Well, it looks like Melissa Brooks was putting together an article for The Bay Area Native on Thomas Hawk’s $2 Portrait Project , the one my BW$P Project is based on.  Very cool!

Check out the article and the full project on Flickr.

Till next time…

Meet Chad.

Chad was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, barefooted with a cup filled with spare change, a dollar and a cigarette.

As I approached Chad, he only kept staring at me, not saying anything.  I approached him slowly and said, “Hey, how are you doing?”  He responded, with a cigarette in hand, shaking slightly, “Man, can you spare any change?”  I said, “Sure, I’m actually working on a project, offering a dollar to anyone who asks me for money, in exchange for a portrait.”  Chad accepted the offer, I gave him a dollar and before I could even get my camera ready, asked if I could give him another.  I told him, the project was for one dollar, but I’ve got a buddy walking around doing two dollar portraits.  He didn’t argue, but said I could only take a picture of the tattoo on the back of his head.  I agreed that would be fine.

Chad came to San Francisco from New York seven years ago and is currently on probation.  According to him, he continuously gets harassed by the cops and gets thrown into jail for doing nothing.  He embellished on the fact that they hit him in the head for no reason and then threw him in jail.  “I don’t understand, they don’t mind the black guys out here selling drugs, but, me, I aint doing nothing and I get my ass thrown in jail.  This is a free country, why can’t I live on the street corner if I want to?  I can live where I want.  They can’t tell me where to go.”

After finding out that the tattoo of the dragon on Chad’s head was the year he was born (year of the dragon), I wished him good luck and continued on my way.

This image is part of my Black and White Dollar Portrait (BW$P) Project.

Everyone has a lapse at some point.  You might have forgotten your keys in the house, left the lights on in the car, or simply forgot about that conference call you were suppose to dial into about an hour ago.  Whatever it might be, we’ve all had those moments.

With photography, it is VERY easy to change your camera settings, forget you’ve changed them and continue on your way ruining the next 10 or so pictures.  If you always use manual mode, you are less likely to have this issue.  However, if you use any other mode, you are bound to forget you changed something.

For me, it happened about a month ago while I was at the California State Fair.  In general, I walk around with my camera in Aperture Priority Mode, ready to shoot anything in a given second.  I also hardly ever check the preview of the picture (I actually have it turned off and only look when I need to be absolutely sure I got the shot I wanted).  Well, I was walking around inside the exhibition galleries and had switched over to Manual Mode.  After about two hours, we moved on to the outdoors.  There, I approached and photographed a few individuals smoking for The Dying Breed project.  From there, we went to the race tracks, back inside, and I went to change my settings on my camera…long behold, I was still in Manual Mode.  After cursing myself a bit, I finally took a look at the pictures I had just taken and it wasn’t very pretty.

So, the moral of the story, ALWAYS, double check all of your camera settings before setting out to capture a photograph.

After doing some heavy post processing work, I was still able to manage and get the pictures to a visible state (all of them were very under exposed).  If you dare care to have a look, here is what the final result was…

So, I’ve learned my lesson, I have 4 less images in my project, but in the end, no one was hurt.  Perhaps, I’ve got to start doing some brain exercises!

Till next time…

[UPDATE:] A few people have indicated (via Google Buzz and FriendFeed) that they actually like the way the black and white images came out.  So, the secondary lesson is: As much as you don’t like a final image, someone else just might.

If you have a second, please take a moment, click on the below link, the image at the left, or right HERE and vote me up.

Thanks so much!

Vote Here: http://jpgmag.com/photos/2611907

The photo to the left can also be found on Flickr (the obligatory link back since the photo is hosted there).