Micah Walter

Someone suggested I begin reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I ran out to Border’s following a brief encounter with a small squirel to buy the book and have read about halfway through the first chapter.

The book tells me to do two things right off the bat: write three pages of anything I like each morning, and go on a date with my own inner artist once a week.

I am not supposed to share my morning pages with anyone (at least not for a long time) but I thought I would chronicle the dates in this new section called Artist’s Date.

We shall see how it goes.

The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

So lately I have had a couple of things on my mind. Number one has been, “How can I expand my business?” and number two has been “What is next in my digital worlkflow?”

And I have come to these conclusions. The answer to the first question is, simply: expand what you shoot. So I have recently taken an interest in doing more serious portraiture. I think it would be great to try and combine my journalistic experiences with portrait or studio lighting. Just a small departure from the norm that I think might get my creative juices flowing again.

A few weeks ago our good friend Nate came to visit us. I have been interested in photographing Nate for sometime now, as he is the subject of a project I have been thinking about taking on. Nate, a transgender female-to-male, has been pretty eager to help, and the only problem so far has been that he lives in Baltimore, so we don’t get to see him too often.
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Meret Oppenheim nude lying on her back, by Man Ray 1929

Sunday, about halfway through the George Mason game, we headed down to the galleries. Our agenda was to hit the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. By this point I was fairly obsessed with actually going to see the exhibit just because I had heard so much and talked so much about going. It was almost a small quest of mine to finally get to see it in person.

Just before we left, thinking that Kendra might get a little bored with seeing the Dada exhibit twice I went to check out what was going on at the Hirshhorn. The Hirshhorn has always been one of my favorite museums in D.C. and I figured there would probably be something interesting there.
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When I lived in Israel a friend of mine decided that there were a few books I needed to read. So, just before I left she gave me, as a going away present, a list of essentials. One of the authors on the list that intrigued me the most was Jerzy Kosinski

photo found on Google^TM Images

Kosinski was a Jewish writer born in Poland in the 1930’s. He survived the war by living with a Catholic Polish family under a false identity and eventually reunited with his real family before emigrating to the U.S. in 1957.
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Another great weekend with friends, including a long overdue visit from Nate, provided my creative factories with enough juice to produce a few nice images. I broke out the lighting kit and dragged it around the house with me as Kendra and Nate did silly things like dyeing each-others hair and drinking Bloody Marys on the balcony.

The weather was amazing, as predicted by our in-house weather guru, Kendra Campbell, and the balcony got most of the action with a small bit reserved for the streets of D.C. and a couple eye-opening Metro rides.

So, I have never been to this theatre before. But, from what my sources tell me, the Source Theatre is one of D.C.’s little gems. WashingtonDC.com describes it as follows:

One of Washington DC’s oldest small professional theatres, the 14th Street corridor’s Source Theatre reinterprets the classics, collaborates with other innovative theatre groups and functions as a visual arts gallery.

Kendra tells me she used to go all the time and see the strangest plays for practically pocket change. I of course thought this sounded great, but when we took a look at the schedule we found nothing! Well a few weeks went by and now the news is in. The Source Theatre is turning into a bar and grill.

But that’s not all. There (as with just about anything in D.C.) is a group fighting to save the Source. Source Theater Open House, this Sunday, March 12th, from 11-5pm. 1835 14th St. NW. Details below.

Petition against

Seatadvisor on the Source

photo by CB

An exhibit of Dada art has come to my town and I feel the urgent need to go. Kendra, CB, and Katie all went while I was in New Orleans and now I am immensely jealous and trying to figure out how to convince Kendra to go again. Seems as though she is up for it, but we shall see about all of that. Reviews, rants and raves to follow by the weekend.

photo found on Google^TM Images

The above piece by Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp was attacked (that’s right, someone attacked a toilet) when the exhibit was in Paris this past January.

Dada at the National Gallery

Man attacks toilet in Paris…

This post is mostly for the students enrolled in the Intro to Digital Photography Course at the USDA. The forums are down and though we are working hard to get them back up and running I wanted to make sure you knew that we are still having our Sunday Workshop this weekend.

Please meet at the 4P’s Irish Pub in Woodley Park at 2pm on Sunday. Bring your cameras and if you have a laptop, please bring that as well. if you have any questions just send me an email at micahpix@micahwalter.com or give me a call.

I have been back from a grueling road trip to New Orleans for a few days now. Back to eating regular food, back to sleeping regular hours and on regular beds. After just two days in New Orleans and making a very minimal set of images I realized I needed to be back in DC. My assistant was also very unimpressed with the concept of Mardi Gras and so after a couple days of seemingly never ending parades and billions of beaded necklaces, we decided to hightail it back home.

The morning we left we had decided to stop by a house in the 9th Ward area. The 9th Ward was one of the hardest hit spots during Katrina and because it also happens to be a very low-income area, has been having the greatest difficulty rebuilding and recovering.

Last night my assistant had found a guy who said he lived there and made arrangements to meet him in the morning at his home. So, this morning I contacted a woman who I had met in a bar the first night. She was a local and also interested in coming to visit the 9th Ward. As she arrived we looked at a map and figured out where the house was. Clearly, we had made a mistake. The house was nowhere near the 9th Ward but further up along one of the breached levee areas in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood.

“Oh well,” I thought, let’s just go check it out anyway. So the three of us piled in the Volvo and headed to the house. On our way we stopped at the site of the levee breach and took a few pictures of some of the destruction. After two days in the French Quarter and seeing nothing but PoBoy sandwiches and beaded necklaces it was finally time to see what we had actually come down here to see. An entire house sat in the middle of the street, floated off its foundation and sitting slightly lumped over itself. A white Volvo was wedged between two houses, and the artifacts were everywhere. Little pieces of people’s lives stuck in the mud. I looked into the windows of destroyed homes and saw lives left behind. Things, stuff, possessions, it was haunting. Though, at the same time it seemed over. It seemed like we were there way to late to make any real contribution journalistically speaking.

After a while we headed to the house. We looked around for a while and finally found it. It was the nicest house in the area. Nearly completely rebuilt. I thought to myself, this guy is probably some contractor with all the help he can get. Sure enough he was. Not only a contractor but the President of DURR Heavy Construction, one of the largest contractors in the area.

His house was amazing. Like the hurricane had never hit, it looked nearly ready for his family to move back in. He met us there and told us about his company and how they were helping the area get back on its feet.

After a few impromptu portraits and snaps of his house we left and finally decided to move on out. The 9th Ward will have to wait until our next visit.