I’m fairly certain that when I die, my work will be relegated to a desk drawer at best, a trash can at worst, never again to see the light of day.  I was motivated by the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, a true story of one of the most prolific street photographers ever.  She had an incredible, broad body of work stored in a few storage facilities.  After her death, the works were sold at auction—mind you, a ton of negatives and a few prints.

A gentleman looked over the lot of Vivian’s effects at one of those auctions and decided to bid on one steam trunk full of negatives.  He looked through the negatives and immediately realized he had found something extraordinary.  He began scanning lots of the negs and contacted some serious curators.  He walked away with his thoughts about the work being confirmed in spades.  He also hunted down all the other people who won the bids on her other works.  Vivian is now considered one of the greatest street photographers.  It’s the most extraordinary example of synchronicity I’ve ever learned of.

That really got me thinking about preserving my work, pedestrian though it may be.

The answer came when I discovered the Creative Commons licensing structure.  It allows me to offer all the work for your use, be it commercial or personal.  You may take it as it is or make it your own through your editing (RAW files are in every zip with a few exceptions).  You only need to credit me (byline), and I would further ask for a link back to this site.

2005 was a year of change for me. I moved to South Florida, made the necessary change to Digital from Film, and got hooked up with several local photographers, each of which had a penchant for shooting protests. I had pretty much been a ‘fraidy-cat’ when it came to shooting people. Protests offered the ability to photograph the human condition without concern of confrontation. Sadly, I’m mostly done with protests, mostly out of concern for the safety of my gear and myself. Loosing the fraidy-cat status was a great outcome though.

Gustavo was a street performer whose turf was one of the best such spots on Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach. He is exceptional at what he does. I didn’t get to know him so well… he was busy after all! I was able to give him several DVDs before he flew the coop.

I’m one of those oddballs who dabble in types of photography few undertake. The first left turn I took was having a Nikon D70 converted to Infrared 890nm. I became smitten with the notion of panoramas. I started around 2006, purchasing a good panorama tripod head. It’s still the best way to shoot them, especially for doing high-resolution scenes like the image at the top of this home page.

IIt’s a lot easier for a landscape photographer to categorize their work, in fact, most won’t need categories. My work is spread into many cubby holes—mixing Protests, Street Preachers together with street, architectural, Infrared, events like the Renfest all together loosing all context. I have some haunts that I visit several times a year, so I break the work down for at least some context.

This Troupe I dubbed the Street Preachers of South Beach a few months after I first spotted them—they began to ply their wares on the weekends around the beginning of 2006. Their usual haunt was 7 blocks from my apartment, so I figured it would be a great series to showcase the human condition. They did not disappoint.