Serendipitous Slendor

Harvey Pekar was the author/illustrator of American Splendor, an underground comic series. Harvey was from Cleveland, and worked as a file clerk at the VA, as the comic made him no real money to speak. In the early 90's Harvey was diagnosed with lymphoma, which led to the graphic novel "Our Cancer Year", in collaboration with his wife, Joyce Brabner. I did photos of Harvey for "The Edition" , an alternative news weekly in Cleveland. The gist of the story was basically how difficult the cancer treatments were, and how life kept throwing him curveballs.

The first photo was to show how he was trapped by the treatments. He really needed the crutches to get around at the time.

Next I put him in a corner for sort of a painted in a corner, no way out feel.

While I was shooting their cat, which was black, crossed Harvey's path, adding an "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all" feel. Lucky for me, though!

The Edition was a tabloid size paper, and the photo with the cat was run large on the front page, as was the style of the paper. When viewed folded you saw Harvey glaring at you, and when you opened the paper to full length there was the cat, sort of a fold-out surprise.

Tomorrow (July 12, 2012) is the second anniversary of Harvey's death. He was 70.

Phun with the Phone

This is one of my favorite places. It is the Chapel in Rodman Hall at John Carroll University. At one time Rodman Hall was the residence for the Jesuit priests at JCU, It is now an office building, with the Jesuits moving to a new residence built for them across the street.
The chapel presents a difficult lighting situation, one that in the film days would have needed supplemental lighting to overcome. The stained glass windows are a good 5+ stops brighter than the interior of the chapel. Film just couldn't handle a dynamic range like that.
Enter digital, HDR (High Dynamic Range) and the iPhone. Combine a little Photoshop after downloading the image and this gives a pretty good representation of what the scene looks like. For a shot from the phone it's quite good.
The iPhone does HDR with only 2 images. Photoshop CS2 and above can combine multiple images at a much wider range of bracketing, and the results can be spectacular.
Heres' the  image sand the HDR, etc.

Trying to see differently

Last night was the annual ASMP Pints and Pixels gathering. We were encouraged to show some images, and these were the ones I chose. I get to travel a bit, and often wind up at over-photographed places, from a tourist standpoint. I've been trying to make images that aren't the norm.

Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. The branches ice over during the winter.

The TransAmerica building, with an echo of San Francisco's past in the foreground.

The Darwin D. Martin house in Buffalo. I had looked for a photo for about 2 hours, and was only seeing "traditional" views. As the sun went down, these shadows came into play.