I’m still shooting BW here in Nairobi as well as color. Here are the two most recent pics from the past week. Both are examples of going with what life offers, no matter how seemingly non-exotic. One is on the way to the grocery store, the other when taking our dog to the vet.
Fourth of July gathering for Democrats Abroad, Nairobi (7/4/2026)
This Expat Life
Greetings from Kenya. I’ve been back in Nairobi for a bit this summer with family and the doggos. The whys and wherefores are kind of convoluted, let’s just say our situation remains in limbo (IYKYK, if not, sorry I can say no more).
Could be worse, the weather beats North American weather. Or just about anywhere’s weather at the moment. Even with climate change, Nairobi’s elevation keeps it pleasant year round. No heat domes here yet.
Photographically I wasn’t really doing much at first but I’m warming up. Mainly in color so far, taking what comes but trying to balance views of the local Kenyans vs expat circles. There are formidable gaps that are often hard to bridge, which in a way cut to some uncomfortable truths about Nairobi. But mostly I’m just trying to bottle some slivers of the everyday flavor. It’s such a car-centric city but we’ve been trying to walk more, which helps.
And one of my favorite shots so far, from Fourteen Falls near Thika, a town not too far from Nairobi.
Ethical Tech, Website Changes, and Keeping Busy
I didn’t have a photo for this week so I’m posting this iPhone pano from a few weeks ago, before the weather turned recently. It’s an unremarkable photo of an unremarkable spot in my neighborhood. I often walk through here on days when I work out of the local library and need to head to downtown Takoma Park for lunch. I took the photo on one of those walks.
There’s some kind of energy pocket there, I’ve noticed it twice as I’ve passed through. Something in the mix of sound and geography and atmosphere triggers memories and a certain vibe I can’t describe. I wanted to see if I could capture it somehow (nope), see if some clue would emerge, or at least it could help me remember the feeling. Have you ever been in a place like that?
I literally stopped and looked around trying to figure it out. It’s not even close to the most attractive part of the town but for some reason it always gives me a feeling of ‘I love this place’ combined with deja vu.
I have to say, I really do love Takoma Park, more and more. Especially after such a topsy-turvy past couple of years bouncing around, I’m grateful to be where I can go deeper rather than farther.
Kind of a hodgepodge of updates today, sorry. A lot going on lately.
About a year ago I first wrote about Resistance Tech. Now I’m calling it ‘Ethical Tech’ which I think is more apt and approachable (if not as militant, though Ethical Tech is still a form of resistance). ‘Ethical’ meaning apps and platforms that help us get off the surveillance/data-harvesting model: a good balance of ease of use, data privacy, integrity of ownership, environmentally-minded, and ideally not based in the US to avoid government or corporate overreach.
I did a community workshop last week at our local library on all this stuff, and I’m doing it again this Wednesday. Went well, there seems to be interest. In an attempt to start putting resources and info together in one place I made a new Ethical Tech page on my website. Hope you’ll check it out, and let me know if I can help you stick it to our tech-bro overlords.
Getting set up (photo by Phil Shapiro)
I also added an Events page. Guess it’s an attempt to keep moving things off Meta and bring them here under one roof to my Squarespace. Though any event I’d post still needs to be shared to FB, so I dunno. You can drive yourself crazy :).
I reshuffled the site organization a bit to separate my main categories of photography, music, and tech. I didn’t really have a proper Music section at all before, my album was lumped together with my other projects.
Come on, Crandall, time to tighten your shoelaces since you’re getting out there more. Now at least I’ve got a little music bio and photos page in progress.
I don’t intend to say no to any paid gig at the moment (and I’m certainly doing plenty of unpaid). One recent paid one was at an assisted living place for St Patrick’s Day, so I learned like four Irish songs. Another one was a house party in VA, which sounded great until I got there and it was for like 2-3 families after their dinner. Then the kids had to get off to bed so it was an audience of like 5-6 people in the living room. I have to say it went well and they were lovely and attentive but um, yeah, felt a bit strange. Next up is a pool party in a couple weeks, glad I’ve been beefing up my covers list.
(Full circle, I think a pool party was one of my first band gigs when I was 14! Not sure if that’s good or pathetic…)
Recently I posted photos from our Sanctuary benefit show for CASA, which was standing-room only for our lineup of poets and singers. That was an offshoot of the Vocal Takoma popup thing we’ve been doing. Next up for VT is something we’re planning for outside People’s Book store, and we’ll be at the downtown clock tower on Sunday mornings in nice weather.
