Excited to be working on a new project with two fellow photo / artists from Europe.
Beware the Ides of March.
More to come soon…
2022: 8 Gratitude
Every once in a while, I am reminded of the good things in my life. It has been harder to do so after the past couple of years, for sure, but this week afforded me time to reflect. I am lucky to live in relative comfort, in a supportive relationship, with friends and (decent) health and no real “wants” as far as the basics of human life are concerned. Especially having carved out a creative life that fulfills and challenges me on a daly basis.
This past weekend, my amazing wife performed a solo concerto with the Santa Fe Symphony, and as I sat in the audience, I was reminded how special she is, and how good our life can be. We both have made choices to pursue our creative endeavors, often at the expense of more traditional societal choices and paths. But the rewards of the things we are able to do are so much worth it. Living an artistic life, with all of its ups and downs, is something I value deeply. The choice not to have children has also allowed us to pursue our creative journeys with more freedom and flexibility than others, and that, too is something I am keenly aware of and value deeply.
This week, aside from attending the symphony performance, I also worked on a new self-publishing project, recorded and edited my next podcast episode, and had two satisfying sessions with my improv team. I know that life throws curveballs all the time. health and wealth and stability are precious and precarious. But for this week, at least, I am able to feel satisfaction and gratitude. I wish the same for all of you, in whatever shape or form that might take. Thank you for being along for the ride.
2022: 7 Back to the Desert
Sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and act impulsively. I am far from that kind of person, in all honesty. I labor over decisions and choices, looking at things from every possible angle before making up my mind.
*Note: maybe most of the time… perhaps that is why I love doing improv…thinking on my feet, in the moment…
In any event, this past weekend, I made a Saturday evening decision to jump in the car early on Sunday and drive the 6+ hours out to Tucson, Arizona. My long-term project shooting the saguaro cactus was in need of some “winter shooting” and I had a small window in my schedule. So, with the blessing of my wife, who is woodshedding in prep for a solo concerto, I headed out of town…camera in tow.
The skies were clear, the temps were warm…hardly the winter experience I was hoping for. Still, the light at golden hour (sunrise and sunset) was beautiful, and my Holgawide pinhole camera did not disappoint. Plus, I avoided the spiky surprises of the unnoticed cactus ripping into my flesh for this visit, so that’s a win, for sure.
Not sure how many more visits to the saguaro this project will require, but the silence of daybreak over the desert, with the sun peeking over the ridge of a distant mountain, not another person to be seen or heard… that is something I will treasure every time and is reason enough to return.
Experimenting with film, double exposures and Procreate. Pushing pixels is not a crime.
2022: 4 Re-visiting old work
Taking a knife to work from decades ago. It has been at turns liberating, frustrating, violent, and ultimately…rewarding.
“Any Day Now” by Elbow
What's got into me
Can't believe myself
Must be someone else
Must beAny day now how's about getting out of this place
Anyways
Got a lot of spare time
Some of my youth and all of my senses on overdriveDon't play Coltrane you will sleep at the wheel
Eyes on horizon
Don't sleep at the wheel
Somewhere in Kansas.
A masterpiece of the unspectacular.
2022: 2
2021: 49 Fear and Loathing on Ebay
The life of a film photographer is sometimes an emotional minefield. The thrill of the “shoot and wait to see” process is often offset by soul crushing disappointment. Cameras are mis-loaded, film is exposed improperly, chemicals are exhausted… dust and scratches and fog, oh my. Add to the rollercoaster ride of emotions the pursuit of a working film camera. Sifting through Craigslist, thrift stores, yard sales and Ebay is a common pastime for film geeks. I experienced a bit of the bad end of the pursuit recently, and I’m still kinda pissed about it.
