One an early summer day in Washington, DC last year, a friend of mine asked me “who will photograph the photographers?” As photogs we’re rarely in photographs, let alone photographs taken with our own cameras. We often cringe when someone picks up our gear to take a photo, it’s like picking up a body part. Leave my camera alone, get out of my personal space.  These photos were taken at one of my favorite spots in Seattle, Local 360, you can usually find me there every weekend for breakfast. The coffee is good and the light in there makes for some nice photos. These images were made with my trusty Canon 7D. I’m schooling a friend who wants to take photography seriously again. She picked up my 7D and didn’t do too bad. I’ve given my old Canon 20D to this pupil, as it was just collecting dust. Each one. Teach one.

This past weekend I biked in the annual D.C. Tweed Ride produced by Dandies and Quaintrelles. What a day. The weather gorgeous, the people beautiful, and bikes dandy. A portion of the proceeds from the Tweed Ride went to Arts for the Aging. Not only did I bike, I also photographed the ride. This was no easy feat with my hulking Canon 7D hanging from my neck. Don’t bike and photograph boys and girls. I’ve organized the photos into sets and here is the first in which I’ve simply titled – Portraits in Tweed. Stay tuned for the rest coming later this week.

A photo shoot with Josh Yospyn for his “5 Things” piece on ReadysetDC.

“Sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.”

Walking into the sea of people prior to the H Street Festival a couple of weekends ago I didn’t know what to expect. I did know that I wanted to leave the street festival with at least one or two “good” portraits. Looking for subjects to photograph isn’t for the faint of heart. I took a deep breath before approaching my subject below who just looked at regal as ever in his Sunday best taking in all the H Street revelry. “Sir can I take your photo?” Sure he replied in a hushed voice, let me go inside and put on my jacket. As he walked inside he asked that I photograph his buddy as well. So there you have it, two “good” portraits.

I’ve meet some of the coolest people, many whom I call friends, just by picking up a camera. For that I am grateful. Let’s all hug it out.

Photos from my interview with Cory Orberndorfer. For the full interview and gallery, click here.

YourBlogSucks!, originally uploaded by EMUII.

…and so does mine.

I had liveBooks install my blog thinking I could customize it the way I wanted. FAIL. But I’ll make do with what I have and hope liveBooks will make improvements in the future. I also wanted to keep everything under one URL tracyclayton.com for my portfolio and tracyclayton.com/blog for what you see here. I’ll stop bitchin’ now and start shooting more photographs.

Cheers.

You may have seen the video produced by the talented Brandon Bloch for ReadysetDC. During the shoot, which we did in one day I took some stills that were to be incorporated in the video. Instead, the shots were laid to rest on the cutting room floor.