The Doohickey Competition

The Doohickey Competition was advertised on clip art-laden fliers and Internet invite platforms, and was met with equal parts amusement and confusion over what counts as a Doohickey. The organizers were not sticklers for formal definition or entry-limitations. Some of the more memorable doohickeys included a wood and metal cat with strings that could be played like an instrument, a Cursed Kermit puppet that had been adorned with human teeth and hair, a battery-powered moving diorama of Tom & Jerry waterboarding SpongeBob Squarepants, a collapsible churchwarden pipe, a 3D printed atomic bomb with internal storage (“It’s also a dildo… if you’re brave enough.”), a ViewMaster-based VR system, a rapid-delivery salt-and-pepper shaker, and an extendable back-scratcher. The contest prize was a five-foot tall doohickey with cranks, gears, a coin slot, and a tiny disco ball, which went to Rupert, the wood and metal cat whose presenter introduced as her child. The true prize, however, was the collective shocked and confused looks of pedestrians passing the event in Union Square Park, which were shared equally among all participants.

My Friend's Wedding

Over the summer a friend of mine got married. It was a lovely wedding, and a glorious excuse to see friends I haven’t spent time with in person since the Pandemic started.

Brooklyn Cyclones Baseball

I went from carrying around a backpack full of camera bodies and lenses everywhere to slinging a compact Fuji with a small prime lens over my shoulder when I leave the house. Apart from having dramatically less back pain, the primary result is the pictures I take when I go to events have become about the experience of going to the event rather than the event itself. Shooting the action on the field gave way to people-watching in the stands, keeping an eye out for the strange and interesting. I liked the former because the predictability meant guaranteed pictures, the latter I am enjoying precisely for its randomness and spontaneity. To paraphrase Cool Lester Smooth, if you shoot baseball, you get pictures of baseballs and baseball players, but if you start to just look around, you don’t know what the fuck you’re gonna see. And that is infinitely more interesting.

Central Park

Central Park on a mild summer afternoon is an easy place to make images. It’s alive with the full vibrance and diversity of the city, all sharing a common desire to get the hell out for a little bit. The friends I met left early, so I got to wander in aimless solitude, to enjoyable results.

Grand Central Fencing

USA Fencing, the governing body of sport fencing for the United States, had exhibition bouts in Grand Central Terminal for a week in late July to promote the sport.

Since my first roll of film in 2008, I’ve shot fencing. As a participant, then a sporadic observer, and most recently as an amused passer-by. A subject once called fencing a kind of physical chess, a back and forth of moves and counter-moves between two opponents. I appreciate the analogy as a fencer, but as a photographer I’d say it’s more like high-impact ballet.

Canadian Wildfire Smoke

Smoke from wildfires in Canada drifted down to New York City and cast the strangest glow. I detoured from my commute to visit Transmitter Park in Greenpoint and see how distorted the view of Manhattan was. It wasn’t distorted, it was just gone. The air was scratchy even with a mask, dense and quiet. My mind kept going to the images of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, diseased and irradiated, in Blade Runner 2049. And my images went that way, too.