Why did I need to buy a 110 film camera? The bane of my existence in 7th grade, a shitty format that now seems so quaint and enticing. Fuck you, nostalgia. Lomography are like camera and film drug dealers to me. They are the only place to buy new 110 film cartridges. I bought a few rolls recently, not even owning a camera to shoot them with. So I jump on to Ebay, and hunt down a sporty, sexy old Minolta SLR zoom 110 camera. Yeah… a Rolls Royce of the tiny format. The camera looked good, was sold “as-is” but at a decent price. I rolled the dice. Of course, the anticipation of tracking a package from UPS is part of the thrill of buying something online. A 50 year old camera inching closer to my grubby hands. Of course, it arrived days after it was scheduled to be delivered. Of course, I opened the package immediately and popped batteries in and pressed the shutter. A weak, painfully slow reaction happened inside the camera…eventually I heard a faint click. No warning lights, no view to be seen through the viewfinder. Then…nothing. Nothing. In short, a lemon. A paperweight.
I decided since it wasn’t working anyway, I’d try to take it apart and fix it. Small, Phillips head screws held the body together. Simple to open up and poke around. Except that I am not at all mechanically inclined. My ten thumbs quickly dismantled the camera with no fucking way for me to even think of fixing it; never mind trying to put it all back together. In a fit of frustration, I threw the camera on the ground, where it burst into multiple pieces. I swept up the debris and threw it all in the dumpster. Case closed.
This is not the first time I threw money out the window on a non-functioning camera. My success rate is slightly over 50%, if I’m being honest. This one stung more than others though. Why? Was it that I bought into the hype over a format that was inferior when it first came out, swapping image quality for ease of loading and shooting? I scoffed when I heard Lomo was coming out with 110 film. And yet…and yet. So what do you do when you get burned by defeat? Do you walk home with your tail between your legs? Do you go home and cuddle with your Canon 6D, 23 megapixel lover who won’t break your heart? Or do you double down and fight against all odds to snatch victory from the jaws of 50 year old, dormant technology?
My new Minolta 110 slr zoom camera arrives in about a week.
2021: 48 Saul Leiter
I watched “In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter,” by the British filmmaker Tomas Leach this week. It is a wonderful film, at times amusing and at times very sad. The idea that a master photographer can live a quiet life in New York City should be comforting, I suppose. But I also was struck by seeing an aging, lonely Leiter sifting through the detritus of his life, and my heart hurt when I realized that here was a great artist, living…not so much in obscurity, but in anonymity. Saul Leiter, who died in 2013, brought color to a genre that was deeply entrenched in monochrome in the 1950s. His eye gravitated towards subtle abstraction, which I find curious, considering the chaos and complexity of the “real world” on display in the streets of New York. Maybe the fact that Leiter was also a painter has something to do with this.
Those of us deeply immersed in the world of photography probably hold our “heroes” in high regard, and we expect them to perhaps live a life that we might envy. Yet watching Leiter sitting alone, surrounded by his life work, stacked in old film boxes and gathering dust, it made me wonder what becomes of the even less recognized artists out there. What becomes of all the work they (and I) create through their lives? Maybe never destined for a book or a museum show, but instead sitting in piles in an office or studio. What treasures will go undiscovered, or under appreciated?
2021:47 In Purgatory
A quiet, long holiday weekend in the mountains of Colorado. Quiet, cold, some snow. A hot tub and sauna and plenty of attitude adjusters. Purgatory isn’t so bad, when caught between heaven and hell.
Polaroid Negative / Positive selfie (shot 6 years ago in Portugal)
2021: 46 Reclaiming Polaroid Negatives
I tinker. I putz. I dabble. I guess I need to keep my mind and my hands busy, otherwise the dark clouds can form. Enough said. I used to shoot quite a bit with my great Polaroid 360 camera. A glass lens, manual focus, Zeiss viewfinder, accordion bellows beast. I was inspired by the work done by Patti Smith, and back in the day, Fuji peel-apart film was cheap (like 10 bucks a box cheap.) Well, take a stroll over to eBay and you know those days are long gone, and Fuji isn’t even making the film anymore. So with a bare film shelf in my fridge, I had to put my 360 to rest.
