About 11 o’clock this morning we set off from Chicago, south towards Louisville.  James brought along some playlists of funk music and snacks for the road and our good friend Lee had decided to join us for this leg. Coincidentally Lee’s girlfriend Rebecca is going to be in Louisville this weekend so it made sense for him to join us. The three of us relaxed and joked around on the road and it wasn’t long before we were stopping to photograph windmills and “Hell Is Real” signs indicating we were definitely deep into the great state of Indiana.

We posed the question of where we should stop for lunch to our Twitter followers and  the awesome @JennFree suggested Scotty’s Brewhouse in Indianapolis. Her pitch was compelling and seeing as how I’m on a never-ending quest to try as many different beers as possible, any place with “Brewhouse” in the title immediately appeals to me. Luckily the guys were happy with it too.

When we arrived in Indianapolis we were struck by the beauty of the city. With it’s many beautiful monuments and circles, the downtown area is simply gorgeous. We wandered around a bit, checking out a smoke shop and a vintage styled Dunkin’ Donuts. We stopped off at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument and were instantly taken aback by it’s beauty and size. The entry on Gowalla for it mentions it being comparable to anything in DC and I’d say it’s formidable by my memory. Sadly the structure is under restoration but that didn’t prevent us from enjoying it nonetheless.

Scotty’s was a very large sports bar / pub with outdoor seating and a fairly typical menu but a reasonably sized beer selection. Lee and I each tried a local brew and chat a bit before hitting the road again. Lee proposed that the city would be suitable for another visit sometime. I definitely agree. It didn’t hurt our impression though that we arrived there to our first real taste of summer weather (a refreshing change from chilly Chicago.)

From there, it was straight on through to Louisville without stopping. Upon our arrival we hit up local music shop EarX-tacy and then went for some BBQ at Mark’s Feed Store on the suggestion of the wonderful Ms. Amy Guth. The atmosphere was friendly, and the food was okay. The three of us were mostly happy to have arrived.

Tonight we are staying with a friend of Lee and Rebecca’s and tomorrow James and I will bid them adieu and head to Nashville hopefully in time for the East Nashville Beer Festival.

For now, we’re going to hit the local bar scene. Good night folks enjoy the photos!

A week ago I had my final day at Apple Inc.

As much as I deeply love Apple it was one of those things where it was just time for me to move on. The constraints of working a retail job have been a challenge to my personal creative pursuits for some time so after six and a half year I’ve decided to move on (for now at least).

Today marks the beginning of something else entirely. Today I am leaving on what I hope to be the first of many road trips across the United States, during which my goal will be to write and publish a photo set daily from the road.

On this trip I will be accompanied by the always awesome and always funky fresh James Vest. The two of us will be exploring our way down to New Orleans and back over the course of 8 days.

We’ll be reaching out on Twitter to crowd-source the things we do in each city and others are welcome to meet up with us if they so choose.

I have to cut this short as I still have a few things to take care of before hitting the road. Expect another blog later today but in the meantime here is how you can follow us:

John
Twitter | Flickr | FourSquare | Gowalla

James
Twitter

While in NY for Thanksgiving. I took the opportunity to visit a landmark of the town I grew up in: St. Paul’s School.

Built in 1879 by Cornelia Stewart, in memory of her husband and the founder of Garden City, Alexander Turney Stewart. St. Paul’s is a glorious example of High Victorian Gothic architecture and stands out among Long Island’s many cultural landmarks. However the school has been closed since 1991 and the building has fallen into disrepair.

There are some calling for it’s demolition. Not so surprisingly this is largely a group of individuals (I won’t name names but they aren’t hard to find on Google) who stand to make a lot of money on construction contracts and other deals if they are able to tear down the building and sell the land for other purposes.

Despite the overwhelming majority of Garden City residents voting against the demolition of St. Paul’s, the proposal to demolish it is presented as the popular option due to Garden City’s board of Trustees propping up two other undesirable options that they know residents will be split on.

St. Paul’s future remains in question but things look pretty grim.

You can learn more about the cause to save St. Paul’s here.

And you can check out my photo set here.

Show your support for web standards by wearing a blue beanie today and changing all your social networking avatars to a photo of you doing the same.

This is me attempting, poorly, to mimic the cover of Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition.

For more info check here.

