The Dog's Name is Lucky

Lucky, originally uploaded by Jeff Shaw Tulsa Oklahoma.

Lucky is our dog. He's been with us for a little over a year. He's one of those dogs that has to be under somebody all the time.

He's pretty smart, too. At least he knows when he's in trouble. This is Lucky relaxing, and perhaps trying to figure out what a camera is.

This is Kodak Gold, expired film. It was made in my Nikkormat FT camera.

Summer Time

A Boy.


A Pool.



A Camera.



I wish Summer would never end.

I shot these on Kodak Gold 100 expired in 1994.

Park Bench, East End

023-WIP_10-10_2009, originally uploaded by Jeff Shaw Tulsa Oklahoma.

On the East End of Downtown Tulsa, just outside the inner loop on South Madison there is an old neighborhood.

There, the Herbold Apartment Building provides a smoking area which is across the street from the apartments, and next to a fence that looks down on the busy highway. From here you can watch cars and trucks and buses go by at 60 miles per hour. From here you can meditate or worry or stare into the dissonant whirring of progress and the tranquility of the noisy city.

And maybe have another cigarette.

Church in Downtown Eagle Pass, Texas

Church in Downtown Eagle Pass, Texas, originally uploaded by Jeff Shaw Tulsa Oklahoma.

This is a photograph made with expired slide film.

I like the lines and the shadow in this photograph. There is a brightness in this photo, but still it's not a sterile brightness. The tonal gradation is beautiful, IMO.

Expired Film In An Old Camera

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Film is my medium of choice. Photographs made with film have tooth, and depth. Film photographs capture a gradation of tones and color that other photography mediums cannot approach. This casual and relaxed portrait has a journalistic element. It feels kind of "blue" if you ask me.

This particular photo was made in my Nikkormat FT with 200 ISO Kodak Gold Film, expired in 2002.

My First Post

First of all, MNOP stands for Madison, Norfolk, Owasso & Peoria. These are the Tulsa, Oklahoma streets of my childhood. That's where I learned to become a city boy. All my urban chops were honed in and around that North Tulsa area West of Lowell Elementary School, which is long gone.

At the south end of those streets, which is cut-off by a factory and the railroad tracks at East Archer, we were led downtown past the Fintube complex and around to Greenwood, which was the only direction we could really go. As we got older, we played a lot in downtown Tulsa.

Joe Andoe got to practice his brand of our neighborhood in East Tulsa. But we got stuck there in that hole of neighborhood. I only mention Joe Andoe, because if I could describe my perception of Tulsa, it wouldn't be much different from some of his stories in Jubilee City.

We were usually at the edges where the homeless people and the prostitutes were. We did all the stuff hoodlums were supposed to do - busted windows, got into fights, stole bikes. (But we weren't all that bad, either - if you ask me.) We rarely got in any big trouble.

So I don't know how a lot of those memories of Tulsa could be described as "fond" - they don't really approach the romantic "chamber of commerce" memories that are so often force fed to Tulsans. But the memories are fond, maybe because I own them.

My photography work is the main purpose of this blog. The other stuff is just a little bit about me. I suppose I'll make an attempt to incorporate some of those memories into this blog, when it supports the photography.

When I was really young, a photographer came around door to door with a horse and to make pictures of kids on his horse with chaps and a cowboy hat on. For some strange reason, we took the photo in the alley behind our house on North Norfolk. I remember the trash laying around and the tipped over trash cans and the stink, and the flies. I have never understood why we took the photo back there.

Not a few years after that, I found myself dreaming about photographing some of the things that people don't get to see. I secretly dreamed of being a photojounalist when I was young. I was always into photography, I just never had a camera.

Now I have cameras.