It's the end of an era, marked by the Art Camp's art show just yesterday. Teaching has been such a rewarding experience, enhanced by the ability to speak to parents yesterday and watch them enjoy the fruits of their children's labor in the darkroom and in the lab.

My photo class' work was on display proudly next to the "Discoveries in Art" and "Potter's Wheel" camps. I was impressed with the range of ability and the variety of work throughout the entire camp.

After the end of the art show, I came upstairs to retrieve my belongings, and found this note on my white board:

My response? Thank you to my students for being so wonderful and so eager. You were all wonderful. Wonderful enough, even, to pose for my camera!

Goodbye, summer camp. I will miss you! I had a blast.

I've made a resolution.

Throughout the month of August (a quiet month for me, photographically speaking), I'm making it my goal to post one photograph a day and talk about it. These photographs will be brand new, taken within the last three days (or so--I'm being loose about it).

The purpose is to challenge myself, and hopefully break some new ground. Perhaps I'll even peek out of my little introverted bubble and get a few new faces around here, besides my own.

This particular photo is a self-portrait, taken yesterday in the atrium at Park School. A ledge across the room served as a tripod. I pre-focused, set the timer, and then leaned up against the bright white wall.

This portrait was a lucky accident. While attempting to take an in-focus shot, my autofocus settings decided to take over during the time my camera was counting down, leading to this deliciously strange version of, well, me.

I'm not always a big fan of something so "pictorial," but I think what makes this shot is the interesting stripe across my chest. Of course, the photo has for me a sense of novelty, because it was a pleasant surprise. And I hope it is for you, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you local Baltimore musician, ellen cherry.

ellen cherry is the stage name of Kristin Putchinski, who I met while teaching at Park School Camps. In passing conversations surrounded by the giggles and screams of excited kids, I discovered she was a musician, that she gigged regularly in the Baltimore area.

"Do you have a CD?" I asked. "Yes!" she said, and promptly told me about her latest, Heart Like a Lion. I'm all for supporting local artists, so I took the plunge, plunked down some change, and gave it a listen. It's good. I like it, LOTS. You can give it a listen yourself too, at her MySpace page.

ellen cherry blogs regularly about her gigs and exploits. Currently she's touring up the northeast coast, so visit her website to see if you can catch her!

The other day I ran across a giant pile of bamboo stalks, recently cut.

I'm sure many people will agree with me that although bamboo has "gone native" here in the U.S., there's still something exotic about its lines and shapes. A bamboo forest is unlike anything I grew up with, in temperate New England; conifers and oaks were more of the visual texture in which I made my home.

And I'm consistently surprised when subtle changes in the landscape can make me feel more or less at home. Traveling southward, I can tell that the vegetation has changed without close examination; as hills rush past, the cumulative effect of less-familiar species creates a unique taste and feel.

Bamboo will always be foreign to me.

While at Eureka Springs, I seized the opportunity to take portraits of my immediate family members. When everyone is spread across the country in four different states, you don't often get the chance to do something like that. I snagged both my brothers for a quick session, and then pulled my parents aside for a little while as well:

My parents are dedicated, loving, thoughtful, under-appreciated, and awesome. I owe so much to them, and they've been a huge support to me in my life, vocationally, spiritually, emotionally... all the "l-ly's" you can think of.

Best of all, they're still madly in love with each other.

Aside: I love the first pose, mostly because my dad initiated it, and also because it accents how beautiful the height difference is between my mother and father. The second shot highlights what I'd call my mom's "wry" grin. And the third, well... isn't it obvious?

In the back of my refrigerator, there lived a cardboard box. This box held undeveloped film, as well as scads of developed rolls that I hadn't touched in, well, who knows how long. Recently, I dropped it off to be processed at the corner store.

The rolls came from at least three years back, shortly after Stephen and I married, before my nephew Michale was born. This portrait of Stephen was taken during a period of long hair, sitting on a dock at his grandmother's house in Mandarin, Florida. I love how contemplative it is, and even though the angle's a little cockeyed, I think it suits the mood well.

Taken with Fujifilm NPH 400 film.

I remember hearing once that you should fill your house with nothing other than what you believe to be useful, or find to be beautiful. So, I like surrounding myself with original art by people I admire and know. The other day I noticed that an illustrator I admire, Ramsey Beyer, was offering her artwork for sale. Being strapped for cash at the moment, I offered her a print trade for her. Lo and behold, she accepted!

