Can you spell "Trojans"?

Can you spell "Trojans"? Santa Monica, February 2004
Originally uploaded by DC Products.

I can't think of a better imperfection than being a USC fan. OK, maybe being a USC fan who can't spell.

The brilliance of this idiocy -- taken February 2004 in a Santa Monica parking garage -- is the juxtaposition of the misspelled license plate and the correct spelling beneath it on the frame. I also won't stand for any excuses -- "Well, 'Trojans' [or 'Trjans'] was already taken ..." -- because, come on, get a better idea for a personalized license plate. A UCLA fan isn't going to settle for "BREWINS" if "BRUINS" is taken (though, even if someone did, it's at least a bit clever and not just stupid).

Weather-worn barn, North Jersey

Weather-worn barn, New Jersey, November 2005
Originally uploaded by DC Products.

It's not the best-composed photo, but I like it nonetheless. The diagonal power lines parallel the multi-tiered ground and the horizon line, which is both on a slight hill and also angled because I'm taking this from the window of the car, holding the camera at my side while I keep my eyes on the road at 45 mph. I didn't look at the camera at all to compose it; I saw the barn ahead, picked up the camera, and snapped the shot. I got enough of the barn and avoided the sun enough to feel happy with this as it is.

It's an old barn on some remote northern New Jersey roadside, probably Route 94 in Sussex County. Worn by the weather, it's got holes in the roof and is comprised now of almost nothing but sun-scorched and faded wood.

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This is the first time I'm playing with the "Blog This" feature on my Flickr gallery. It has some pros and cons, so we'll see if I keep it up.

New York City sunrise, Edgewater, NJ, November 2004

Week two of my conscientious effort to participate more regularly in the Photo Friday projects. I tend to think of the spectacles of nature as divine intervention of a sort. In college at Notre Dame, my roommate Bryan and I chose to skip the all-campus welcome-back mass our junior year to rent a canoe and paddle a few miles on the St. Joseph River. You'd be surprised at how pastoral the Michiana area can be if all you know of it is Grape Road, downtown South Bend and the campus (though the latter certainly is more scenic and peaceful than, say, campuses I've visited in Boston and Austin). The majesty of a sunrise or sunset, to me, is more of a display of the divine nature of this world than a factory-made reproduction of Christ on the cross or Mary and the baby in a nativity scene.

Besides, my archives contain few -- if any -- images of those last two icons. So sunrise it is.

Washington Square Park, New York City, July 2005

I need to get back to posting here. So I offer up this one, a composite of four photos taken of the recently refurbished arch in Washington Square Park. I like the size and detail these types of images offer, not to mention the funky lines and quirky perspective that are created when using four images that don't line up.

And, for a more amusing take on something massive -- relative to what we might expect -- here are two cats...

Gates series

Gates reflection, Central Park, February 2005


Atop Great Hill, Central Park, February 2005


Near the Great Lawn, Central Park, February 2005

If there's one thing that meant "orange" this winter in New York, it was Christo's The Gates. I took close to 200 photographs in four different trips to Central Park during the installations three-week run. I went into the city on two consecutive mid-week off-days and treked from Columbus Circle in the southwest corner (at 59th St.) of the park up to around 100th St. and then east, over to Central Park East and down to the 80s. My plans were more ambitious than I'd expected, and I didn't get to explore the northern edge of the park, which now remains the last great section I've yet to explore.

Ambiorix Concepcion, Hagerstown Suns at Lakewood BlueClaws, New Jersey, April 2005

Sport? That's this week's challenge? That's what I do. That's my passion. Stopping a moment so fast, so fleeting, as a bat in motion to meet the ball, the orb suspended in mid-air over the plate ... It's a rush to come home and look at a day's output and find a few gems.

I don't think I'll be able to stop at just one. This post will probably come to include a series of shots. And since I've been neglecting this blog for a month, I hope to go back and add posts, some for old challenges, to get back into the groove.

Along the Apache Trail, Arizona, January 2005

When I think of "space," if the heavens and cosmos don't come to mind, if there's something here on Earth that I picture, it's the West. The West is space. Open space. Much of it is owned by the federal government, which isn't always a good thing these days, but there's just so much room out there. Growing up on the East Coast, having never been west of Pennsylvania until I was 14, knowing only New Jersey, New York and New England until I went to college, I've always been fascinated with the open space out beyond the Mississippi. I still am. I'll never tire of taking my camera out into the arid air of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and their neighbors.

Ryan Howard, Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons, April 2005

Sports photos are the reason I took up photography as a hobby. I wanted to capture the images that you find on baseball cards or in the pages of Sports Illustrated. There have been many trial-and-error efforts, but I have managed to score some outstanding images. This is easily one of the best, capturing a split-second of an action that, in itself, is gone in an instant. For this "action" challenge, I had to restrain myself from posting more than just two.

