. I had friends in Eureka, and I found Ukiah dull. I had favorite parts of the trip, the sun-drenched hills of Garberville, the redwood canopy of Humboldt County. I never noticed a plot of land just north of Willits. Most people, I think, never noticed the plot of land, just north of Willits, known as the Schoolhouse property.

To see the rest of the series, click here, or on the image.

Rhonda (last name witheld per subject’s request) greets Jim McLeary, a Mendocino County official, with apprehension. McLeary arrived at the Schoolhouse property Nov. 17, 2005, to second an earlier letter informing the property residents they had 30 days to vacate the premises. The property had been labeled unlivable by the county, due to alleged lack of proper maintenance on the part of the property’s landlord, including unpermitted mobile homes and illegal power line splicings. In all, 14 residents living in the nine rentals on the property were told to leave their homes. Most had no where else to go.

“If you’ve got time, I’d like you to just grab some portraits after the finish.”

No problem.

The race ended for the best runners at 9:30 a.m. I found a large white tent, the medic tent, and used it’s east-facing wall as a reflector. I would have liked to clean the backgrounds up some, but since I was using a medic tent for my fill, I wasn’t too mobile.

May 3 was also the first day I used a new 2x tele converter. I intended it to lengthen my long glass for baseball and soccer, but since I had it, I figured what the hell. I attached it to my 50mm f/1.4, for the full-body shots. It made a blurry kind of vignette, which was unexpected. I used a 28mm f/2.8 for the close-ups.

To see the rest of the series, click here, or on the image.