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What's appealing about window reflections is the psychological element, and depending on the time of day and where one is standing and who or what is passing by, the myriad possibilities of images. Glass is only a surface, but that surface changes, a hard surface with fluid flexibility. In Philip-Lorca diCorcia's "Mike Miller; 24 years old; Allentown, Pennsylvania", the image is taken through glass at someone who appears to be taking a quiet reflective moment and more reflections and layers on the glass surface farthest from the view; like the subject is caught between different depths and perceptions captured at that particular moment in time.

"Capturing daily life in the form of ‘snapshots’ taken in the street," Daido Moriyama “I. Retrospective 1965-2005″ & “II. Hawaii”





Taking street images out of context makes them a little surreal; capturing what is often overlooked because it's just there like so much noise, or a note of a song, but not looked at individually.

Talking about Ansel Adams with a friend the other day, I realized that his work is the exact opposite of mine. He lugged heavy manual equipment up dizzying heights in nature and was maddeningly deliberate and technical in taking his time-consuming grand landscape images shot in black-and-white.





While my color snapshot images are taken from a lightweight hand-held digital camera on flat streets, often close up, and take seconds to find and capture. Yet there is a joy in taking the pleasing image that captures our attention, compelling us to archive it, whatever it may be.

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Came across a couple of sites this week where the photographers make their own cameras, from the rather primitive yet effective cameras by Czech photographer Miroslav Tichy



to the elaborate cameras by "Boy of Blue" artist Wayne Martin Belger



Tichy invented his film cameras out of bits and pieces of trash, while Belger's are highly-developed cameras whose elaborateness are in direct contrast to the simplicity of the pinhole. Both types produce a wonderful dreamy effect with psychological edge and tension. Since Tichy lived behind the iron curtain (so hard to find a camera for sale), do these images have a historical significance or did he simply like naked women? (seems to be quite the leg man).



Facing a light source, the iconic cross looks like its warding off the threatening storm behind it, but what's that plastic angel doing exactly?



Here are a few recent images from my Canon point-and-shoot:



I picked these images because although they're not dreamy, they're a bit edgy (or in the case of jack fruit image, pointy). The man's bruised face and torn eyes, the scattering of neon light; things seem displaced or disrupted, forcing our gaze, sometimes on the surface, other times disturbingly inward.