When I drive through the North Fork Valley, I sometimes get the feeling that the coal just spills from the walls around me and comes to rest in the little town of Somerset, Colorado. So when I saw some water pooled up in the adjoining roadway and dirt parking lot by the mine, I looked at it differently. I braced my hand on the pickup nearby and tilted my head upside down. What I saw was the coal covered “Valley” walls of the upside down street and the sunset light on the clouds. This is not the way I normally shoot, but I liked it…

The ESPN Winter X Games that is. A few days of colorful madness in my home town won’t hurt me and the crew puts on one heck of a show.

In front of the good folks of the North Fork Valley, I put on a good old fashioned slide show, my first in years. It was a hit as bold Kodachrome reds practically knocked people out of their seats. Working on Somerset most of this week, getting snow….

And in other news, above is a Google Earth rendering of New York City with TImes Square in the lower center. This is a mock angle for a dusk aerial shoot to be done in June. Onward and literally upward!

Warm from a shot of Jack, I am doing my business in the men’s room of the Loose Moose Saloon when a bottle rocket flies under the door and explodes beneath my boot. After completing the task, I emerge low to see contrails of incendiary devices…in the bar. Of course, I grab my camera and start to work the best angles…which were the worst possible angles to stay out of harm’s way. The first hit my thigh all the way across the room, the second in my back at much closer range, it felt like I was hit at point blank range with a slingshot. After a third blew a hole in the pocket of my Carhartt’s and exploded near my iPhone, I ran for cover, thank you iPhone!

This is Somerset, Colorado, a coal mine with a town of 75 people in it. It will be my near-home Kodachrome Project. In the early 80’s photographer Richard Avedon spent time in Somerset while photographing for “In The American West”.

Moose owner Garry Hogenbrik has given me the go ahead to do a slideshow at the watering hole this Sunday at 5, come one, come all…

The emergence, convergence and disappearance of light paired with Kodachrome film can sometimes attain a crescendo of color, a flashpoint. The intertwining of light sources paired in subtle layers can bring about a self illuminating attribute not unlike varnished wood. I have seen this in various images on several mediums, but none as profoundly as Kodachrome. This is a most alluring phenomenon…I must persist…

So I am on my way home right now from a great week in NYC and I am really thinking that I want to go ahead with an idea before it is too late. Kodachrome Film often looks like an Old Master’s painting when shot in the right light. So I am going to get ahold of some casting folks, set and costume designers and give it a go. God I love this film!

Pretty much have a cold now, but don’t care, really having fun in NYC using Kodachrome…

All I can say is WOW!!!

I have done pretty much all I can to get this all lined up, should be a long but fun night…

Many of us have gotten fully on board with the digital age ( typing this from 37,000 feet en route to New York ) but there is always something that brings up back some of us to film use, Kodachrome or otherwise. A friend of mine who is a stellar photographer in his own right, uses a Littman Single 4×5 camera for some of his high end wedding work. So it is all kind of settling out now, the debate is largely over and it is time to get back to making photographs. Just passing the time on my flight to New York City, too restless to nap…did get 50 rolls of Kodachrome hand checked though, I do that if at all possible.