streetcar

OK, I’m going to stop sounding like I work for the Portland Chamber of Commerce. Forget about the crazy good restaurants, the impressive community street party that was First Thursday (and the fact that there are enough galleries in town that tonight is First Friday), the fact that REI is just a few blocks from me, the fact that the best frozen yogurt is too (they swirl the obviously superior flavors: chocolate and raspberry), that there is an ultra great camera store (they put Holgas and Hassies in the same display case), the fact that men here aren’t afraid to wear capri pants, that the streets in our part of town that go north/south are numbered and the streets that go east/west are alphabetized meaning that someone like me who has a painfully pathetic sense of direction can NEVER get lost, and also forget about the fact that you don’t need a car here if you live in the city. Forget about reading any of that on this blog. Its time for me to get back to work.

Photo work.

Remember the Streetcar Series I started last year and continue to work on each time I’m in town? I didn’t touch it the first couple of weeks here because I knew I wanted to explore it from a slightly different approach. I didn’t know what that would be, but felt sure that the photo goddesses would wave something in front of my face at some point.

That wave came in the form of a new camera. It was time for me to upgrade to the new Canon 5DII. Buying it here was on my list of things to do, since there is no sales tax in Oregon. (Oh, you can add that to the things I won’t be talking about.) Stepping up meant getting more mega pixels, like a crazy number of megapixles that are probably over the top really. Wasn’t sure what I’d do with all those mega pixels.

I learned very quickly after my first outing with the new camera that those mega pixels would let me enlarge the image like never before.

So, in the spirit of the Walker Evans subway pictures that inspired me to do this series in the first place, I am now more on the lookout for individuals on the streetcar, rather than interactions and “conversations.” (That will come later when I piece these together as triptychs in the final presentation.) In a way, these are more like portraits.

A little scary to share them so early on, but here goes.