super machine

I saw this typewriter in a thrift store in Seattle’s uber-hip Ballard neighborhood. Nothing really special about it but I liked that the storeowner had typed “I’m a super machine. I write in black and white.” I’m fascinated with the notion that the faster digital technology races along, the faster the popularity of vintage technologies grows.

 

While I’m on the topic, all the photos on this blog (minus the first post shot by Ethan) are shot with my Original iPhone, enhanced with a “Helga” (holga-type) feature in the affordably priced CameraBag app. Try it, it’s addictive. 

I sat down in a Seattle coffee shop to work on grant proposals. This cup of coffee lasted through about 30 minutes of research before I got distracted. Seattle is where I lived when I first delved into photography and this trip helped me remember why I love taking pictures in the first place. 

twilight

This trip I have spent a lot of time thinking about my future. Ironically, I spent the night in an isolated town sunk deep in the past. Fork, WA is the setting for the popular “Twilight” book series, which somehow I have managed to avoid hearing about. Craigslist may have helped kill newspapers on the mainland, but in Fork there appears to be no need for such modern hassles.

hurricane ridge

By Saturday, I was as far as you can be from North Carolina: Hurriance Ridge in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.  With my heavy cameras now a thing of the past, most of the trip was documented with my Canon G10 or, in the case of this blog, my “Original” iPhone camera.

awakening

I woke up to start my new life just how I had imagined it: alone in the hayloft of an Alamance County dairy farm.  Friends gathered there the night before to bid adieu to my newspaper career far from the distractions of city lights. 

April 21, 2009

April 21, 2009 was my last day as a newspaper photographer.  A dear friend of mine, Ethan Hyman, shot this photo of me as I returned roughly $15,000 in photography equipment issued to me by the Raleigh News & Observer.  Our equipment manager, Paul Magann, seen at right, was another one of the 31 employees who shared my fate. I was his last official duty.

I have spent my professional life making a living telling other peoples’ stories. Here is mine.