I take between one and three cameras with me everywhere, and I mean Everywhere. The number and type depend on mood, time of day, and how much room I have in my pack. My main camera is a Konica Hexar, a quiet gem of a machine. When I need to line up elements in a scene more precisely than a rangefinder allows I use a Nikon SLR. The swinglens Noblex only works when I'm on foot. I shoot mostly b/w, mostly 35 mm because I care more about spontaneity than film grain. No tripod, no studio, no zone system, no expectation. Since moving to Eugene in Fall 2006 I've begun to carry a medium format rangefinder loaded with color film. This camera seems to work best on overcast days and for scenes with no people.

I am attracted to everything in the human/urban environment: buildings, pedestrians, graffitti, grit, billboards, etc, especially patterns or things that reveal some hidden order or disorder. I am especially interested in photographs which are confusing or absurd in the way that Zen koans are absurd.

Many of my photographs happen during and between regular daily events, running various errands or visiting people or whatever. At least twice a week I try to schedule purely photographic outings. I'll pick a part of Eugene or sometimes an outlying town and spend two to four hours on bike and on foot observing and photographing. This happens more in the summer, with longer days and less rain. I spend one day a week in the darkroom sorting through all the photos from the previous week.

I go through about 10-15 rolls of b/w per week, more in the summer, less in winter. I use whatever film is cheapest at B & H. Sometimes it's Tri-x or Tmax. Lately it's been HP5+. I develop them 4 rolls at a time in my bathroom using D-76 1+1. Out of this I'll get maybe 15 or 20 photos per week worth printing, and I'll make 5 x 7 work prints of these. For the color film I don't make prints (yet). I just scan negatives to get a sense of which ones are interesting.

Some of my photographs fall into easy categories, and they get tossed in a file with similar subject matter. The uncategorizable ones get thrown together in their own box, which I periodically sift through to see if they mean anything yet. Usually it's the ones I cannot categorize which excite me most. Once or twice a week I'll get one of these and I'll have no idea why I took it or what it means. These photographs are the ones that keep me excited about photography.

Monthly Fallout is a small selection of such photos, one per month starting in January 2000. This section was formerly called Photoblog, but since I began this website (using that term and even registering the domain photoblog.com) the word photoblog has taken on a different meaning. There are now countless photoblogs online, most of which are written blogs. Since mine is entirely image-based I thought Monthly Fallout was a more appropriate title.

Monthly Fallout last update: November 2009