I am so thrilled with my new piece of artwork, which hangs above my workspace in my bedroom. It inspires me now every day. I'm so happy to have added it to my collection.

I mentioned in one of my last posts that Stephen's grandmother has a house in Mandarin, Florida. It's an old place, built a long time ago, with an old collapsing dock and other interesting buildings slowly decaying as she is unable to care for them. An old chicken coop, a barbeque hut, a grape arbor, and more.

Among the ruins I happened to find this mysterious mound of unknown origin, which feels strangely appropriate to post, given that I'm about halfway through reading The World Without Us.

A world without us will be filled with these mysterious markings of our presence.

I didn't stage this photo, I swear.

One of the benefits of running my business from home is that I get to be around my daughter a lot. She's an endless source of entertainment, frustration, fascination, learning, and love. Her latest craze is to tear all of the letter magnets off of our refrigerator, one by one, munching each before they get tossed into an alphabet-soup like chaos on the floor.

R is for Ruth, but R is also for reckless abandon!

The discipline of posting a photograph each day stretches me. In the past week, my reading, thinking, and personal conversations have led me to sit down and sketch. Today's shot is an example: I noticed this heart-shaped box in my apartment, and thought that it might make an interesting prop for a portrait. After a few sketches, I was ready to try it.

As with many of my shots and projects, it looked different in my head than how it came out in the end. I usually start with a few certainties about a shot, and then work through a number of variables until I end up with something I like. In this case, the end result was further from where I began than is usual for me. I may try it again to aim more towards what I was hoping for in the first place.

To further myself in yet another fashion, I've ordered several new toys from Lomography.com with which I can experiment further. I'm crossing my fingers that they will arrive before the weekend, since I'm photographing my cousin's wedding in Barnstable, MA, and would love to try out a few new gadgets with her.

Lastly, I will point fellow photography enthusiasts to the work of Evan Baden, who has a very interesting set of shots called "Illuminati" that highlights our need for constant connectivity through contemplative, peaceful, and haunting portraits (via Conscientious).

It's fun to play with props. When selecting jewelry the other day, I wondered what kinds of pictures I could take of jewelry to make it look like something else, a la Michel Gondry's crazy videos, but not even close to that kind of amazing.

As with yesterday's photo, I think further exploration of making things into other things needs to happen.

Remember that cardboard box in the back of my fridge? Well, quite a bit of film has returned from the lab, most of it medium format black and white work. It's been such a trip looking through it and seeing my old subject matter with new eyes. I'm a big believer in learning from one's past and reviewing your work frequently. I ask myself, what do I gravitate towards? What do I seem to have a knack for? What do I fail miserably at? Am I relying too heavily on a certain technique to make up for my own technical ineptitude or lack of ideas?

Well, one of the things I gravitate towards without fail is children. And luckily, I seem to have a knack for them. My favorite thing about this shot is that even though I obviously shot these two images from slightly different vantage points, the horizon line remains exactly the same in both frames. For me, that makes the diptych sing.

Back when I was teaching at Park Camps, we took a few field trips. Once, we went to Patterson Park, and the last trip we took was to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.

Down by the Federal Hill area is the Science Center, along with a very old-fashioned merry-go-round. It wasn't functioning when we visited, so I simply decided to snap some pictures of it while the kids were running around accumulating pictures for their assignments.

"Creepy carnival" is kind of an old trope to play with, but I think this works. I like how the arch of the circle swings upward, then is disjointed in the middle, interrupted by the galloping horse, and then continues around. It implies a much jerkier ride than what I'd imagine you'd experience on the actual merry-go-round.

As an aside, I owe a great deal of thanks to Severn Graphics for developing all my film so wonderfully. With Ruth running around all the time now, and not napping as frequently, I don't have the ability or spare time to develop film in my bathtub!

One of my dear friends, Sonja, hired me to do her headshot before she moved from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. I had a blast, not only because I love spending time with her, but also because I got to play with my then-brand-new PocketWizards, enabling me to cast light at will via radio transmission. They're awesome. And Sonja is too. So with her permission, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Sonja Bontrager, the Music-Maker!

