Our June photograph (the eerie womb of a hotel room on our main page) came to us from Chris Marstall, creator of Tourfilter.com and friend of Open Letters. We had some questions about his photographic work and he was kind enough to share his thoughts.

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OL: How often do you take pictures, Chris? Is it a part of your daily life, or something you save for unique occasions and excursions? and what kind of equipment are you swinging around?

Chris: These days, very occasionally. What is the point? I sometimes ask myself. So many pictures have already been taken of anything i might want to photograph. If I am dating someone, I will take a thousand pictures of her in every kind of place.

I don’t have a film camera now. I have a slim Sony Cybershot T7 digital camera but I lost the charger; so if i take photos these days, and it’s rare, i will buy a disposable camera. Sometimes the results are amazing. I bought one on a recent trip to South America and it malfunctioned, leaving all of the photos looking instantly ancient, and not in a good way.

OL:Where was the hotel room picture taken? What’s the story there?

Chris: Cairo. it was my first night of a 6 week trip to the Middle East in 2003. I was scared of what might happen to me, an American, in the Middle East, so I gave my worrying mind an unusual luxury and reserved a room at the Nile Hilton for the first three nights of my stay. It’s the grandest, coolest, old-schoolest hotel in Cairo, right on the river. I thought my room was beautiful so i took a picture of it.

OL: What drew you to the Middle East? What did you see?

Chris: I went to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel for 6 weeks in 2003. I wanted to see this place which I was suddenly being told was our enemy, a new USSR. I also had visions of classic North African romance from movies like Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia. As it turns out those classic places are rare in Cairo and have become tourist museums, for the most part. There are a lot of new rebar concrete towers, etc. However it was still a dense, multilayered place and there were lots of beautiful things to look at and peer into. Everything was new to me. I tried to capture some cultural things and photograph people I encountered. Like the young men who invited me into their home (which was scary at first) and smoked me out. Or the clueless Italian tourist in a short skirt who fell asleep at the port and flashed her panties at 200 Palestinians on a religious pilgrimage.

OL:For a time you were keeping a sort of photo journal online. Do you think it changed you as a photographer? What kind of feedback did you generate? How did you decide which pictures to post?

Chris: A few years ago I got this amazing camera, a Sony Cybershot U30. It was about the size of half a pack of cigarettes and charged through its USB port. I could carry it everywhere and it was a minimal hassle to get photos onto my PC. I told myself I would take a photo every day and have an evening ritual where I chose one and uploaded it to my photoblog. I kept it up for a year or two and at one point about 80 people were viewing each photo. It was an exciting time in my life because my best friend and his family were living with me and I had a new girlfriend and a new job, so there was lots to take pictures of. i would love to have that camera back and get back into the habit. I really appreciate your featuring my photo and it inspires me.

I used to make personal videos — much in the same way i described my photography process: taking a compact video camera with me everywhere and becoming known as someone who would and could whip out a video camera in any unexpected occasion. I edited together several 5-20 minute short diary films. i was living in San Francisco and everything around me was so exotic and beautiful. At that time i developed a brutal approach to choosing what clips to keep and what clips to toss. Basically, i kept only clips that worked on every level. technical, visual, emotional, etc. if i caught myself saying “oh but that was such an amazing night i have to put something from that in there” i would say no, only good stuff goes in. I use the same approach with photos; nothing matters except whether it’s a good photo.

I enjoy writing captions for photos and I think they can add a lot. i was inspired by Bill Owen’s Suburbia and Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, among others. I admire their neutral, minimal, yet piercingly personal approach to caption writing. They focus on the reportorial four W’s, yet in a way that makes you love, understand and admire the people in the photo. I think the best photography takes you inside.

OL:The hotel room shot is an exception, since the balance of your best shots frame your subject off-center. The way you do it often conveys motion — these things were seen in passing — but you’re also interested in depth: there is usually either a brightness or a darkness that the image plunges into (the doorway of the bookshop, the street beyond the arch, the darkness around the wall). What catches your eye when you’re out with your camera?

Chris: My ideas about composition are pretty basic and instinctive. Get close to the subject, but not so close that you don’t get a sense of their setting. Look for strong lighting. Hunt around in the frame for visual balance. Take pictures of beautiful, interesting things.

