my digital life
2013 Photo Challenge, Week 1/52. The theme is “Icon”.
This is a San Francisco street artist. He calls himself Elvis Christ. He writes poems on strips of masking tape, and sticks them to the sidewalks around the city. I shoot the poems whenever I see them, and once in a while I run into him. He’s an interesting guy to talk with. He and his work are definitely San Francisco Icons.
You can see the poems I have managed to collect here: Tape Poems on Flickr
Ricky Leong is one of my Flickr and Zooomr contacts. I’ve been following his photostream for a while now. He was visiting the San Francisco area over the last week, and I had a chance to shoot with him today. Michela met up with us as well, and we spent about four hours exploring Berkeley along Shattuck, University, and San Pablo Avenue.
Between the three of us we had 10 cameras. Talk about photo geeks.
Last year, Thomas Hawk started a project he calls the $2 Portrait Project. Basically, if somebody on the street asks him for money, he will give them $2 in exchange for allowing him to shoot their portrait and tell him a little about themselves.
I have finally jumped in and started up my own $2 Portrait Project.
I met Sister Shirley on Market Street. She was asking for spare change. I explained the $2 Portrait Project to her, and she was happy to participate.
Sister Shirley has been in San Francisco for about three months now. She came here from Eureka to look for her daughter, who hitchhiked from a truck stop.
After she looked at the photos on the LCD display of my camera, she said "I argued with my boyfriend last night; that’s still on my face."
Day 47/365 of the 2009 Challenge. The theme is "Black and White: Portrait".
Photo by Melissa Brooks
My wife’s entry was selected as the runner-up for the “Fireworks” challenge on This Week In Photography. Congrats, Melissa!
If you walk around the North Beach area of San Francisco very much, you may have seen poems written on pieces of masking tape and stuck on the sidewalk or billboards. This is the man responsible for these great works (or so he claims).
He was quite a trip to talk to. There was a lot of talk about the FBI and CIA, and various San Francisco political figures. But the tape poems are always fun to read.
You can see my set of tape poems on Flickr.
In December, I decided to join Trevor Carpenter’s December Challenge, which meant taking a portrait of somebody different every day. I usually do not shoot portraits, so this was an interesting challenge for me.
Some of the shots were very average, just snapshots. But I managed to get a couple of portraits that I am particularly happy with, and I have some ideas for future portraits that I want to pursue.
Here are all the portraits I took for the December Challenge. Clicking the photo will take you to the set on Zooomr, where you can see larger versions of each photo.
Update 2008-01-08:
Andrew Lighten asked about the ratio of friends and family to strangers. Here’s the breakdown:
Family: 3
Friends: 6
Strangers: 22
I was pleasantly surprised at how receptive most people were to having their picture taken. Most people wanted a copy of it as well. I would say probably 70-80% of the strangers I asked said yes.
This is my portrait for day 4 of the December Challenge. This was taken at Columbus Cutlery in San Francisco. The shopkeeper, Jenny, was a great sport about posing with a giant knife for a portrait (a pizza knife, if you’re curious).
I have purchased cutlery from Columbus Cutlery in the past, and I have always been happy with the quality of the merchandise. If you need a good knife, this is the place to go!
This is my first portrait for the December Challenge. I was quite busy today, so I settled for a self-portrait. I would like to avoid this as much as possible. I see enough of me as it is.