Photo of the month for September 2023 by Don Hudson, as voted by BME members.
Some words by Don about the photo:
This photo was taken at the annual Flag Day event in a small town near where I live in Michigan. I've photographed this event for about 5 years now, and It is one of several events that I have been photographing as part of a self-assigned project that I began in 2009. I get to perhaps half a dozen of these small town parades and community festivals in a given year. Probably the primary fascination for me is how the local population chooses to dress and reveal themselves at these public social events.
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Photo of the month for March 2023 by Don Hudson, as voted by BME members.
Some words from Don about the photo:
“Since 2010, a few years after shutting down my last darkroom, I have been periodically going through my negatives and contact sheets from the last century looking for images, that for whatever reason, I didn't "see" some 40+ years ago. I have to say it's been fun. This is an image that I never so much as made a work print or even circled on the contact sheet as a possible keeper at the time. But about two weeks ago it caught my contemporary eye. I think partly I was attracted to this image because it made me remember growing up in the late 1950's after our family moved to a new subdivision, and my friends and I would play in the construction sites of new homes. Pretty sure nostalgia had nothing to do with me taking this shot at 28 years old, some 20 years removed from my childhood memories, but now 44 years from this moment, it serves to conjure my long relationship with time.”
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Photo of the month for December 2022 by Don Hudson, as voted by BME members.
Some words from Don about the photo:
“For the past 12 years I have been photographing community events and parades at 4 small rural towns near our family cottage in northern Michigan. Not much happens in these towns most days, but at least once a year each community hosts an event that brings out folks from the area. What I hope to do is continue to photograph at these events for another 12 years or so and compile a record of a generation. This particular photo was made in July 2022 during the Luther Logging Days festival in Luther, Michigan.”
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
For April 2021, 2 photos shared the first place for photo of the month, as voted by BME members. This is the second of the 2 photos, by Don Hudson.
Some words from Don about the photo:
“I found this frame in a box of loose negative strips labelled 1973. No other information about the shot was on the sleeve. The time frame though looks to be the Summer between my two years at art school in Detroit. That early Summer I did go on a road trip to Colorado and Wyoming from Michigan, so I can't be sure even where I might have made the picture. Perhaps if I had known that I would be asked about it 48 years in the future I would have made better notes”
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Photo of the month for December 2020 by Don Hudson, as voted by BME members.
Some words from Don about the photo:
"Tiger Stadium, Detroit, 1983. Back in 1983 the Detroit Tigers had a great baseball team, and they won it all a year later in 1984. I was a big fan back then and went to a number of games at the old Tiger Stadium, which was torn down in 2008-9. This photo was taken during batting practice before the game. Early arriving fans would often gather in the outfield stands to see if they could snag balls hit over the fence. I happened to be in the right place at the right time to snag a catch of my own. I might add that I possessed a younger man's reflexes back then."
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Don Hudson’s is photo of the month for December 2019, as voted by BME members.
Some words from Don about the photo:
"Photographed at the visitors center at Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. Perhaps it was because I was close to Area 51, and had aliens on the mind in this other worldly landscape, that this view had to trigger a photographic response"
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
This month, 2 photos shared the first place for photo of the month, as voted by BME members. This is the second of the 2 photos, by Don Hudson.
Some words from Don about the photo:
"On a trip out to Oregon this fall I did a hike up Larch mountain on a foggy, misty, cloudy day. Arriving at the overlook, from which you are able to view 5 area volcanic mountains, I couldn't see any due to the clouds and mist. But when the clouds parted and the sun came out above and behind me, I looked down into the mist in the valley below me and I saw this, a Brocken Spectre...look it up."
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Don Hudson’s is photo of the month for September 2019, as voted by BME members.
Some words from Don about the photo:
On the second weekend in July the little town of Le Roy, which is near our little family cottage in Northern Michigan, holds a homecoming-type festival called Razzasque Days.There are a Grand Parade, chicken bbq, adult beverage tent, games, live music, kid's parade, and other festivities. For the past several years I have made a point to photograph the festival. This particular photo was made during the kids parade. Every year there is a different theme and this time it was Superheroes.
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Watching the watchers by Don Hudson
"Watching the watchers. This photograph was made on July 4th (Independence Day) 1978 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, not far from where my wife and I lived. It was a short time later that year when we moved to South Lyon, about 15 miles north, and where we have lived since. The tools, a Leica M2 and 35mm lens and Vivitar 283 strobe. No cell phones here recording the fireworks for sharing on social media. But 41 years later, thanks to some fool with a camera, their watching has wound up on the internet. The right place the wrong time...thank you Dr. John."
Don Hudson
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
This is the second photograph that was voted as photo of the month for December by Burn My Eye members and is by Don Hudson. If you follow this thread you will probably remember that there was a tie between Don and Gustavo Minas whose image was featured last week. It’s an old photograph but Don unearthed it from his archives only recently.
“In the Summer of 1978 my wife and I moved to the small town of South Lyon, about 15 miles from Ann Arbor Michigan where we both worked. That Fall I noticed a lot of banners, window paintings, and other decorations supporting the local High School football team going up around town. Curious about the fervor suggested by the decorations, I went to the Friday night game. Liking what I experienced, I wound up shooting at my hometown games and at other games in towns around me for four seasons. My rig, a rangefinder camera with a wide angle and strobe, was not the typical sports photographer's set-up. And I wasn't interested in "documenting " the events as much as I was curious about photographing in such an atmosphere of heightened social energy and under weird (for me) lighting conditions. I became addicted to the quest to find pictures that transformed this experience. Recently, I have been revisiting these pictures made nearly 40 years ago, and this is one example made in 1980”.
By Don Hudson
PHOTO OF THE MONTH BY DON HUDSON
Saline, Michigan 1978 - In 1978 my wife and I bought our first house in the small town of South Lyon, Michigan, about 15 miles north of Ann Arbor where we worked, and thus began my photographic exploration of the culture and events in my new town, and other small towns around Ann Arbor. Both South Lyon and Saline, a town south of Ann Arbor, were considered "horse towns", with many farms dedicated to breeding and training horses for the racing venues in southeastern Michigan and equestrian teams at the schools. For two years 1978-79 I photographed at the rodeos and horse shows in the two towns. I've posted some of those photos on social media over the last few years, but this is one not seen by anyone until just this past month.