I try to take myself out of the moment and ask if someone would find an image interesting, not knowing any of the context, or knowing only minimal information, like what you would put into a caption.

OL: What kind of shots do you throw away?

Chris: I throw away almost everything I shoot. If a photo is bad, or if it makes the subject appear unattractive, there’s no reason to keep it, even if it’s a picture of someone or something you love.

Elinor Lipman has written eight novels, including Then She Found Me, The Inn at Lake Devine, My Latest Grievance, and most recently The Family Man. A chapter of The Family Man appears in this month’s Open Letters, and Lipman kindly took a little time to answer questions about the book.

Open Letters Monthly: In The Boston Globe review of The Family Man, we’re matter-of-factly told, “In a Lipman novel people match, fates meet, and patience is rewarded.” Would you agree, that the world of your novels is essentially a kind one?

Elinor Lipman: 100%; can’t seem to help it.

OLM: The Family Man is set on the Upper West Side and stars a laid-back middle-aged gay man! When in your creative process, while a new novel is percolating, do topographical and casting choices like these ping? When do you become sure what your focus will be?

EL: In this case, location presents itself immediately. Even though I don’t know where the story’s going, I know where it starts, even if all I’m going on is the opening line. Details come as I move ahead, always in linear fashion. Description doesn’t come easily to me, so I have to stop, look around, home in on the salient details. As for focus, I’m working at that in every chapter, pushing the story forward as I go, making decisions, asking myself, “Why is she–often a first-person narrator–telling us this?” If it isn’t to move the story along or help characterize someone, then I cut it.

OLM: There are a couple of choice points scored on the entertainment industry in The Family Man – post traumatic echoes from having your first novel transformed into a movie, or was that experience bearable?

EL: Very bearable, eventually, though I’d given it up for dead more than once. Then She Found Me Bend It Like Beckham video was optioned in 1989, in manuscript, and came out in 2007. Yes, 19 years. As a result, I’m never sanguine about a movie deal ever reaching fruition. Having said that–I loved the result. Fans of the book complain all the time that Helen Hunt changed the novel. To which I usually say, boo-hoo. I loved it, and it brought the book back to life. The complainers seem to think that the best screenplay would have been the novel, word for word, and it’s very hard to disabuse them of that.

OLM: To put it mildly, the gentle Thackeray-style tone of your novels sets them apart from most of the contemporary fiction in bookstores these days. Why is it, do you suppose, that your characters don’t eat each other’s faces or get high and shiv people?

EL: That’s hard to answer without it sounding like a testimonial to my own big-hearted self. I do grow exceedingly fond of my characters, so I want them to behave, to love and be loved. I don’t set out with that goal, but even the villains–so I’m told–end up being a little menschy. Not Ingrid Berry, though, from The Inn at Lake Devine. I want full credit for her being a nasty piece of anti-Semitic work from beginning to end.

OLM: Care to set up this scene a little for us?

EL: My main character, Henry Archer, has just learned that his boyfriend, Todd a) still lives at home with his mother and b) hasn’t come out to her yet. Over Todd’s initial objections, they are making that first visit. Henry, a lawyer, had a brief, closeted marriage to a woman named Denise who, in fact, has fixed him up with Todd, who works none to proudly in retail at Gracious Home.

Read the chapter here!

Greg’s talents have propelled him up the Open Letters’ masthead, enlisting as a writer in 2007, he was commissioned Politics Editor in 2008, and is now visiting the front lines of both web design and cover photography. He answers a few of our questions about this month’s cover image, the postcard rack, below:

OL: What a fun pic, Greg–Where did you snap it? and with what kind of camera?

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Greg: August film Thanks! I took it on the Seine in Paris, about two years ago, with a Canon digital SLR that is now, unfortunately, broken. There are dozens of mini-bazaars along the river’s walls, and they sell everything from used books to sculpture to postcards; they’re perfect fodder for photographers. Paris in general is a street photographer’s dream.

OL: I love the way the color photos own that lower corner. Did you snap a lot of different photos before you found that color scheme, or did you luck into a fortuitous arrangement?

