John Boal Photography

So I was finally able to "win" a bid on ebay for some polaroid film.  I had tried originally to get some black and white film, but lo and behold I ended up with some type 79 which is a nice ISO of 100.   The polaroid I had used not long ago (donated to me by the photo lab at NVCC) had been long expired and didn't turn out very well.  This type 79 film was also expired but I was absolutely stunned by the quality of the print I made (and it's not because I made it of myself). Sitting alone in my apartment waiting for my laundry to finish I situated myself near the window on a rainy day (just beautiful window light). But it's funny how you have to try these self portraits with a 4x5.  I situated a pillow upright on the couch, and figured out all the technical stuff with the camera.  Then, I moved the pillow and held my hand out where it was, then moved my face in behind my hand, and pulled the trigger. I did pretty much the same thing but with a box of tissues in t

Ok.  I swear when I started this blog, I was going to be good about it.  I knew I would be able to put down at least 2 blogs a week.  It just didn't seem that difficult.  But it is.  It really seems difficult to put together the 30 minutes to throw a couple images online and write about what it all meant, if anything at all.It reminds me of when I was going to be the next great american author.  This was when I was about 15, and a sophomore in high school.  I took a creative writing class and by the end of that class, I have to admit, I wasn't awful.  I belted out several sonnetts, a couple short stories, and pages and pages of random thoughts not unlike this, into one of those marbled black and white composition books.   During the class, we were required to have 7 entries a week...yep, one a day. But the caveat was this:  it did not matter what the heck you wrote, just as long as you wrote.  And being the clever teenager I was, I would write "...so, I don't have anyt

Ok, so I've been super busy lately, and I haven't blogged much, lately.  As spring rolls around, real estate gets very busy, especially when prices and interest rates have dropped so much, so I've been shooting a lot of properties.  But on occasion, I have the opportunity to shoot some journalism.  Last weekend, a local high school in Manassas held a vigil for two recent graduates who recently died at their respective colleges.  About 100 kids showed up. Some knew the deceased from high school, but others didn't.  They all came out to show their support for the families of these two girls who were taken at such a young age.   Vigils have become strangely common in recent years.  A year ago, following the massacre at VATech, a huge vigil was held on campus (one I didn't attend, but I knew of scores of photojournalists who did).  Another, more recent vigil, that I did attend, was that for fallen Redskin, Sean Taylor.  It seems that vigils create an atmosphere conduciv