Blog Archives

¡patria o muerte!

Homeland or death – that’s what the sign on the wall says. I do not know if there is any connection between that and the headless statue (other than the connection I made in my mind, that is), but at any rate, those things did all fit within my viewfinder.

Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.7.2022

car + driver

Me (pantomiming taking a photo)

This guy (giving a very brief nod of agreement)

And here’s the result.

Cienfuegos, Cuba
photographed 11.9.2022

estefanía in a doorway

Seventy hundred twenty six days.

That’s how long it was between when I first spoke to photographer and tour leader Don Toothaker (whom I barely knew at the time) about his Cuba trip and when Don and I and the rest of our group arrived in Havana earlier this month. I am sure you can easily do the mental math and realize that the pandemic was the cause of that really long gap.

However: it was completely worth that wait.

And this begins a series, in a random order, of the things I photographed. This is Estafanía, a ballet dancer who posed for us in the streets of Havana.

I took notes* during that long-ago phone call with Don, and now I see that I wrote down he promised me that I would “see parts of Cuba that people don’t usually go to” and he stressed that human element would be a vital part of every day’s shooting.

He was not wrong on either point.

Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.6.2022

*Yeah. I take notes. Keep that in mind if we every talk on the phone…

fish steps

Where I live, fish is sold from glassed-in cases in the grocery store. It smells really fishy when you walk by, and if I am being honest, I generally hold my breath.

At the market in Boston, one of the places you can get fish is from this below-street-level spot, where carefully-arranged fish are in an open-air display that uses the concrete steps to hold everything up.

It looks interesting. And it’s not even smelly.

Haymarket
Boston, Massachusetts

photographed 8.27.2022

red is a color that fades easily

Those curtains tell the story of how the color red fades a lot faster than other colors.

(If you want to know the science – it’s something to do with red objects reflecting red light, but at the same time absorbing short-wavelength light) – you can read this explanation. But otherwise you can look at this photo and know it’s the truth.)

Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 8.27.2022