Don't We All Hate Those End-of-Year Lists? Me too. So here is mine.

The endless, end-of-year lists, all structured to be click-bait, are in full swing. I've been doing such a blog post for 4 of the last 5 years. I'm not sure why I missed 2016, but here is my contribution for this past year, 2018.

There were three magazine covers, two for Merrimack Valley Magazine, and one for Commercial Integrator, a trade magazine. There were several features for these and other magazines that I am proud of, as well as a very un-typical-for-me architectural shoot that was actually fun.

Finally, there were my artistic efforts. I was really happy to have had showings at two Curated Fridge shows (click for more on that), one photograph shown at the Whistler Museum of Art in Lowell, Massachusetts, and two photographs that made the 'on-line annexes' of gallery shows, one at the Photo Place Gallery, in Middlebury, Vermont, and the other at the Black Box Gallery, in Portland Oregon.

Thank you, as always, for your support this year and have a great 2019!

From the July-August 2018 issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine

From the September-October 2018 issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine

From the May-June 2018 issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine

From the March-April 2018 issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine

From the September-October 2018 issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine

Duckpins

I was asked to photograph a bowling alley for the last issue of the Merrimack Valley Magazine. As a kid, I used to walk to the candlepin bowling alley in the town where I grew up after school and play in an after-school league. It wasn’t much of a league, but I learned to play and remember having a good time. That could have been because I was doing it in lieu of going home to do homework. The lanes that the magazine had sent me to were not candlepin, which, if you are not familiar with it, is a New England thing, nor were they the more standard 10-pin lanes. North Chelmsford Duckpin Bowling Lanes is one of only a couple of Duckpin lanes that is still in operation. Coincidently, my late cousin, Richard Bisson, used to own and operate the T-Bowl duckpin lanes in Newington, Connecticuit. His daughter, Amy Sykes is a champion duckpin bowler, acquiring the title of “world’s best female duckpin bowler”. There is a really good article about Amy, and duckpin bowling from the NY Times here.

But what I encountered in North Chelmsford was something that was truly from another era. This issue of the magazine may still be in the stores, in which case you should grab a copy, but here is the opening spread as well as several more shots from my visit. Thanks very much to the lanes’ owner John DePalma too! It was a really interesting and fun experience.

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