Doug Boutwell the occasional odd thought or image
Personal
Edgar Peak
250 miles from home, out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, lies a spike of rugged granite and iron jutting above the surrounding desert. The 7129′ top of that range is called Edgar Peak, and getting to the summit is a 4-6 hour climb over boulders and cactus. There are no trails, and no other human beings for miles around.
The $100 Milkshake
There’s a phrase in aviation – the “Hundred Dollar Hamburger” – which is basically a short flight to go have lunch somewhere. This is the story of a $100 milkshake on my 32nd birthday…
Scout Rose Boutwell
Scout’s almost a month old, and I haven’t written a proper welcome for her on my blog (which makes me a terrible father, or a terrible photographer… or both).
Goodbye, Murray
After having Murray in our lives for over ten years, yesterday we finally made the decision to let him move on. He was 16+ years old, and his legs and back were causing him so much pain on a daily basis that there just wasn’t much joy left for him in life (despite his daily [...]
Wings!
Thoughts on my Private Pilot checkride, and why it was one of the most stressful things I’ve done in years.
My Desk Today
“If you look inside someone’s home, you’ll see who they are. If you look at their car, you’ll see who they want to be.” My desk, at a glance, gives you a pretty big clue as to what occupies my time nowadays…
12 Frames of My Family
We just returned from a trip to Santa Cruz, where Chenin had an engagement session. I still love using the Rollei as a vacation camera, because I never do any “serious” photography with it, so it doesn’t feel like work to shoot with it. I also like shooting 120 because you have few enough frames [...]
Bombay Beach | Salton Sea | Stuck In The Mud
While making pictures at Bombay Beach, on the shores of the Salton Sea, my Honda Element was nearly lost to the mud.
25 Things You May Or May Not Know About Doug
I don’t think I’ve ever posted a random list of facts about me on my blog, even though everyone else seems to have, and I almost always enjoy reading stuff like that if it’s a blog I follow. So whether you consider it the height of narcissistic solipsism, or a fun ice-breaking mini-autobiography, here you [...]
Max Smiles!
Our little baby boy has been working on getting a smile out for a couple weeks now, and today he managed to pull off his first, bona-fide, I’m happy and not just pooping smile. It just so happens that we had the camera rolling at that moment – I had been thinking lately that I [...]
Inspiration and LOLz
I just had to pass this link along to one of my favorite websites. Check out pictureisunrelated.com for some of the strangest photos you’ll ever set eyes on. It’s simultaneously entertaining, and mind candy for getting your brain into a place where you’ll let weird things happen in your images. Though most of these are [...]
Chenin and Max
Shot my amazing wife and beautiful little boy this afternoon. Just a quick portrait of a mother and her child while we still have this amazing weather. Kinda a hack retouch job, but I have an early morning tomorrow… I’ll tweak it some more later I suppose.
Ten Years Ago
I got a wild whim to go poring through old negatives a couple days ago, and came across some shots from college. Took me back to the days when photography was fucking magic, before I was all jaded… where every time you picked up a camera it was just awesome to press the button, and [...]
Happy Birthday to Maxfield Banks Boutwell
Born Feb 16 just before 2am. 8 lbs, 3oz, 19″ long. Our beautiful, little baby boy. Welcome to the world, little man!
Flying Solo
Just had an exhilarating experience today… my first solo flight! Yay! I’ve been working on getting my pilot’s license for about a year (took a detour in June because the surf was good all damned month, and then just kinda forgot about flying). Got back into it this week, though, and surprisingly didn’t have nearly [...]
Giving Is Awesome
Kristen Kalp, our TRA Customer Service Wiz, recently started a little charity project for the holidays. It began with a simple idea: that one family, who couldn’t otherwise afford her photography, would receive $1000 worth of goods and/or services for Christmas. People would nominate someone they thought could use the gift on her blog, and [...]
Getting Personal With Me ‘N’ Chenin
Even though this was posted earlier this month, I’m a schmuck and let it get buried in my emails. Anyway, Ron Dawson, videographer extraordinaire, did a telephone interview with me and Chenin a while back (excuse me, Chenin and I). If you want to know a little more about who we are, what we think [...]