Category: Uncategorized
Redemption
I shot the cover story for this week’s East Bay Express. The article is about the rising cost of the curbside recycling program in Berkeley, as well as the “poachers” who raid the bins and take the cans to recycling centers and redeem them for cash.
I had always thought that the curbside recycling programs paid for themselves by selling the recyclable materials. But it turns out that they’re not free, and never have been. We pay for the recycling pickup along with the garbage bill, but the bill isn’t itemized, so nobody knows how much it costs.
To some extent, I can sympathize with residents who don’t want to pay more for curbside recycling when the bins are just getting raided by scavengers. But I have a lot more sympathy for the guy who has to go out and collect cans and bottles in order to feed his family.
I can’t help thinking how great it would be if there were some way to turn this situation into a real jobs program. If we could actually employ people to walk around with carts and collect the bins instead of driving around in big diesel powered trucks, that would be a much greener way of collecting the trash and recyclables, right?
Anyway, I took a lot of photos for this assignment. Here are some of my favorite shots and some outtakes that didn’t make it into the article:
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- Martin Bourque of the Berkeley Ecology Center.
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- Martin Bourque of the Berkeley Ecology Center.
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- A truck full of mixed recycling is dumped at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
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- Glass bottles, sorted by color, at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
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- A pile of glass bottles at the Berkeley Ecology Center.
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- Carlos Campos collects bottles and cans from restaurants and bars.
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- Michael Chevalier collects recyclables up and down San Pablo Avenue.
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- Raymond Graham collects recyclables from Dumpsters and bins in Oakland.
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- Berkeley resident Ann Riley has taken to locking up her recycling until the last minute.
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- Ben Bartlett, owner of Bartlett's Organic Coffees & Teas, a coffee shop in downtown Berkeley, and heads up the subcommittee on poaching.
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- Ben Bartlett, owner of Bartlett's Organic Coffees & Teas, a coffee shop in downtown Berkeley, and heads up the subcommittee on poaching.
Fisherman
This is the first in a series of images that I’m creating for a new portfolio.
The idea for this one came to me when I took a different photo of this same tunnel a while ago. The long exposure made the headlights of the cars stretch out into streams and it reminded me of a river.
The river idea made me think of all the commercial/lifestyle/stock photos I’ve seen of fishermen standing next to streams and rivers. Most of those types of commercial photos are composites; they shoot the landscape, and then they shoot the model in the studio, and then they put the whole thing together in Photoshop. So it’s kind of poking fun at those images by putting the fisherman into a completely absurd environment instead of a mountain stream at sunset.
This is a lot different than anything else I’ve done. I usually tend toward more “straight” photography, and I actually had to get some help with the post production on this because I’m not much of a Photoshop wiz.
The images in the new series are all loosely joined in the sense that they all include some sort of visual joke. Some of them (like this one) reference commercial photography clichés, others are just funny on their own, but I hope to keep the style consistent throughout. Stay tuned for more.
Big thanks to Jamie for helping me with the post-production on this shot, and also to Richard Orlando, fly-fisherman (and model) extraordinaire.
Halfway House
Don in 60 Seconds
I took these pictures of the Berkeley Opera’s Don Giovanni for lighting designer Lucas Krech a few weeks ago. This show is over now, but their next one, The Tender Land, starts in April. Watch the slide-show for an ultra-condensed version of this modern take on the epic tale of seduction, betrayal, iPhones, and pilates.
Poles
Out the window
Sometimes when I get bored on long car rides at night, I like to stick a camera out the window and take blurry pictures of the lights passing by. Here are a few of my favorites.
New Website and blog! (again)
Welcome to the new stephenleowinsohn.com!
It’s Chinatown
I went to visit Felix yesterday, but his office was gone. I asked some of the guys who work on the loading dock across the street what happened, and they said that “they” (the police?) had torn it down. Evidently it’s happened before, several times, but he always rebuilds it. I hope he does; there can never be too many strange and interesting things in the world and it’s really a bummer when one of them disappears.
Anyway, I had already paid for parking so I wandered around Chinatown and took pictures of some of the strange and interesting things for sale there:
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- The office has vanished.
Corner Office
I was walking around downtown Oakland with my camera a little while ago, and I came across this strange little “outdoor office” situated in a little fenced-in area beneath a freeway overpass. There was a man working at the desk, so I introduced myself and asked if I might take some pictures of him and his office. He introduced himself as Felix, and gave me permission to come around the fence and take some photos.
I talked to him a little bit, and he said he was not homeless, and that he did not live here, although there was a bed in the office. He said he had an apartment nearby, and that he just liked to come here to work.
In addition to the desk and bed, the office also had a very old set of encyclopedias and an electric organ, which unfortunately wasn’t working when I visited. He said I should come back and hear him play sometime. I’m going to stop by today and bring him these prints. To be continued…
Resolute
Happy new year everyone! This year I’ve made some photography related resolutions, and I thought I would post them here. I’ve tried to make them measurable and realistic, so feel free to make fun of me if I screw up on any of these.
1. Go out and take more pictures for fun. Sometimes I get so caught up in taking pictures for clients that I feel like I don’t have time to take pictures for myself. But whenever I actually make the time to shoot for myself, I have a great time and end up with great shots. At least once a week, I’m going to just go somewhere and walk around with my camera. I’ve actually been pretty good about this lately, but it never hurts to set a specific goal.
2. Make more prints. These days a lot of the pictures we take just end up on the internet, and never become anything more than ones and zeroes. I think that’s sad. There’s still something great about holding an actual printed photograph in your hands (especially big ones), and I plan to make at least one print every week.
3. Post something on this blog at least once a week. Obviously I’ve not been doing a great job keeping this blog updated since, um, last September. But there’s no point in dwelling on the past. I’ve set a goal, and I plan to stick to it. If a week goes by without anything new showing up here, you have my permission to call me a big, dumb flake in person or via email.