Between Frames - March 2025
A few concerts, some snow, and ✨ the sun ✨
Introduction:
Spring is here. Western Michigan breathes again. Winter has been exhausting, mainly because of the lack of sunlight1, but also because Paloma and I haven’t gotten the chance to really leave Grand Rapids for a few months. The itch to travel has been real.
Thankfully, I’m writing this on a plane ride back to Grand Rapids after a long weekend in NYC visiting family and friends. I think Paloma and I are both breathing a little bit deeper again, now that we’ve spent some time away.2
This month’s newsletter contains a lot of photos that I don’t feel like are my best (or my worst). It’s a lot of daily life, trips to the Lake, and a few concerts thrown in there. I hope you enjoy!
The End of Winter:
Winter has *almost* come to an end here in Michigan. The sun is starting to show its face a little bit more, snow isn’t as common, and everyone is a bit happier. Despite all of that, ice still covered the Lake for a while this month. I made a trip out to the lakeshore one night and got lucky with a beautiful sunset.3
Some of my favorite photos of the month are of the lighthouse for a small town nearby, as it was being lit up by the sunset.
I got lucky with having two people sitting on the bench out front of it (a hard-to-access location, so people are rarely seen there).
Last photo from this scene is a detail shot of the ice on the shoreline. Sheets of ice had washed ashore and broken up into these beautiful, large chunks. The ones in this photo are probably eight inches thick and three or four feet wide. They’re massive lol.
In March, the temperature has gotten up to roughly 70ºF (21ºC) a few times. One of these days, Paloma and I went out to a local state park and hiked to the beach. It’s a ~1 mile hike to the beach, meaning that, compared to other beaches, this one is quite secluded. Unfortunately, when we got to the shoreline, the wind was brutal, meaning the 70ºF weather felt more like 50ºF (10ºC). Regardless, it was a beautiful day with some really pretty dunes, largely undisturbed by humans.
For those of you that regularly read my newsletter, I bet you can imagine how much I felt like Ben Horne taking these photos.
Last photos of this section are two frames from random adventures around town, both with really good light, but at completely different times of day.
Concerts:
I used to work and photograph concerts professionally almost every week. Since then, I’ve found it’s much more enjoyable to stand in the crowd, scream my heart out4, and take photos with my little X100F. I don’t have deadlines, rules I have to follow, or extra hearing loss from being so close to the speakers.
This month, I saw two shows. Each show was of my friends’ bands: the Phabies, Vacation Manor, and Rhineland.
The Phabies are some friends from church here in Michigan and they make some lovely indie-rock/“midwest emo” tunes that are just phenomenal.
Vacation Manor are friends from our time in Lynchburg. They are more indie-rock mixed with chill tunes. “Damage is Done” is hands down our favorite song, but definitely not representative of their whole discography.
Rhineland are also friends from Lynchburg and they’re definitely slower indie-rock that’re so nostalgic.
Here’s some photos from those shows:
New York City:
We finally were able to get back to the greatest city on Earth. Things felt right in NYC; I want to be there forever.
I didn’t take tons of photos there and I don’t feel like that they added a lot to the body of work that I have already created in New York. I think they’re weak images, but they’re images of subject matter (neighborhoods: Williamsburg and East Williamsburg) that I haven’t spent much time photographing.
Things I Loved This Month:
I’m helping launch a book! Capitalizing on College is written by my friend, Joshua Travis Brown, and is a novella about the future of higher-ed (genuinely a VERY good read).
Now that the weather has warmed up, I have been wanting to get into cycling. I’m looking at a Canyon gravel bike, but would love advice!
I finally ordered prints from my lab and hot dang, State Film Lab killed it!
I launched this website with the agency that I work for. I think our design team did amazing with this redesign!
Conclusion:
Now that I’ve written this email, I think that the work I created is better than I originally thought. I am struggling with the whole challenge of what to do with my work more and more nowadays. Do I share my work here? Make books? Or something else?
I’d love to hear of any particular images that stood out to you this month or any ideas that you may have for things that I can do with the work I create!
Until next month. Peace & blessings.
-C
Being a ginger means that I got sunburnt within 15min of sun exposure on the first day of sun. Yippee.
I’ve talked about this with a handful of people recently, but it takes leaving your home for a bit to really get out of your head & reset. Yes, home is restorative, but I believe that travel helps to really reframe everyday life and the problems you face.
Side note: I showed this photo to my coworkers and I was told it looked like the end of a Severance episode. Idk if that’s true, but that’s the vibe they got lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Losing my voice in the process… oops.
Great stuff! Excited for the sun and for you + paloma to experience your first full michigan summer. Truly a magical time that will remind you why you moved here!
Love love love