Letters Home a visual diary of Matthew Ginn's activities in Cleveland, Ohio, and beyond971-219-7189
info@matthewginn.com
Misc.
Spring has sprung …
Although there was snow in the air again this morning, last Friday it felt like spring had finally arrived. It was sunny, and relatively warm around 10°C (50°F), so I decided to bust out of the office and enjoy the afternoon. Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve (aka Dike 14) is not too far from my home, [...]
Kenneth Baldwin Davey, Grandpa, 1924-2013
Born July 18, 1924 in Sevenoaks, England: a Kentish Man. Served in the Corps of Royal Engineers in World War II, followed by a career as a quantity surveyor. Married Magda Lowy (1926-2010) in 1947. Moved to Kingston, Ontario, in 1957 and Toronto in 1965. Died March 6, 2013, in Toronto. Leaves behind three children, [...]
New gear
Every business needs to reinvest in new equipment to replace aging pieces and upgrade to more capable machines. Photography is no different. In the film days, camera bodies were a very mature technology. There wasn’t much Canon or Nikon (or anyone else) could do to improve on their top-flight models: maybe a bit lighter, more [...]
Good things
Some more table-top photography, this time some things I found around the house: our orchid, a fine Oregon Pinot noir, and an angel my grandmother made of clay. I started shooting on the white background, like the portfolio I photographed for Sharon a couple weeks ago, then decided it might look better on black. The [...]
Angel’s Share
I rarely do any product photography, but when a friend who is studying graphic design asked me to photograph her portfolio, I said “of course!” I brought my equipment over to Sharon Cody’s house last week, set up on her kitchen table and we shot various design projects she’d worked on. The first, shown here, [...]
Christmas traditions III: Snap-dragons
For the third and final post in our Christmas traditions series, we’re talking about snap-dragons. No, not the flower. Snap-dragons (which is really more of a New Year’s tradition for us) is an old parlour game most popular (according to Wikipedia, at any rate) from the 16th through 19th centuries. As with all ancient folk [...]
Happy Thanksgiving!
For those of you celebrating America’s greatest holiday today, happy Thanksgiving! To the rest of you, please enjoy these e-cards while you’re chained to your desk, frustrated that you can’t get hold of your American contacts on a normal Thursday for a whole week in late November. The images were shot about two months ago [...]
Canadian Thanksgiving, part 2
In act I of our Thanksgiving Dinner, a host of gluttons converged on our house and consumed the largest bird therein. Act II: The ritual beating of a clown Their blood lust not satisfied, the mob proceeded to take turns gleefully beating a hapless clown to a bits. Once its corpse was torn asunder, the [...]
The Queen’s flag
The other day my friend Pauline had an opening in her studio and I had some unbooked time as well, so I headed over there with some props, and we played around with some still-life scenes. Or, in the case of this flag, some not-so-still life. With this little desktop flag taped to some white [...]
Spotted in Northwest
Something I stumbled upon the other day. I came across it in Portland once before, not too far from here.
Brown pelicans
I’m slowly going through the hundreds of photos I took on this weekend’s camping vacation adventure on the Oregon coast, trying to figure out the best way to present them. It was a great trip, filled with cool wildlife, natural wonders and spectacular vistas. Well, maybe not spectacular vistas per se, but … memorable? I’ve [...]
The cottonwood comes down
Just over two weeks after it received a last-minute stay of execution, the black cottonwood tree in our front yard has been taken down. It took four men from All Around Arbor less than four hours to dismantle the 40-foot tree on July 9. Friday morning dawned clear and hot in St. Johns, and I [...]
Cottonwood tree gets last-minute reprieve
In the North Portland neighborhood of St. Johns, a black cottonwood tree was given a last-minute stay of execution this afternoon after the crew assigned to cut it down realized that their boss had grossly underbid the job. The springtime snowstorm caused by the tree’s cottony seed pods prompted complaints from neighbors. “Oh, gawd,” said [...]
Portfolio/website update
I’ve been going through and updating my web presence over the past couple of months, and I finally got around to updating the site for the photojournalism side of my business. There will probably be a few tweaks over the next couple of weeks, but you’re invited to check it out now and let me [...]
Decorating for Christmas
As you can probably tell, I’m trying to play catch-up with the blog posts today. Last week on Thanksgiving Day, Perrie and I took advantage of the day off to clean the house and decorate it for Christmas. We didn’t have enough room for a 10-foot tree, so we settled on a four-footer and two [...]
Witches’ Fingers
Halloween is coming soon … here are some tasty treats that Perrie made on Sunday (I did the nails). Creepy!
Summer Cotillion (and pie fight)
OK, so I’ve been a really bad blogger lately. I’ll try to catch up a bit this week, starting with an event that Perrie and I attended almost a month ago. But first the back story… When Perrie and I got the keys to our new house we had about 24 hours to do some [...]
American beauty
With all of the amazing scenery, not to mention the creative talent in this country, why does so much of it look like this? Greeting from beautiful Burlington, Wash.
Health Insurance Costs
The mailbox was full when I stuck my head outside the door just after lunch today: a magazine, a Visa bill, two movies from Netflix, and a large package from my health insurance provider. “Dear Health Net Plan Member, Thank you for your continued membership …” As a self-employed individual, I bear the full cost [...]
St. Johns Farmers Market
Last Saturday morning we went to the St. Johns Farmers Market to pick up some vegetables and such for dinner. New this year, the market is not as large as others in Portland—only about a dozen vendors—but it has enough of everything including some great produce. Best of all, it’s not crowded out with all [...]
Pierced navel?
For the past couple of weeks, workers have been refurbishing the brickwork on the apartment building across the street from mine. The 5-story, 1931 building is covered with brick on the two sides visible from the street, and decorated with about eight 10-foot tall sculptures I call the “pharaohs.” (You might remember that I wrote [...]
New template
As you can probably see I changed the template for this blog. The content is the same, but it’s a fresher look. It might change a bit more in the next few days—there are a few things I have to clean up, add or restore, but I don’t have time to do that right now. [...]