WWII Memorial, Washington, April 2005

I went to D.C. last week for the first baseball game in the District in 34 years and I had a little time to walk around with my friend Matt before we headed to RFK Stadium. I'll try to post a few more shots from the trip soon, but for now, I had to display my best panoramic to date. I've never been able to get three pictures to come together so well. If it weren't for the change of green in the grass, it might not be noticable. I don't even mind that there are subtle signs of it. I actually like a little evidence that the photo took more than a look through a viewfinder to compose.

"Tempe By Air," Arizona, January 2005


"Christmas in the Citi[Corp]," New York City, December 2004

For the "Tiny" assignment, I couldn't go with just one. What? It's not the first time. Unsure of what I'd use, I first thought of the model train shots I took in December. Then I came across the aerial shots from the Arizona trip and liked those too. I love taking pictures from airplanes. I insist on getting a window seat whenever I can, and I always stow my camera under the seat in front of me, rather than in the overhead compartment. This is why. Had the camera been above my head, I couldn't have reached it to shoot the pictures as we were taking off.

On another note, SI.com has a great spring training feature, a photo series taken by Oakland A's pitcher Barry Zito.

"Forty Channels," Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, November 2004

I've been busy lately, so I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, and I haven't kept up with the Photo Friday challenges. But after looking at just a few of the shots so far, I think "Glow" will be one of my favorites.

I love the possibilities -- the play of sunlight on winter fields, neon signs on empty streets, light refracted through droplets of water. For my own, I went with the glow of television, partly because I like the ethereal light emanating from behind the partition at the other end of the room.

There's so much more I feel I could do with this theme. Once some of this preseason baseball stuff dies down, perhaps I can get to it.

"Jeter! Jeter!" Houston, Texas, July 2004

There were many who expressed "obsession" with pictures of coffee or chocolate, while a lot of people shot something they're obsessed with shooting — signs, the moon, etc. And at least one of a bottle of Calvin Klein's Obsession.

This shot serves both purposes for me. The image depicts the obsession of the fans; it also represents my personal obsession with baseball. The game is the reason I started shooting. At one time I wanted to be a sports photographer. I realized the other night that I'm much better off doing it for a hobby. I enjoy it more that way, I'm sure.

"Former ALCOA Factory," Edgewater, New Jersey, March 2005

There are three overriding categories of photographs that people seem to consider ghostly: blurry people in motion, long exposures in which a subject (or the photographer) moves into the shot and pauses before moving away, and cemeteries. There were also at least three images of jellyfish in the first 400 listed that I looked through as I endured a slow day at work yesterday.

While I was flipping through them, one-by-one, using the link viewer, iTunes shuffling in my ears, this page came up just as "Clocks" by Coldplay began and I felt the song — particularly the intro — fit the image perfectly.

So when I got home -- at 2 a.m. -- I set up the tripod on the balcony and shot a few 4-second exposures of the abandoned ALCOA factory adjacent to the cemetery next door. It's the factory moreso than the tombstones that I wanted to capture.

"Pigs For Sale," Southampton, New York, October 2004

Yes, indeed, the Hamptons can be rural.

My picture pages

This internet is a wonderful thing. I think back to the first time I used it -- fall 1994, my freshman year of college, the newness of the world wide web and what it could do, the potential of it, conveyed a sense of knowing ... the future is here. One of the first things -- perhaps the first thing -- I searched for, I Googled before there was Google, was lighthouses. I looked at pictures of the New England coastline, of Pemaquid in Maine and Brandt Point on Nantucket, and images of home, Sandy Hook and Twin Lights in New Jersey. They were pleasant, comforting shots of the comforts of home, of the familiar, from the far-away cold of the South Bend winter in the months after a breakup.

Now we can't seem to get by in our jobs without the web. When the internet goes down at the office, we sit around wondering what to do, how to proceed past a certain point when all our resources are frozen at the whim of a server somewhere. But it's a great thing. It's opened doors for everything, for everyone. Once, we showed guests photos of our vacations, guided them through scrapbooks and albums of pictures of places they'd never been and longed to go. Jokes were written and cartoons drawn lampooning those families who sat their guests down in a dark room to look at their slides of the family trip to the Grand Canyon ... and now we're e-mailing the link to our Yahoo! photo albums, letting those on our contact lists sit through the presentation at their leisure -- or their downtime at work.

I've fallen in love all over again with photography, a hobby I began developing 14 years ago when I got my first Minolta SLR for my 14th birthday, just in time to go see the Texas Rangers play the Boston Red Sox on a visit to Massachusetts. I've fallen in love again because of the internet, because of photo blogs that allow me to see the work of others and draw inspiration from them. And now I'm inspired to do the same. As for the name -- DC Products -- well, that comes from my childhood "corporation," the made-up copyright I used to put on my drawings and other expressions, artistic and otherwise.

My hobbies extend far beyond photography, so I don't devote as much time or money to it as the best and my favorite photobloggers. I don't spend much effort refining, fixing or doctoring my images in an effort to make them as good as I can. I'd like to, but then when would I go to baseball games or enjoy the fantasy sports I play with my friends or keep my fiancee happy with some quality time? So my plan is to use this space to further inspire myself, particularly through the Photo Friday exercises.

But I'll experiment, and I'll have fun with it. And after that, what does it matter?