Planning, planning, planning. And then, whoosh, in a couple days things can either come together, fall apart, or remain static. So as I was planning on how to make a couple vaguely overlapping shoots work I thought I had it all figured out. Yet, within a few days both shoots had fallen through - for different reasons - so instead of a nice little block of work I ended up with nothing. And don’t even get me started on the “unreturned email/voicemail” phenomenon. On the bright side, these kinds of disappointments often spur a bump in creative imperative.

Preparing for World Cup 2010 in my own small way.

Snow on the ground, that alone tells you this was shot some time ago. We got only 4″ of snow in January, which is pretty bizarre and put paid to doing any amount of local winter shooting. So I was out in LA last week shooting some non-winter, two-wheeled activities. The only upside to the relative winter drought is that it has allowed us to out the studded MTB tires for the first time in 3 or 4 years. And skidding through turns made entirely of ice floes remains an experience worth waiting for.

Don’t pay attention the next time I complain about how sucky shooting in Northern New England is in the winter. It’s just a matter of patience. Beautiful morning on Lake Fairlee in Fairlee, Vermont and worth freezing my fingers off.

Every time I question whether or not it’s worth all the challenges of shooting 120 at events I get back a shot like this. Yeah, sure, not the world’s greatest image but the textures and depth, for me, remain singular and what I’m after. And, at least, different. Which is good, because the funny looks, ranging from pity to full-on scorn, I get when standing among the photo pool with a clunky old 67 can make me doubt the wisdom of the entire enterprise. BTW, the flare from the flash on the left side of the frame was just a lucky coincidence. But as Henry said in Barfly, “Dumb luck. Yeah, but that counts too.”

The lull is over, I think. Things seem to be pointing back towards busy. Just home from a quick NYC weekend with Ben F and hanging with James and co. All this on the heels on getting a totally great bit of recognition from the culture luminaries at Selectism. So trying to finish up a couple reasonably successful personal projects before the travel starts in earnest week after next. Unfortunately the travel does not include a trip to Tabor for CX Worlds, but we have enough cold and bluster around here, even if we’re missing the world class CX racers.

Thanks in large part to Jeremy and some last-minute frame salvaging down in the basement, my photo show, HOME AND AWAY, is now hung at Bloc11 in Somerville. It was great to see all the prints all in one place and all framed to look as good as possible. Especially the C-prints and the 4×5 Polaroids, I love the way they look. We’ll be having an opening at some point in the next few weeks I think, but in the meantime it’s worth swinging by and looking at show.

When not shooting ice fishing, making the winter scene in Boston has become how I pass this winter. How excellent: eating greasy spoon food, talking my model into pounding a Stella at lunch (Stella glasses look great), riding the T for hours. And not freezing my fingers off. But speaking of freezing fingers, it’s off to MN next week to finish up a project we started back in November. One of the best projects I’ve ever worked on, stay tuned.

I expected the time on ice fishing to reap some interesting looks, I had a couple in mind when I went there, but little did I anticipate to the the ice fishing money shot. But, boom. The large mouth bass/happy fisherman portrait, still kicking. Forgot to mention I finally killed my original Pentax 67, the first one I bought, back in 2001 I think. It got dropped last week on a shoot and the impact stove in a corner of the body that keeps the shutter lever from advancing. Game over. Luckily the prism is untouched and a “new” 67 is in the offing.

I’ve ridden past this ice fishing spot countless times. But when I went by it today I knew I was coming back. It’s a quiet time shooting-wise and I’d been meaning to do some more Northern New England winter culture stuff. Here was the chance, no excuses. What a good decision. Oh, and yesterday was my first ride since racing the USGPs almost three weeks ago, amazing how quickly you can go from feeling at one with the bike to fighting it every meter of the way. The longest 1.5 hr. ride of the year I hope.