I've known Sonja since being in college with her and watching her grow there (in addition to many other fun times) obtaining her B.A. in music composition. But Sonja has been making music as long as she was old enough to speak, making up songs in the car and devouring her parents' record collection (where both of us independently of each other discovered the Beatles' greatness, actually). After 12 years of piano lessons (starting at age 7), four years of vocal training, and her degree, Sonja learned the business of being a professional musician while working as the Director of Education at the Harrisburg Symphony. It was great to have her just a stone's throw from Baltimore; every now and again I'd travel up to see the symphony perform and keep tabs on her latest activities.

But that was not to be forever... just recently in May of this year, she daringly decided to strike out on her own and moved to Philadelphia to find work as a musician. Cat-sitter and dog-walker by day, Sonja teaches voice and piano lessons around the city at night. She writes her own songs, and currently performs on keys and vocals with The Marc Lomax Band (a reggae-blues-rock experience), and in her Harrisburg-based band, Smoke the Groove.

With a penchant for analog synths and circuit-bending, Sonja has incorporated these electronic delights in projects for Moviate (film screenings, art festivals, and more) with the Mystery Frogmen's Orkestra (also based in Harrisburg). I had the wonderful privilege of hearing their original soundtrack for Moviate's screening of Nosferatu, which was as strange and creepy as the movie itself. Her appetite for music is as vast as her range of influences, all of which I have heard blasting from her stereo in our dorm room and vehicle -- concert music like Beethoven, Krenek, Weill and Rachmaninoff, choral music & oratorio, reggae, trip-hop, indie hip-hop, opera, musical theatre, post-rock, experimental & noise, jazz, blues, world music and good ol' piano rock all have a place in her lexicon. I can always count on Sonja to expand my musical horizons.

For this portrait, I wanted to catch Sonja's quietly (but furiously) burning energy and professionalism. She does as she pleases with her compositions, but maintains a high standard for herself, which carries through into everything she does. Surrounding her with light on all sides and ratcheting the contrast serves to emphasize her rock star hair and accentuate the beautiful mixtures of color in her eyes.

One of the things I usually try to avoid when using flash is mirrors. Not so this time! And what's more, it's all fogged up and smeared from a recent shower.

This shot was taken with my brand new fisheye camera, and the film was developed at a local one-hour place nearby. The interesting thing about this shot is that I've put colored gels on the ring flash on the camera, which creates the strange colors.

Having a cheap plastic 35mm camera feels very freeing. I can be more cavalier when taking pictures, and the ring flash and colored gels makes me more playful, less serious, less intense about things coming out a certain way. The fact that it's film helps to add mystery and novelty, but also reveals that having a primarily digital workflow has made me impatient and perhaps a little less thoughtful than before.

I'm enjoying the return to film.

Well, I'm sad to say that I missed blogging my "one a day" portraits the past few days. However, it was for the absolutely wonderful reason that my cousin Martha got married in Barnstable, MA (Cape Cod) on Saturday. I was lucky enough to be both a guest and the photographer, so you'll hear more about that later, for sure!

And now, business as usual:

Again with the "film stuck at the back of the refrigerator" trick, I've managed to find a few more interesting diptychs. I like the differences between the frames here: one on land, one in the sea. One child clinging to its parent, the other independent. Male and female, old and young. The light artifacts from the HOLGA are also quite charming, I think.

At the time, I'm certain I wasn't thinking all of those things when I took those frames. One of the happy things about analog shooting is the mystery of what you'll get in the end. And because you're forced to view the pictures in a certain order (the order you took them), the progression (or lack thereof) between each frame feels highly significant.

While my brother Kevin visited last week, we had a little fun with our feet in the fisheye department. A colored flash helped make this shot even more strange.

I spend a lot of time at my sister-in-law's house. She lives ten minutes away, in a suburb of Baltimore. Many, many times I've photographed her kids while enjoying conversation, dinners, and games. This is the tree that shades their front yard.

I grew up in a suburb outside of Boston. In spite of my own negative feelings about certain aspects of suburban living (the need to drive everywhere, the lack of trees, the bad architecture...), I know suburbs. They're a part of how I grew up, and in spite of how much I try to get away from them, they have their own mystery and charm about them.

My husband, Stephen, is a music aficionado. Graduating from UMBC with a degree in Musicology, he's amassed quite a collection of CDs for himself. I vividly remember the day when his collection outgrew the two small bookshelves he had bought to house them. Needing a good solution for our tiny apartment, we mail-ordered a massive-but-efficient piece of furniture, with the promise that it would hold 1500 CDs--room for him to grow.