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I took only two. The first was your typical touristy snapshot: bad angle, wrong lens and wrong shutter speed. Afterward, as I was perusing the postcards, I thought the display had more potential. So switched to a wide-angle lens, set the aperture wide open, and took another shot. The image you see is about a 75% crop, which I made for a few reasons: so the shot would be more symmetrical; so I’d get the color pattern you noticed; and to cut out all the pornographic postcards that made up half the right side of the picture! In fact, if you look at the postcard in the top right…

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OL: There’s both a found art and a collage aspect to the picture … you seem to have a love for images that comment on reality as they capture it, that foreground the artificial or intellectual aspect of photography, rather than “reality as mirror.” Do you think that emphasis is reflected in the sort of art you care for in your non-snapping life?

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Greg: I agree with you about my preferences, and you put it more succinctly than I ever could! People overestimate photography’s connection to reality. I think it’s a very personal art. It’s strange, but in my non-snapping life, my tastes run the opposite way. In painting, my favorites are what you might call generic: Rembrandt, Titian, Botticelli, the impressionists and their offshoots. I dislike atonal music, and I’ve had a tough time warming up to postmodern poetry. But I must say that your wonderful essay on appreciating modern art

has led me to reconsider, and I try to keep an open mind!

OL: When do you like to take pictures? What are your favorite things to take pictures of? Or do you refuse to define yourself in such terms?

Greg: In general, I like to set out on a trip or just a walk with the intention of taking pictures. It’s a “getting into the zone” sort of thing. Still, you never know when you’ll happen upon something, so it always helps to have a camera with you at all times. My kit is rather bulky and my budget doesn’t allow for a more compact carry-around, so I bring it along whenever I can. Street photography suits me best and landscapes are fun, too. I’d like to try my hand at more portraiture. I just need to get my camera fixed!

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Jeffrey Eaton took this month’s cover image, “West Unity Road,” in late December. A longtime friend and contributor to Open Letters, Jeff’s striking landscapes lead off our April and November issues from 2007. His 2008 review Two From No Tell Books digs into poetry by Shafer Hall and P.F. Potvin and his recent essay Raging Bull recasts the Library of America’s Debate on the Constitution Night of the Comet psp volumes in a uniquely contemporary light.

OL: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid video From a different angle or a slightly altered spot, West Unity Road wouldn’t be half the picture it is. (The title seems almost ironic, it being a picture of at least as much sky as road — as contrasted with your Fort Tabor pic from last year). What kind of decisions did you make when framing the shot? did you take lots of them, or just the one?

Jeffrey: The sky is the central element of the picture, but it was the road that initially drew me to take out the camera. I particularly like that stretch of road because the stubborn Yankee farmer whose farm stretches across it fought to keep telephone poles from being installed on it. I don’t know if he had a rationale aside from being an old coot, but he did succeed at preserving an aesthetically beautiful section of rural road. The utility company ended up putting the poles through the woods to cut around his property, rather than fight him.

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I usually take many pictures around a single idea, but in this case I was driving and not by myself, so I only had time to take two. The composition is mostly what I was going after, though I think the final product is unbalanced. A little more time (or a slightly wider lens) would have helped give the road some more margin on the right.

OL: Was the picture inspired by current events? The big Obama/Hillary rally, say?

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Jeffrey:

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Forbidden Planet the movie It’s true that this is the New Hampshire town where Obama and Hillary buried the hatchet in June, but it’s also the town where my aunt and uncle live. I can honestly say there is no intentional political content to this picture. That is, unless the Obama team thinks the sky represents our hope for the future and the road is the path out of the current economic depression, in which case I will sell it to them at a firesale price.

OL: You weren’t always such an accomplished photographer… at some point, you picked up a camera and began to take it more seriously. Were you surprised by your own interest in the art, or in how much satisfaction it gave you? What’s surprised you most about the clicking life?

Jeffrey: I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures, but it wasn’t until the digital camera that I could see it as a hobby. To get good pictures you have to take a lot of pictures, and I have no use for zillions of prints. Film photography is also unappealing because much of the output is determined by the settings on your local CVS’s one-hour photo machine. At the time I got my first digital camera, I also started taking lessons in Photoshop which gives digital photographers a lot of post-shutter control over white balance, exposure and other settings.