Photo freelancing is starting to show some signs of life, let me know if you need me. It’s actually been sort of energizing in a way to reassemble that former life of mine, get my ducks in a row.
I’ve got an idea for a zine.
Phew. It’s a lot, yeah. But with our family and job situations (IYKYK) still in flux I’m just pushing in every direction all at once with everything I know how to do.
Photo Dispatch: No Kings Takoma Park
Westlands, Nairobi
Nairobi, Finally
Good morning if you’re reading this as you’re waking up on Sunday. Obviously there’s an unbearable amount of craziness going on. No bottom. Multiple layers of no-bottomness. We’re in a tight spot.
I am posting and dedicating this body of work to a much-needed collective spirit of positive human endeavor. Anything that advances understanding, empathy, intellectual curiosity, solidarity, truth, creativity, culture, etc now counts as a war footing, a bop to the nose of the evil ‘kaiju’ we’re facing: war, AI, misinformation, demonic overlords, and all the rest. So put yours out there too. We need it. Trust the butterfly effect. Enough butterflies can win this thing.
A note about generative AI (which I do not and will not use, it can go right ahead and leave me behind thank you) one thing it will never do is what real photography does: move through a physical realm, navigating human relationships and interactions to capture authentic images of real humans in their real habitat. It will never be able to do that any more than it can repair your toilet or play center field. - Bill
Hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I left Nairobi after living there for most of two years. It feels like just yesterday we were debating if we should go.
If you follow me you know I was shooting and posting some pics along the way with my blog posts and newsletters (Nairobi Calling, Nairobi Contradictions), but I haven’t really put together the full body of work until now. Contrary to IG-era pressures, best to sit on it for a while sometimes. Gain some perspective, let the work settle, decide what it is that you got and what you want to do with it.
Read on or check it out:
Nairobi
One thing I’ve been hedging about is that I actually have two sets of photos, from Nairobi itself and from the massive Kibera slum in the heart of the city. I’ve tended to mix them. Technically it’s all Nairobi.
Nairobi
Kibera
At first I combined the best-of-the-best images, from both sets, in a short portfolio. Nothing wrong with that. I’m proud of the best ones, they are some of my finest work. But then I took my own advice and thought about what the work is and what I was trying to do with it.
What I wanted to do is convey the story of arguably one of the most important, interesting, and fast-growing cities in Africa. That’s really the main parameter I set for myself at the outset (I used to tell my students “parameters will set you free”, meaning by defining what you’re doing you’re more free and able to do it, instead of being paralyzed by too many choices). Anything that emerges within that will take shape on its own.
So I ditched the short ‘look at me’ portfolio format, which allowed room for added more images that would tell the ‘look at them’ story. Jump to the galleries here:
Nairobi
Of course no city has one story. But sometimes lots of little story fragments add up to a broader composite. That’s usually my approach, like I did in Belarus over several years for my book.
And who is telling the story? Every photographer wants to make ‘good’ photos. But what makes it good? As a photo teacher I harp on authorship, making it better by making it more you. How do photos express your vision, in your way? What does that look like?
For example, I love symbolism in photos. Like the lead photo at the top, to me this one is loaded with it:
Westlands, Nairobi
These are more examples of ‘my’ photos, hopefully inviting you to fill in the gaps yourself.
So in the end I decided it’s clearly two stories: Nairobi and Kibera. Or at least a two-part story. So I’ve made two galleries.
In any case, maybe this is not so much the story of a place but the story of my discovery of it. Which will always be different from someone else’s view. Which is what makes photography worth doing at all. I still mentor young Kenyan photographers from Kibera who are telling their own stories, from the inside. It’s exciting stuff.
I’m very interested to know what resonates for you.
I hope you will click through to look at them, it would mean a lot to me.
Nairobi
Never Seen a Cybertruck?
I had an up-and-back errand to NYC yesterday. Much of my time was spent waiting, and I was parked for a while behind this thing. Which I soon noticed was a curiosity for passing tourists. Statue of Liberty > Cybertruck > Empire State Building. No one mocked it, which I admit surprised me. They were fascinated. The Europeans seemed especially into it, go figure. So to pass the time I pretended I was interested too but took photos of them for the human-behavior file.