I did have the forethought to keep the negative backing from some of my peel apart photos. Most folks would throw that part away, keeping only the nicely colored, long-lasting positive image. However, they didn’t realize that there was a salvageable “negative” buried beneath the backing paper and black, chemical coating. You can “reclaim” these negatives with a simple process using cling bleach and warm water. I went down the rabbit hole this week (tinkering, putzing) and reclaimed a bunch of old negatives…some shot over 6 years ago. I figured I’d share the process, in case anyone with deep pockets is still buying and shooting the Fuji dead stock and wants to get more mileage out of the film.
STEP ONE: Grab the left over backing paper from a recently (or not so recently) exposed sheet of Fuji peel-apart film. There are two sides, the one with the matte, black coating is the side you want to work with. Remove excess paper around the edges, if you so desire.
STEP TWO: In a sink, place sheet face down on a flat surface. I used a small developing tray.
STEP THREE: Using toilet cleaner bleach (the kind that is in gel form is really the best way to go, since it doesn’t run all over the place.)
STEP FOUR: let it sit for about 30 secs to a minute.
STEP FIVE: Rinse carefully with water. You’ll see chunks of black goo pulling off the negative. This is what you want to happen. Rinse until no more black chunks are visible, water runs clear.
STEP SIX: Flip the negative over and rinse under warm (to hot) water, gently rubbing the surface with your fingers. try not to scratch, but even if you do, it’ll probably look cool. This step takes off any binding goo, but please note: you do not want to use bleach on this side.
STEP SEVEN: hang to dry
You’ll see a discolored negative image of the original photo, which you can take a photo of (or scan) and then invert in Photoshop, or the app of your choice. Do some adjustments to your liking…and voila! You have a cool, one of a kind, image. Rescued from oblivion, or at least the garbage dump. The fun thing about this process is you end up getting odd color shifts, surface textures, and rough edges that an Instagram dweeb would pee themselves over. I personally really like the look of scratches and emulsion distress.
Give it a try if you have some of this film lying around. In the meantime, I will write an angry crank letter to Fuji Corp. to beg them to manufacture this film again. Maybe if all the analogue folks out there do the same, we can drag these wonderful old cameras out of storage and shoot one of a kind (or two of a kind?) photos once again.
The final image, inverted and tweaked in Photoshop! Check out the janky, amazing frame.
On set, just after midnight.
2021: 44 Planning and Randomness
I spent most this week on set for a TV production. Three overnight shoots in a row. Cold, tired and inspired. Shooting and editing TV commercials and web videos is the best part of my “day job.” Contrary to my photographic work, this kind of shooting entails the work of many people. Collaboration and team work are key. And although most of the game plan is set ahead of shoot day, there is always risk involved. Thankfully not the kind of risk and repercussions on a recent production up in Santa Fe; but often times, we don’t know how things are gonna go. Time is always against you on set. There is crew, talent, the weather, random “bogies” and all sorts of variables to contend with. Most of the projects I work on start with an idea in my mind. It is still a wondrous thing to see it come to life on set, and more fully in the post-production edit. That small nugget of thought becomes a real thing. A short story many people will view and critique. Everyone on set is there to manifest that original idea. It is an amazing thing to participate in.
Did we get the shot? Who knows?
Even though things are scripted, storyboarded, planned, blocked out, rehearsed… you never really know what you’re going to get. Is the talent scared or nervous? Is the director tired? Is that cloud overhead starting to drizzle rain on us? Throw into the mix the randomness of a technical challenge. In the photo above, we rigged a camera into a round, metal casing. The camera was turned on to record, and then the rig was launched from a moving vehicle. The idea was to replicate the view of a tumbling car, in the midst of a crash. We had no way to monitor the camera. We had no idea what the footage would look like. We had no idea if the camera itself would survive the tumble. On a set where thousands of dollars was invested, where 40 plus crew members, each with a specific skill and role, were on hand… we were at the mercy of the randomness of hurling an expensive camera down the road in a metal device. The best laid plans… as they say. Sometime you just gotta trust and try and surrender to the unknown. A good lesson learned at 5am on a Friday morning.
p.s……The footage actually looked great, as we all took a deep sigh of relief.