I do find photography very satisfying, and the most challenging thing is keeping it in check. I try not to be the guy who is inseparable from his camera, always living life from behind the lens. In this regard I err on the side of not bringing the camera along, even if it means missing a few opportunities.

For me, taking pictures with an artistic intent (as opposed to snapshots) is too much of a solo enterprise to be compatible with sociability. Going out to shoot by myself is generally the most satisfying, though those are not necessarily the times I take my best pictures. Good pictures can happen at any time.

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Rachel Burgess drew this month’s cover illustration of Jack Spicer, as well as the striking portraits of Lorine Niedecker

and C.D. Wright inside. “I like cropped figures, sparse surroundings, limited colors,” Burgess says, and “simple, quiet, slightly melancholy scenes.”

OL: How do you prepare to draw a portrait?

Rachel: Local Hero divx If it has to look like a specific individual, then the face becomes very important, and I might exaggerate features (like the shapes of the shadows around the eyes) to ensure a resemblance. If the portrait should hint at someone’s character or interests, I might add a setting and costume, or some sort of visual pun (maybe a sailor’s scarf becomes the waves of the sea). If the portrait does not have to be specific, then I like to mentally flip through my friends and family and decide who looks the most like how I imagine this person. I ask the lucky friend or relative to sit for me, and the process becomes more about creating an interesting image and less about capturing a particular face. Sometimes I ask for the model’s input—how would you sit if you were actually a ship’s captain?

OL: Your pictures of English Ballads are beautiful! Have you always felt strongly about them, or was there a real moment of discovery?

Rachel: I can remember from an early age my father playing recordings of folk music. He loves the genre and amassed a great collection of songs. My sister and I often made fun of the lyrics—perhaps I should have realized that our teasing meant we were taking note. By the time I got to college, I knew a handful of traditional folk songs and was eager to learn more.

I studied and wrote about James Francis Child as a literature major, and, thoroughly obsessed, decided to illustrate some of his ballad collection as an M.F.A. candidate. Ballads suit my aesthetic—they are pared down, deceptively simple, mildly earthy—and they have a wealth of memorable characters and situations. I once had a professor who defined “deep” as something “simple and correct.” I find many of the ballads deep because their narratives tell very human stories, without elaboration.

Murphy’s War release OL: Your Red Riding Hood picture is striking to me because she seems so much more canny than the naive waif you often see … do you imagine yourself re-defining the traditional images for these tales (I don’t recall motorcycles in many of the Child Ballads), or are you just drawing what you see?

Rachel: Little Red Riding Hood started as an etching of my roommate. I didn’t intend to turn her into a character. But her features struck me as perfect for one of the dark-haired fairy tale heroines—Snow White, for instance. I finally made her Little Red Riding Hood because her profile is girlish but not entirely naïve, and I don’t think Little Red Riding Hood is completely innocent. In general, I don’t imagine myself redefining older stories—I am pretty traditional. (For instance, the motorcycle images are from a contemporary British ballad by Richard Thompson—I don’t think I would ever introduce a motorcycle into an older song.) And because I like to use models and location drawings when I illustrate, I am literally often just drawing what I see.

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OL: Some of your pictures look like Toulouse-Lautrec and others like blurred photos: which artists did you learn from growing up and which do you still feel anxious to look at?

Rachel: I grew up with one artist hero—Trina Schart Hyman. Her romantic and haunting books first interested me in illustration, and I used to spend hours tracing over her drawings. She gave me a lasting fondness for fairy tales, especially ones told in a gritty, darker manner. Her line work and sense of proportion, along with that of Arthur Rackham Lean on Me download The Bodyguard the movie Asphalt Wars ipod and a few late Victorian illustrators, still influence me when I compose scenes.

As I grew older, I moved away from such an overtly romantic style and became more drawn to subtlety and restraint. New England’s coastline, with its spare architecture and clean light, began to seem more interesting than any fantasy setting. I started to use location drawings as the inspiration for my illustrations, paring down scenes until I captured a certain character or mood. Maybe that’s the Toulouse-Lautrec element—a slight abstraction or simplification of reality. The artists I currently look at tend to have a deceptively simple, quiet feel. Currently on my desk are books on the etchings of Mary Cassatt, the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershoi Masters of the Universe hd , the drawings of George Seurat, and the watercolors of Carl Larsson.