The end of this blogger site!

My website and blog made a baby, and can be found at larsonharley.com. This blogger site will be phased out in the coming months, please channel your good thoughts toward the new site.

News: Teaching classes at 3rd Ward

Finally! Tomorrow I will start teaching classes at 3rd Ward down in Brooklyn. This is going to be a 4 week intro to photography class, while later on this summer I will step it up a notch and teach a course in street photography! This July class will take us out into the baked streets of summer in NYC and get photographing in some of the most fascinating places this city has to offer. I can't wait to work up a sweat pouring photo knowledge out my brain, down the lips, and into the ears of willing students.

Pass this on to anyone looking for some photo know-how, from beginner to expert tutoring!

Unfortunately, I will not be traveling out west this summer to teach for the Canon Photography in the Parks program. Due to the earthquakes and the tsunami in Japan, Canon has cut funding on a lot of their nationwide marketing. Good news is, I am continuing the teaching and adventure as it comes.

The Fog

While scoping out a future underground shoot, my return home brought me past Prospect Park on a dark, quiet, foggy night. I have been so busy at work that I have been neglecting to take pictures for myself. This isn't much, but it felt good to be camera in hand. This will be a busy week again, but I have some good news to share later on.

The life of the party

This Friday was one of the worst days I have had in a long time, up until the party. My friends, with the aid of Moustache, helped me to be goofy for awhile and forget about serious things. I laughed until I had tears, and on that particular night, I needed it. Thank you friends, and thank you Moustache.

Moustache and blank canvas

Big City, Small City

January 2010

Amadu stopped me in the street one day in January, and began talking to me. After a few minutes, I realized that he is a local celebrity. He talks with half the people that pass him by, and works all over the neighborhood. Even though I have left Chinatown, I try to come by and hang out with Amadu for a little while each time I'm around. It is beginning to become ritual, to talk about how nobody else helps to keep the street clean, the neighborhood, work, change. Amadu also poses for tourists as the Statue of Liberty. I took a picture of him 14 months ago, before we became friends. I was stunned when I realized this, since New York City can seem so big sometimes, and then again so small.

Small, yet personal relationships are beginning to have an impact on my photography. Usually I take the "grab and go" approach to taking photographs of people on the street, avoiding all personal interaction. It has been a new experience for me to make a connection before I bring out the camera, that establishment of trust that takes the right moment to ask for a picture. It wouldn't matter if Amadu had said no, but in fact I couldn't get him to just be natural and not pose! His interaction with the camera was almost mechanical for him. Striking peace signs, sweeping at half speed, and making sure we were in good light for the portrait.

Sal's Barber Shop

Welcome to Little Italy, in case you have not had the chance to visit via blogs past. As I have previously spoken, it can be rare to get a true experience of this neighborhood. Saturday proved otherwise for me, when Lisa and I were invited into Sal's Barber Shop several times throughout our visit next door, at the Italian American Museum. We got the grand tour of both Sal's and the museum, learning a lot of personal histories throughout the day. Lisa is working on a project in this neck of the wood, and soon to come will be a quick collection from inside the museum. Have a seat, stay for a trim!

Argyle Rd.

This is my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Down around the corner of Cortelyou and Argyle roads, I remember snippets of my childhood, including bakery runs on Sunday morning, the playground around the corner, and even the walk up Argyle to Prospect Park.  Most of the neighborhood changed, but I was able to quickly find old bearings through my memories of this part of town. Most notably, the mural in Lt. Federico Narvaez Tot Lot has weathered the decades long between visits, and stands just as it did to me almost 20 years ago today.

Confetti everywhere

Yesterday was the Chinese New Year Parade in New York City, and I found myself photographing mostly children and people enjoying the parade, rather than the parade itself.  "Confetti everywhere" is all I could think, all I could seem to photograph all day.  Most of the enjoyment it seemed came from popping confetti tubes, which showered the streets and onlookers, covering the pavement with a pinkish, liquid mass.  It was a lot of fun, but once I got myself in the mind of a child, I began to enjoy the whole thing much more.  I would be curious, if anyone could tally a figure, of how many of those confetti shooters were used yesterday.

Big ups to the New York City sanitation workers who cleaned house after the parade.  They were working the moment the last float turned down Mott and Canal, and this morning is the cleanest I have seen Chinatown... for the entire year I have lived there!

More from the Land of Fire and Spit

Black Sand Geyser Basin

The latest in photographs from the caldera of Yellowstone National Park!  I keep thinking of Yellowstone as an ancient place, where prehistoric beasts roam, and fire bubbles up from the earth.  These are panoramas made from three to sixteen individual parts, and photographed in some of the park's most active geyser basins.  The sun stayed protected until the morning I was leaving Wyoming, and even those rays were fleeting.  These should compliment the photos in my last post from this winter trip.  Click on the image to see a larger version.

"Bobby Socks" trees

Night at Mammoth Geyser Basin

Midway Geyser Basin

Norris Geyser Basin