Thus, whenever I enter my house, there's a neverending stream of music coming from our stereo system. Things I like and things I don't. New things he's trying out, and old familiars. Music is such a vital part of my husband's identity, I decided to take a portrait of him in front of his collection.

I also took some time this afternoon to ask him about his collection...

Take a look at this picture. Exactly how many CDs do you own, right at this minute?
I think it's around 850, maybe closer to 900.

What genre or genres predominate?
As much as I'd like to be more of a cosmopolitan, i have to admit that rock is the dominating genre, but there is a good amount of jazz and experimental music in there.

Why did you start collecting music?
That's a good question. There are other ways to enjoy music, but gosh, I'm not sure how to answer that! I honestly don't know if I can say what got me started, just that I'm in the middle of it now.

Well, then why music?
Because I'm not very athletic, and I'm a slow reader, and I have poor penmanship. Music was the only thing left.

Name your top five latest new artist finds in the last year.
Battles--they released the best album of 2007. Robin Williamson--one of the founding members of the Incredible String Band. The last few albums he's done on the ECM label are just astounding, the most sophisticated and beautiful folk music you'll ever hear. Jaga Jazzist--a democratic synthesis of jazz and electronic music, very European. Not too long ago I fell in love with the Brandenburg Concertos. Lastly, Lyle Lovett. Just recently it's dawned on me what a superb and utterly unique songwriter he is. He can be so charmingly cocky and turn around and be equally poignant.

People seem to say you have a broad taste in music. Is it really true?
I'd like to say objectively that I have a broad taste in music, but I could never say I listen to "all kinds" of music. It's a pet peeve of mine when people say they do, because it's patently impossible to do. While I could confidently say I'm willing to listen to any music whatsoever, there are things I don't enjoy and prefer not to listen to.

For instance?
I hate to say it, because it's so cliche, but mainstream country, mainstream hip-hop, mainstream pop--anything where the commercial compromises artistic integrity. It can certainly happen outside the commercial industry, but when people complain about mainstream music, they're usually on point.

Do you have a favorite music critic?
I really enjoy Sasha Frere-Jones, from The New Yorker. He's astute, although a bit of a know-it-all sometimes. I'm amazed when I go through AllMusic.com and I see Thom Jurek's name attached to a baffling array of topics.

Why do you still collect CDs when everything is digital, and you even own an iPod?
I've thought about switching over, and I may do so in the future. Notwithstanding the argument between CD and vinyl, CD is still a lossless quality compared to mp3s, in which most music is formatted digitally. There's a lack of fidelity, and a lack of packaging and artwork, that enhances a record's enjoyment for me. Like a good book, having the tactile connection, something concrete is important. I don't think that will ever be usurped, regardless of where the digital media goes, and I'm sure it will go great places.

Closing remarks?
If you want to do something good for yourself, go out and listen to an album that you would never, ever listen to. Listen to something totally different than what you would normally listen to, and see where it leads you.

Steve currently works part time for International Orthodox Christian Charities, tunes pianos, and blogs regularly about music here.

Well well well, my attempt at a "one-a-day" project has been upset by a staggering lack of internet connectivity while on vacation. Happily, we are home safe, and I return to my regularly scheduled program.

Do you all remember my first attempt at a falling star? I was playing with some objects in my house, and my fooling around led me to a slightly illustrative style of work.

Well, I gave it another go, gathering a few more favorable materials in order to create a different look of falling star.

I'm really enjoying this method, and am thinking through other possible scenes to illustrate in the future, using the everyday objects around me. I really enjoy creating things out of other things, and then documenting them in a way that maintains something of an illusion.

The goal, however, isn't to completely trick you into not recognizing the objects for what they are, but for you to enjoy that the objects can come together to create something new.

Along the lines of yesterday's post, I bring you a butterfly garden.

Again, I had a lot of fun with this, finding objects and fabrics around my house with which to create an illustrative scene. This whole thing was inspired by finding a broken hair clip on the ground--the bejeweled butterfly you see featured in the center of the photo. It just so happened that I had other, smaller butterfly hair clips that served to create a family of butterflies; I couldn't resist making a home for them to live in.

Thus, I conclude my one month of attempting to blog a photo once a day. I never ran out of material! The week or so unexpected disconnectivity (is that a word?), may have helped, but I don't think I'd have run out of subject matter either way. Maybe I'll try this again some time. Do you all think it was a worthwhile experiment? Would you like to see more from me overall? Tell me.