Check out the Flickr group here

To start with I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

I’m visiting NY for the weekend to see my family and reflecting a bit right now I’m thankful for a lot. I’ve switched to part time at my retail job and I really have started to find a good work / life balance. I turned 29 on Saturday and had an awesome party with awesome friends. I can’t express enough how important and awesome my friends are. Thank you everyone. This has been a great year. What I am thankful for going forward though are exciting projects. If you know me, dear reader, I’m not happy unless I’m doing a million things at once, here is what is going on right now:

1. I’ll be working with dynamic improv duo Batterymouth to promote their upcoming run Fridays at DeMaat Theatre at Second City from Jan 21st – Feb 25th. So far we have one publicity photo ready but there are more on the way. In my eyes Batterymouth is one of the best kept secrets of Chicago theatre and I’m very excited to be working with them.
2. Speaking of comedy… Long Pork is still going strong. The Gentlemen are hard at work on their next show which is set to debut at the Chicago Sketchfest on January 13th 9:30 pm. Also they’ve been invited to preform in the Charleston Comedy Festival for which they are super excited and honored.
3. Still doing the ChicagoNow thing. Yesterday I published a photo set of Wrigleyville during last Saturday’s Northwestern vs. Illinois Football game. You can check that out here. Tomorrow I’ll be publishing a holiday gift guide for photographers so check back then.

That’s all for today friends. I hope you all enjoy your turkey dinners!

Things have been busy lately in all good ways. This experiment of going part time at Apple while attempting to build my photo business has been exactly what I needed for my sanity, business future and sleep schedule. Where things are going is still a bit unsure but sure enough there has been no lack of interest, my schedule is almost as busy as it was before, except now I’m getting to actually work on projects instead of just watching them pile up.

Taking more jobs I’m starting to experience a transition in my work, I’m starting to grow creatively. I’ll elaborate in just a few.

First off I am still working with ChicagoNow and my photo blog Focal Points, although admittedly I don’t publish as much as I’d like to. I’ve got some exciting ideas to freshen things up over there (and here) and I hope I’ll get the chance to share them with you. It’s just a matter of time before I figure out the right way to do things.

My latest entry about my visit to Blue Island I think is my favorite so far. Blue Island was full of grit and decay and realism. The stuff I’m attracted to and really the purpose behind that blog, it has sort of a purest’s angle. Here is a sample shot.

Speaking of ChicagoNow on Tuesday they had their monthly tweetup and I was the official photographer you can find those shots on the ChicagoNow Staff Blog. Here is a shot from that.

Pretty different right? Obviously both in subject matter and approach. Walking around a party with a flash is still a new experience for me. I spent pretty much 2005-2008 refusing to use anything but natural light / room lighting because I think it requires you to hone your craft. For a long time I was averse to shooting with flash because of the effects it causes when used improperly. I also feel like people who heavily use flash photography tend to be annoying. I usually prefer to catch people in the moment than to get people posing.

However I’m at a point now where I feel like I’ve done enough work pushing the Apertures and ISO of my camera and lenses that it may be time to learn something else. Also, the nature of shooting weddings and events are requiring me to move to using flash. So far so good, already my opinions on the subject are starting to change. We’ll see where this leads.

Now that I’ve done all that talking about working with flash I’m going to show you a picture shot without it. Here are my friends Austin and Allysa at my friends Evan and Shama’s wedding.

I still prefer this look to any other, there is a softness to natural light that just feels more human to me. I’m often told that I’m more a photojournalist than an editorial shooter and I’m not sure how I feel about that. My preference is to make something feel real, that captures a moment… that by nature sounds like photojournalism but I’m perfectly fine with that moment being faked or set up as well. I want my photography to be believable.

If there is one thing that I’d say that grounds most of my work it’s that.  Realistic beauty. Even when if it’s faked I want the viewer to feel it in a real way. Some would say this holds me back, I think it makes me better. Every tool, every trick can be used and overused. This is sorta why I shy away from HDR photography. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very often beautiful (my friend Megan does particularly good work) but more often than not it’s overused until an image has no depth, no black and no white at all, things become just overblown over-saturated messes of photos. It’s walking that line that makes you skilled, using something in moderation and creating something beautiful is the right way to go.

When I do use it I try not to over-use it.

Some might tell you that photo isn’t “true HDR” because I actually have black and white points. I would tell them to go frak themselves. HDR is a tool like any other.

That’s sorta the same way I feel about flash. Now, this is not a knock against studio photography. As photographers many of us are obsessed with light and the fact we can control it for our artistic expression is the equivalent of cavemen learning to harness fire. It’s not something I’m taking for granted, however in this day and age there is an obscene amount of editorial / studio photos that look the same in boring ways. I don’t want to be like that.

Every model on every magazine cover is made up like crazy, lit to death and then photoshopped back to life. I don’t want to do that. I’d like to walk that line and find that balance to create something that is exciting while being somewhat real. I think that’s how I’ll stand out… my editorial work will be informed by journalistic / natural style.

A major influence on my work has been Clay Enos. Clay shoots entirely with natural light and works in Lightroom to do everything else and it’s those restrictions that make him better at what he does. By confining himself creatively he inherently becomes more creative.

The thing is I don’t want to be Clay either. I love his work but there are things I don’t like about it either. I want my own style. It’s just a matter of finding exactly what that is. I think the last few years have taught me well. Now it’s time to learn some new toys and continue to find a balance.

Onward!

A few months ago I was coerced got the opportunity to photograph my friends Laura and Jeff’s wedding. They knew that wedding photography was typically not my thing and in fact something I usually detest but Laura was persistent.

