work
A Walk in the City
Flying by night.
The beautiful thing about SF is that you can walk around and see people doing different things but they all have the same look in their eyes. I’ve really been enjoying the versatility of shooting in lower light conditions with this camera…its really pushing me over the edge towards the D700.
This was shot with the Nikon D700 and the 85mm F1.4. No image correction involved besides cropping. I guess for digital shots I’ll have to start saying what edits were done …. that might get annoying.
Faith Based Charity
This is a still from an independent film out of SF called Faith Based Charity by Director Maria Breaux. The woman on the bed had lost her sick mother whom she had been taking care of most of her life. This other woman was meant to try to bring her out of her depression. I just loved the look in her face and the patterns in the kimono.
This was shot with my Nikon F3HP and 50mm f1.4 ai lens on ilford delta 100 asa film.
The Digital Dilemna
The haunting face of feeding time
I’ve been delving into photography for the last 10 years and of that time of off and on devotion, I’ve been adamant of my stance against embracing digital. This was mostly because I worked with computers and didn’t want to spend my off hours in front of the screen again doing photoshop. I had great excuses; the medium isn’t comparable, digital is too expensive for a decent body, the low light conditions are horrible to manage on a digital….all those excuses go out the window.
I’ve had the fortune of becoming friends with someone I respect as a person as well as a coworker and fellow photographer. I also had the joy have sharing the same addiction to all toys photographic, as we both have a deep love for film and manual cameras. That love has been betrayed when he purchased a Nikon D700. Full frame. Great integration with my manual prime lenses. Intuitive controls and features. Better integration with my SB-600 flash unit than my F3HP. Sonofabitch….
Some of the many things stacking up against the fans of the film medium lately is the ease with which we can view the shots we take. Everything is too expensive now. Chemistry. Darkroom space. Disappearing film and enlargement paper. Because of a few of these reasons, I have not been shooting nearly as often as I wish. It also makes the approach of doing the shoot, scan, posting something that now seems to be ‘work’. I feel lazy for saying it. I feel like I’m not giving forth the right amount of effort it should take to capture something and share it with people I want to share it with.
So here is the point of this post. I am recommitting myself to sticking with my film preference as my main medium, but I am now admitting that I will also throw in the occasional digital image with my posts.
I know this really only matters to an audience of one: me. That said, I feel like I needed to write it down as an admission to myself so I can come to terms with myself.
Here is a digital shot I took of my new son. Also another reason why I haven’t been shooting much, but also the main reason I will be shooting more again. This was shot with the Nikon D700 using my 28mm F2.8 AIS lens.
Montezuma’s Dream
Sunset at Playa Montezuma
One of the best things of seeing a new place is the sense of wonderment you get when you see something. Something that is commonplace to those people that see it more than a few times will obviously give the newcomer a different feel. I’m not stating a secret. This is pretty common knowledge. But what I think about when I try to capture the image of that moment in time, is the communication of that same emotion I feel at the time. It’s my philosophy that a photographer’s goal in life is to learn all the skills/techniques possible to best communicate an emotion through the visual image. I want my viewer to feel what I felt when I saw the scene I’m taking or notice the same things.
This image taken in Playa Montezuma in Costa Rica is about 76% there. I think I was able to capture the blending of waves and clouds into the same horizon to give that sense of the eternal renewal…one just becomes the other endlessly. I also tried to set the tone of the image as dreamlike, as if you were just about to enter the next phase of reality. I think there were a few things I could have done to make the shot that much better but you sometimes play roulette with slide film and a manual camera. I shot this using Fuji Velvia 50ASA film on my Leica M6 TTL with a 35mm F2 Summicron lens.
Buddha in the air
I think buddha would have smoked a kush.
I captured an image while on a vacation to Tagaytay, Philippines. It’s a wonderful place, an island in a lake that is basically the crater of a volcano. There was a lookout point way up on the edge of this crater that looked out onto this phenomenal place where this Buddha statue was perched, overlooking the view. It isn’t so much the Buddha statue that attracted my eye to this scene, but the way the clouds seemed to surround the head of the Buddha as I stood on that particular angle. I used Fuji Velvia 50ASA film with a polarizing filter on my Nikon F3HP with my 85mm F1.4 AIS manual lens. I wanted to capture the detail of the cloud, the deep blue of the sky and the image itself. It overwhelmed me with a sense of peace and laughter at the same time.
