Coffee Black and Egg White Photography

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This is my cousin pete. he works at z studios, in ventura. his boss is originally from ashland, ohio (where i live.) if any of you have a grasp of how small and insignificant ashland is, you would know that the odds of such a thing happening are SUPER slim.

Anyway, when i was a kid, the only thing that ever went through my mind all day and night was the creation of images. i just wanted to learn to photograph. that, and listen to records. computers (at least the kind that mortals could afford) had not been invented, so i no had exposure to them, other than stories from my dad about the multi million dollar machines at his work.

we would visit pete’s family, and i would see his cameras, his photography, and his record collection and wish i could just live there. aside from getting chills and in insatiable lust when i saw the name “nikon,” i also listened to tons of records.

among the records that stuck with me until this very day was elton john’s “Goodbye yellow brick road”. even now, as i hear this album, i can still remember being a little kid and evaluating my options for the future. although the song that struck me most was “candle in the wind” (i always wished i could photograph marilyn) i figured it didn’t make a whole lot of sense in this context, so i picked “bennie and the jets.”

i should also note that cousin pete is also responsible for my insatiable love for horror. his pile of monster magazines and monster books got me started on the road i am on now.

for the sake of completeness, i should also mention the other folks that got me addicted to making images:

• my uncle jarvis - every vacation we went on, he would carry his 35mm slrs with him. i would ask him if i could try it, and without flinching, he would let this little goofball kid look through the viewfinder and twist the focus ring. he even told me how the meter works! he also took a ton of slides, and even had a slide projector. he would tell me stories of waking up before sunrise to catch a perfect shot. at that point, i decided to shoot things that were more in line with my schedule. like rock concerts.
• my uncle paul - when he was stationed in japan, he got all kinds of nikon gear. one summer, he let me borrow his nikon f for the whole summer. i spent all my allowance on film and processing. that is the camera that i learned to shoot slide film on. he also had a copy of “goodbye yellow brick road.” i think i wore his copy out. we lost him a few years ago, but my brother still has the amp, tuner, and speakers that we listened to 35 years ago. it lives in new york now, but it still sounds … err… magical. of all the things he had, i would have killed for that nikon f. not that it was a collector’s item, but i wonder if i could still smell orange blossoms when i held it, like i did pedaling my bike around town as a kid, looking for something interesting. i should have made an effort to keep it in the family. dammit.
• john nichols - you should also visit his gallery site and browse around a bit. when i was a kid, john opened a gallery downtown. i used to ride my bike down there after school and on weekends and he showed me that while i had managed to successfully figure out how to build and run a darkroom, i was just missing one piece. how to look at things. from then on, i started working hard on learning to see. the only problem is, the more i learn, the more i find that i don’t know. but john (back then, his store/gallery was called “mr. nichols”) was patient enough to push me along the way. i am still amazed by his work. if you ever get down there, take half a day to browse his image collection. it will show you all the things you don’t know.

anyway. because of those four guys, i dream about images. for almost forty years now.

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Before you read this entry, start the song playing, first!

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This is a reprint. A photo that i have used on the old picture of the day site, but i thought it might be kind of cool to use this image to kick off the new section of the coffee black site, and to kick off the new format for picture of the day. rather just a picture sporadically posted, i will post them weekly, but each post will have a song that i think goes nicely with the photo.

This photo is the last photo i took of my grandma rangel. after snapping this photo, i hopped on my motorbike and made my way back to ohio. we lost grandma later that year, just after christmas. one of the reasons i really would like to get off the provervial fence about what i really believe is the hope that grandma and her lifelong buddy aunt marion (who we lost earlier this year) are still around somewhere… playing cards, drinking port wine, and laughing about harder times.

I picked this song for a few reasons. i can still hear this song in my head, playing on my grandma’s stereo when their friends would stop by and the house would smell like percolated coffee, pall malls, and scotch.

Last year, when my brother made a video tribute to grandma, and included this song in the closing scene. so fitting, and so cool.

Let me know if the photo or the song stirred up any memories for you guys.

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This is the first entry on the new site. Hopefully, this will be the new home of Coffee-Black’s Picture of the day. I will keep you all posted as we go along here.

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