If you can use 100 rolls of expired color film, check out James Pomerantz’s expired film giveaway.

Fire Island (twice), 2010

One of my better mistakes.

I have been taking pictures in a small patch of Baltimore’s urban wilderness called Stoney Run for several years now. I was supposed to be heading down there this weekend, but unfortunately the trip had to be postponed. I’m still hoping to make it before the end of winter.

It is interesting to go back and look through the photos I’ve taken in this area over the years, as they show a clear progression of my growth as a photographer. The first time I visited with my new “photographer’s eyes” (2007, I think), I took a few unremarkable pictures of the area with a digital SLR. Something about the place piqued my interest, though, and I returned the next year with a medium format camera and some black and white film. Some of those pictures ended up as part of The universal theory of absolutely everything.

In March of 2009 my wife and I visited our friends in Baltimore again and I took another batch of photos in the ravine. It was some of my first work using color film and I was very happy with the results. Over time, however, I became dissatisfied with the scanning, processing, and selection of images, and I eventually removed them from my site.

I have finally gotten around to re-scanning and processing everything, creating a new edit, and posting them to my site. It’s incredible how much I’ve learned about dealing with color film in that time, and how much better the photos look. The tighter edit leaves me with just seven photos, which isn’t very many, but I think the series is very much improved by its brevity.

Wyman Park, Baltimore

I was planning to bring my large format camera to Baltimore this time. That will unfortunately have to wait, but I look forward to making more work in this hidden part of the city for years to come. I suppose after I finally get down there with the 4×5, the only thing left will be to get an 8×10!

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 2009

Wrong light, too cold, too windy, rain, snow, and slush; bad weather is a major pitfall of winter, which also just so happens to be my favorite time of year to make pictures. But when the light hits just right and there’s a dusting of snow on the ground—well, it doesn’t get any better than that for me, so I keep trudging out there, hoping for a break.

On days that aren’t good for making pictures, I still try to spend some time out and about. It’s a good opportunity for exploration. I visit parks I’ve never been to before, or revisit a familiar place and make a left turn when I would usually make a right. My knowledge of the local landscape is constantly growing, thanks in part to those days when I am forced to take a break from photography.

Over the last couple of months I have grown to appreciate the landscape of Long Island more than ever before. When I first started taking pictures out here, I was drawn to the winter beaches and marshy forests of the southern shore. Lately I have been spending more time on the interior, learning the lay of the land.

Long Island, New York, courtesy David Rumsey Collection

The topography of Long Island is heavily marked by glacial activity. It is a terminal moraine, the area of the maximum advance of the Wisconsin glacial ice sheet, created approximately 20,000 years ago. This activity has created an interesting mix of rocky shores to the north, sandy shores to the south, and a hilly backbone dotted with kettle ponds throughout the interior. The backbone starts in Brooklyn to the west (Prospect Park is a good example of moraine topology), extends through more than 100 miles of Long Island, and continues hundreds of miles to the north in Martha’s Vinyard and Cape Cod.

At the moment, it’s those hills and ponds that have captured my attention. I love the feeling of the rocky soil beneath my feet as I crunch mile after mile. I’ve got a map with about twenty pushpins in it, full of ideas for new places to explore. Hopefully I can get the weather to cooperate at least a few more times before spring arrives.

I hope the rest of the year is this good.

The end of the year seems like as good a time as any to reflect on recent accomplishments. I was cleaning up my Lightroom archive this week and got sucked into the “January ’09″ folder. Was that really just a year ago? It seems like forever. Most of the photos are pretty bad. Some of them are kind of good! I ended up going through the whole year this way, revisiting the many photographic twists and turns I’ve made in the last 12 months. While I came across a lot of not-so-good images and photographic dead ends, there are also a good number of promising images and interesting ideas.

Above all, 2009 has been a year of tremendous growth for me. I have failed over and over again—but from every failure I have learned something important and it has shaped my work in significant ways. Looking forward to 2010, I feel like I have the wind at my back. I’m actively working on a project that excites me and is generating promising results, and I have a good list of ideas for future projects. I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to doing that series of portraits of urban beekeepers, but it’s nice to know that I have something to fall back on if I ever get stuck.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the past year. Some I have posted before (maybe you’ve seen them too many times already) and some have been lurking in my archives, seeing the light of day for the very first time. These are not necessarily my “best” photographs, but they are the most meaningful to me. I can remember the exact moment I took each and every one of these; how the air felt that day, the quality of the light. Each one feels like a small turning point that has helped to define the images that have come afterward.

Lloyd Harbor, Long Island, NY

Kismet, Fire Island, NY

Fire Island, NY

Marine Park, Brooklyn, NY

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY

Wyman Park, Baltimore, MD

Parc Collserola, Barcelona, Spain

Manitoga, Garrison, NY

Connetquot State Park, Long Island, NY

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY

And one last image, for good measure:

400 sheets of 4x5

I’d like to invite anyone who reads this post to do the same thing. Revisit your work from the past year, come up with a dozen or so images that best represent your year in photographs, and leave a link in the comments. I would love to see your work!

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! See you in 2010.

Rockaway Beach, 2009

Ah, well. I did not get into the Landscape Interrupted exhibition. Congratulations to everyone who did make it in, I hope it’s a wonderful show.

Every time I get a rejection letter I ask myself “Why do I put myself through this?” I am much more interested in creating new work right now than I am in showing it. In fact, I’m not sure that I’m ever going to be excited about showing my work. Exhibition takes time, money, and energy, which are all in short supply. I’d rather be out shooting.

Update: Liz Kuball got in! Congratulations, Liz!

Not actually new (they’re from January of this year), but new to you. I’ve finally pulled together a small series of images from Fire Island into a proper collection. Please take a look.

Riches Field, Brooklyn, 2009

I’ve picked up steam on my Outer Lands project again, after having to abandon it for several months over the summer. As I was working on the project through the late spring, I started to realize that the light and the colors were going all wrong. Now that fall is here and things look right again, I am going to push myself hard through March or April and get as much done on the project as I can.