PHOTO ESSAYS

My favorite photographer in the world, Patrick LaRoque (laroquephoto.com), is a master story teller with photographs. While perusing his website/blog it became apparent to me that not enough photographers use a sequence of photos to tell a story. Don't misunderstand me, I'm absolutely floored by brilliant, standalone photographs as well, but I was so struck by the power of the most simple images when they're strung together to form a cohesive narrative.

And so this portion of my website, the blog portion, is dedicated to him. He is my greatest inspiration, photographically speaking, and I would be doing him and everyone else a disservice if I didn't mention him, encourage everyone to visit his website, and take in the art he puts out every week. Thank you, Patrick.

GEAR CHECK

In these stories I tag my photos with the camera I'm using, the brand, and the lens. I do this for myself more than anything, but you will note that everything I shoot now days is Fujifilm.

I shoot with Fujifilm, primarily, because of one camera: the X100. It has a fixed 35mm (equivalent) lens, it's small, it's light, it has a leaf shutter (which makes it virtually silent), and it has super tactile controls-- it's just a wonderful, little camera. It was David Hobby (strobist.com) and Zach Arias (zacharias.com) that got me drinking the Fujifilm Koolaid, frankly. Both of those guys are extremely well known photographers that make phenomenal photographs, but more importantly they are great educators. 

At any rate, the point I want to make is I don't want to come off as a fanboy of any particular brand of camera; the top manufacturers all produce worthy camera systems that create phenomenal image files. Which is to say -- as the saying goes -- it's not the camera that makes the photograph, it's the person behind it. Cheers.