“We don’t want a wedding photographer. We want a photographer we like.”

She played to my ego and thinking and it worked. When I finally agreed, Laura told me they sent this photo to their parents with the caption: “We picked a wedding photographer!” The wedding went well and I’ve published a few of the shots publicly so far: here, here, & here.

Laura is a member of the über-cool NESrock band I Fight Dragons (LP forthcoming on Photo Finish Records) and has an affinity for all things 8-bit and I had a free moment today so I made this in her honor.

I’ve got a lot going on and a few new and exciting things up my sleeve but I wanted to post a quick note that I just published a few new photos from my Thailand trip back in April to Flickr.

A lot more are on the way. Sorry about the delays. Thanks for your patience. The best part of working part time is the ability to get through your backlog of stuff you’ve always wanted to do.

Here is the link: Kanchanaburi – April ’10 on Flickr

Of all the places I’ve spent my time. No place has as many fond memories for me as Yankee Stadium.

I shot this image almost exactly two years ago at the 2008 MLB All Star Home Run Derby. This would be the second to last game I would spend with her.

I only just now finally getting the chance to assemble it in Photoshop and Aperture. This is my tribute to the most important stadium in all of baseball and my one true home.

May she rest in piece.

When Google announced it would support the “nofollow” HTML attribute back in 2005 I was pleased. Blog spam was (and still is) a major problem. The invention of “nofollow” took a lot of bite out of the usefulness of comments for spammers. It really seemed like the right move at the time and looking at it now it still makes a lot of sense. I can’t image how bad things would be without it.

For the uninformed, “nofollow” is an attribute that can be assigned to links on websites. This is recognized by Google and then subsequently ignored in Google’s index, thus not allowing sites to raise their “PageRank” on Google. Therefore, in theory, leading to more relevant search results.

Here is my gripe, when Google announced this feature they did so under the stated guise of “Preventing Comment Spam” but it’s turned out to be abused. There are those who would argue that “nofollow” has become a tool that creates an unfair balance where higher trafficked sites don’t share traffic with lower ranked ones. Now I’m not saying that “nofollow” should go away but that it should be used less. Why am I complaining? Because three of the sites I use most often implement “nofollow” in places that, while well intentioned, work out as unfair. These sites?

Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

For starters, Facebook’s usage makes no sense. Facebook has several checks to prevent spammers from joining the service and multiple ways to report it when it happens. I am not saying they are perfect but they very much maintain a strong and effective walled garden. When you factor in that the site has pushed its users to make more of their content public and had major issues with privacy. It’s downright unfair that if they are going to push me to make my content public that they aren’t going to allow me to get a PageRank incentive for this.

At first glance however, the inclusion of “no follow” does seem logical for Flickr and Twitter. The ease of access to these sites makes them obvious targets for spammers. In the case of Twitter, it’s no secret that they have a large spam problem, so in the short term “nofollow” seems like a practical solution to de-incentivise spamming.

Despite this reasoning I still believe it to be the wrong solution.

Flickr is a publishing system and there are those who use their Flickr accounts as blogs with very long written posts to accompany their photography. Yet Flickr automatically attaches “nofollow” to any link posted anywhere on their site, even on the user’s own written content.

With every photograph I post on my Flickr account I include a link to a related blog entry whenever possible. These things directly relate and semantically should be linked. My analytics also clearly show this is an effective tool for increasing my readership and traffic as a significant portion of my traffic comes from these Flickr links. Yet, Google ignores them because of the “nofollow” attribute. The same with Twitter.

Doesn’t this go against the whole spirit of “nofollow”? If you ask me it’s lazy and unfair. Especially in Flickr’s case when you consider that many users are “Pro” users like myself who pay for a Flickr account. I’m paying for a service that is going out of its way to prevent me from getting PageRank from it. That’s a bunch of crap.

There is another way to look at this though. One could argue that PageRank is actually doing the opposite of it’s intention and hurting Google’s relevance. The three biggest traffic sources to this site are Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, in fact these account for almost 50% of my traffic, however Google’s mysterious PageRank algorithm ignores these sources, thus making it harder for my site to gain relevance in search results. Isn’t this leading to an inaccuracy in what’s “relevant?”

“nofollow” is used almost ubiquitously by any service that has an easy sign up system, therefore it is creating a tiered system on the web that takes away power from user generated content and gives more strength to those who have a greater technical knowhow. There are many out there who will never understand how to setup a blogging platform such as WordPress or MovableType but can easily get a Twitter, Flickr or Facebook account. Why should their voice matter less to PageRank? And on the flip-side, why should a major media outlet matter more? Isn’t this working against the democracy of the web?

How do we decide what is signal and what is noise? Surely just because something is easier to do doesn’t make it less relevant, does it? Can’t we come up with a better technological solution that empowers users not punishes them for their lack of tech savvy?