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Thursday, January 27, 2011

First post.

So where to start? This is my new 'blog. You either saw the link on my new homepage or I told you about it on Face Book. I'm slowly updating my website, just a little bit at a time because really- Thats all I have the patience for. A page or two here or there, upload some new images or remove some.

If you've seen the main page of my site before, you may notice that the image has changed. It was taken in Chicago's Millennium Park back in 2005. It was during the time that the rent-a-cops being used at the park were instructed by the city to harass anyone looking like a "professional" photographer for a city issued permit. To these people, a "professional" was looked upon as anybody with a tripod and/or a big (Larger than a point and shoot) camera. The permit that they were told to look for could be obtained from the city for somewhere between two and three hundred dollars. When I was shooting that first image, a young rent-a-cop literally rolled up to me (On a Segway) and belligerently asked if I had a permit. In the ensuing debate I was able to convince him that he had better things to do  than harass me for a permit I had no intention of paying for and I got my shot.

Not long after that, various news outlets carried the story of how that was happening to all kinds of people and the city relented, loudly deciding that only commercial photo shoots and film/video productions required a permit. Nice of them to make that decision for shooting in a public park, don't you think?



Subsequent trips to the part in order to shoot more usually resulted in one of the rent-a-cops pacing slowly back and forth in front of the "Bean" when they saw me trying to shoot (I'm sure they played this game with other photographers as well). Since I was usually shooting time exposures, they never actually showed up in the image.

So back to the main reason for this- First off, my site is going through a redesign. The format will be similar but I'm changing things up. Removing some old images and adding new ones. I figure this is a great way to do incremental updates. Also, maybe I can offer up some helpful information about my photographic experiences. That and the occasional opinion.