I’ve been driving straight home after work lately, as opposed to going to Jen’s, she’s up in Cleveland for another 2-4 weeks for regular check-ups following her transplant. I take the highway to her house, but I use hard roads to get to mine. Driving slower and being able to pull over easily sometimes draws me to shoot some typical sunset photos. Sunsets are pretty easy to shoot and usually look nice, but getting a really good one is hard. This is not one of those. But I think the lights from the city add a little something to it.

So there I was…wandering the back alleys on Cincinnati in the snow. I was walking to City Hall when I stumbled across this door covered in vines.

I kept wondering how long a door would have to remain shut to have vines grow over it like that. I thought it was awesome, but it was snowing, I was cold and the light really sucked. So I went on to my assignment. A couple days later we got some great weather and I went back to take some shots. I wanted the sun to get high enough in the sky to cast some iight into the alley. I went back every hour so I could catch it at the right time. There was no right time. The sun literally cast light directly on that wall. At least not in the winter. The shot above and the shot below were made that day I went back every hour. Hope you enjoy the second installment of what I’m going to call “Alley Cat” from now on, haha.

I’ve always heard of people doing “studies” of things in traditional fine art photography. It basically means, I’m going to take a picture of (insert a landscape, piece of fruit, tree or house here) at different times of the day and throughout the seasons. I do this occasionally on a very small scale. The first image is the view from out the triple (you heard it right) paned windows in the visitors lounge at the Cleveland Clinic’s 5th Floor. There’s this odd little “courtyard” area, but it can’t be walked in or accessed at all.

It was taken during the surgery itself. This next photo is from a little later.

This last photo was taken within 10 minutes of Jen being moved from the Intensive Care Unit to her regular hospital room.

It was a pretty big step in her recovery. I was pretty emotional. And in the reoccurring theme of buliding shots, this is actually the same courtyard area as before, but from the opposite side. And the sun shining through the clouds, it all just came together and seems appropriate.

So I’m back in the ‘Nati. Jen is still up in Cleveland recovering from the transplant. She’s doing really well. She has around a week left in the hospital and then 4 to 6 weeks that she has to stay in the Cleveland area for regular tests and check ups. I’ll be posting more regularly now that I’m back in town.

So for the past few days I’ve been stuck behind a stupid firewall. Please see the post below (which is actually new to the site as well, since it is being posted at the same time as this post) to see where I’m at and why. Basically, for the first night of my stay here in Cleveland and for most of the morning, I literally had nothing to do. So I shot photos of what was around me. It was almost uncontrolable. Photography has always been my therapy. If you scan through my most recent posts, you won’t see many people. I’ve always found most non-people photos pretty boring, and this make it pretty challenging for me. I sort of feel like I’m back in a high school photo class taking pictures of leafs and sticks and mirrors and crap. At the end of the day, I’m just not shooting as many traditional news assignments as usual, so I’m making up for where I can. Here’s a lot of the stuff I’ve shot.

The one of above is especially high school. A picture of your shoes, really? Well, I thought it looked a little interesting.

Umm, so when you’re sitting for hours in the hospital, you have to eat. We had snacks. Some almonds and some bananas. Does it make you hungry? The white base of the photo in my MacBook.

As for my trip here, Jen came off the ventilator today, and she’s doing great. She’s talking and doesn’t seem to be in much pain. I can’t wait for tomorrow when they start having her move around and really get her going in the recovery process.

Also, I won’t have ftp access for the rest of the week due to the firewall issue (I’m paying for this access), so I’ll post some more shots early next week. Chances are they’ll be from Cleveland.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I am currently at the Cleveland Clinic with my girlfriend. She is getting a lung transplant. So while I was extremely excited and scared and shocked and worried and happy when most of the day, I am now five hours into an eight to twelve hour surgery. I am sitting with her family and a few friends. And (even though it sounds horrible) I’m a little bored, so I’m updating my blog. My girlfriend, who is pictured below, is the most important thing in my life. This lung transplant will be a completely life changing experience for her and I can’t think of a better day for her new life to begin (hopefully it will continue to involve me, haha). Anyway, before we got the call that a set of lungs was available this morning, I was able to put the finishing touches on my most recent project. Hope you enjoy.

Click the image to view the slideshow

I’m a huge photo geek. I like weird cameras and weird films. I also like talking about weird cameras and weird films. I really like older cameras and one of my favorites is my Rollei 35.

This is one of the smallest full frame 35mm cameras ever made. It’s scale focusing with a collaspible lens. It’s fully manual and has a built in lightmeter. Its winder is on the wrong side, the hotshoe is on the bottom. So here’s the real reason for this post. I wanted to post a couple pictures I shot with this camera. Here’s my justification for shooting film:

Happy mistakes. I managed to break to sprocket holes and double expose a shot, and I came close to stripping the gears in my camera, but it turned out pretty well. I’ve also developed a bit of an obsession with photographing alleys. I’m not really sure why I’m drawn to them, but they’re really hard to shoot. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post a better shot soon.