Beauty in unexpected places
Out of a crack in the wall
I never really did a lot of cross processing until around this point. Most of my attempts have produced a washed out look that was not really doing it for me until a set I did while out in the Stinson Beach area. I don’t know if it was the blaring hot sun that produced a massive amount of light or if it was cross processed differently but I was pretty happy with this and a few others. I like this one in particular because the flowers were very pretty and healthy as they grew out from between a crack in the wall and sidewalk. Beauty really is in unexpected places and I am glad it does…makes one always keep his eyes open.
Economic Stimulus: Not a Silver Bullet.
simple pleasures
stim⋅u⋅lus
/ˈstɪmyələs/
–noun, plural -li /-ˌlaɪ/
1. something that incites to action or exertion or quickens action, feeling, thought, etc.: The approval of others is a potent stimulus.
As January posts an unemployment rate of 7.6% and the clamor for things to be done is reaching its height thus far, I fear that the desperation will cause people to fool themselves into thinking that the Economic Stimulus plan is the silver bullet to end all their fears. That is a huge mistake. I’ve been reading that there is a lot of argument over whether this will actually help or further sink the economy but what isn’t being mentioned is that it really is more of a choice of doing something or doing the same nothing. Here’s a link to a Newsweek post on the matter. Yes this is a huge risk. It has so many dependencies on it, mostly that the American people and corporations will reverse the fear from the Economic Sinking Ship and take the steps towards rethinking the ways they do things. Right now, its like watching the rats run to the part of the ship that isn’t sinking into the sea.
Panic. Fear. Flight.
This sort of reactionary behavior will not facilitate the possibility of leading ourselves off this ship and live to build a better craft. Industries need to rethink how they do things to not find themselves in this position. The people of the land need to rethink the way they live their lives and spend.
The other dependency is the need for the American people to move away from the Baby-Boomer mentality and move towards the Millennial mind set. Namely, the shift from a top-down paradigm to problem solving to the collaborative, something characteristic of the Millennials. Most of the articles you find on the comparison is about the differences in the workplace and the buying habits of the 2 groups. But if you look at the characteristics of each generation, you see that Obama’s effort is dependent on either the existing mindset to move towards the spirit of collaboration and balance or that the Millennials step up and create solutions to the problems of their forefathers. Some people have called characterized this generation as lazy with a false sense of entitlement. I don’t believe that. I believe their priorities are based on their group mentality and social awareness that does not make much sense to a generation where priorities were set by an authoritarian and materialistic society.
But to my original point, this Stimulus is meant to try to facilitate an environment where the solutions will come from the collective strength of the people…not from the head of the government or corporation. Obama is leading by example in his efforts to reach out to all members of government to assist in rebuilding the Government machine. At least, he’s trying to attempt to change the way things have been done thus far. Govt is broken. The people must help facilitate change from the outside.
The last thing we want to see is a country that is impoverished and falling apart. To put an illustration to this post, I chose to post a photo of an older homeless man that I met on the streets of SF. This is someone’s father, uncle, brother, lover or friend. It could be you.
A moment taken
Sunset Rock
I was driving along the California coast around Big Sur and saw this scene and had to turn back. I went back and composed the shot I wanted and continued on. It made me think of all the times that I wanted to do something and didn’t take the opportunity or didn’t scratch that itch and missed out on an experience. It funny what it takes to remind you to pursue things you want to see or try. Sometimes, you have to break the routines of your life and do what you want to try. This isn’t a new concept, but why don’t we do it more often?
Somewhere to start
Little Ninjas
Everything needs a beginning to start off the journey so I thought I’d start with a hello and a photo of an older photo I’ve taken. I’ll be trying to add newer material in each pending post but here is one to start.
The above photo was taken last year at one of SF’s street parades. These kids were part of the parade and I couldn’t help but think about the Boondocks, one of the smartest and rawest cartoons i’ve seen in a while. I love how there is more of a cultural mashup with the younger generation. Makes me believe there is hope for a world where Bob Marley would be proud of. In his words:
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war. – Bob Marley
This image has not be edited other than cropping. It was shot with the Nikon F3HP using fuji’s Velvia 50asa slide film, cross processed.
