photography

Lens of yesterday's eye

2008-07-10T00:51:59+00:00

If I had to guess, I was six. Maybe. Too young for such things at the time, too young for such things even now, in an age of technologized children. I was young, and my memories took longer than most to root, so I do not remember a time when I did not know the inner workings of a camera.

My co-workers have grown accustomed to my photography; it is a useful, serviceable tool. I tell people the truth: I am a serviceable photographer but not an artist. Send a shoot list with me to an event and I'll return with good, documentary photos that serve your need. A few will be truly good, and every now and then I turn out something extraordinary, even by my standards.

When I'm asked how I learned, the answer "I come from a family of photographers" rolls easily off my tongue. My uncle and my sister both were -- and are -- excellent photographers, but my memories of sitting in a darkroom as a child have little to do with where and how I point my camera now. I think the real answer is that I was given a camera at such a young age that I became fearless with it, and was never told I couldn't do it.

I've always wondered if there was a parental discussion before the camera was given to me. Paramount in parents' minds when allowing a child to play with an expensive toy is the question, "Will it be broken?"

['K1000']

The answer is no. Whether or not I had been reverential, and generally I was, the Pentax K-1000 had one thing going for it: it was a tank. It was a metal casket for film. It survived a child's hands, occasionally careless teenage handling, being dropped, being hit by football players, and drunken college parties. I shot with it all the way through college -- unheard-of in today's age. When digital cameras see forced obsolescence in a hand's-span of years, this one saw decades.

I had years to grow in bravery. I must have started out with someone else loading the film for me, but I no longer remember that. I do remember the day I realized that without film, I could just open the back of the camera and fire the shutter over and over, absorbing through repetition how the system functioned.

[' Local on the eights']

There is a visual rhythm to a manual camera. Focus, meter, f-stop, shoot, wind. I love shooting digital now, but I do sometimes miss the tactile pleasure of loading a roll of film, and the faint chemical odor of freshly-developed negatives.

* * * * *

Ever since getting the Nikon in October of 2007, in the back of my mind I knew it was probably time to do something with the Pentax, because on some level I knew I would never shoot with it again. I hesitated selling it, and recently it hit me: John Wilson was still shooting film, and loving it. I kept the knowledge in my head until a shoot when I realized my hands no longer automatically attempted the twist-untwist pattern of the Pentax lenses, but had adapted to the Nikon versions.

It was time to let it go.

I'd love to believe that inanimate objects absorb something of the lives they inhabit. Tonight, I cleaned each of the lenses and held each of them up to my eye, one at a time, wishing it were as simple as turning the lens around backwards to be able to see backwards -- not just in space, but in time.

I'd find a younger version of myself squinting through the other side.

['ISO 400']

Tonight I'll pack my camera of over a quarter-century and ready it for a one-way journey to Minnesota. For so many years, what it saw was what I saw, and it's odd to think that its eye and mine are diverging for good.

I hope it sends me pictures every now and then.

Wendy demoes the new lens!

2008-06-12T18:17:58+00:00

I got my new toy last night -- the Nikon 20mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens. We're still sniffing each other and making friends, but Wendy was nice enough to let me shoot three photos of her over lunch today that give a pretty good idea of how different the world appears through each of these lenses.

Shot with my trusty Nikon D80 across the table, using ambient light and with no real attempt to do anything except point and shoot.

Using the [shiny new!] Nikon 20mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens. [link to flickr]

Using the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens. [link to flickr]
For most people, this would be their typical lens, but if you know me then you know....

Using the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens. [link to flickr]
...THIS is my workhorse. I adore this lens. It has a giant light scoop on the end, what with that 1.8 f-stop madness, and it just takes gorgeous, gorgeous photos without me really needing to try all that hard. See my recent Matt Costa concert photos for proof.

I've been saying that I needed to practice landscape photography. The 20mm lens practically demands it.

(Thanks for humoring me, Wendy. The Very Pregnant™ typically don't allow photography.)

Quickest photo shoot ever

2008-02-12T22:03:35+00:00

This entry is partly to test a code fix and partly to grin at the results of this morning's photography.

BJ is a favorite and consistent photo subject of mine. I got an excellent headshot of her for a print piece I worked on a couple of months ago, but I had to cut her photo out of the finished piece due to space constraints. It made me sad, because her photo was excellent; it was just trumped by two better photos.

This morning, she saw my camera bag and said, "Think you'll need another shot of me sometime soon?" I told her that I might, but that it would be for a very different project.

This morning, I walked into the break room expecting to take some candids of shelvers on break, but BJ walked in right after me. She sat down, and grinned at me, and twenty seconds and three photos later, I had this image. I was just getting warmed up to move to the 'real' shot, but I looked at the LCD screen and realized the 'real' shot was already there, whether I realized it or not.

She laughed and said, "Over already? Quickest photo shoot ever."

24/365

2007-12-21T17:51:18+00:00

The standard life photos go up a lot faster than my version of the 365 Library Days project. I know from watching the other photos posted to the photo pool that what I'm doing is very different from what the other participants are doing. I'm not sure if my version quite qualifies as subverting the intent, or celebrating it in a different way.

Most participants are taking this literally, by snapping a photo a day of Their Workplace. I'm shooting less often, and looking for something I don't quite know how to quantify. Moments. Images. In the absence of feeling comfortable writing about that place I spend my days, I find myself growing increasingly comfortable with the idea of letting the pictures tell the story.

I started the project partly to document this part of my life, and partly to give myself license to experiment with my photos. I'm related to several paper-and-film amateur/semi-pro photographers, and without realizing it, I had picked up their belief that the act of photography was the end of the composition. The idea of doing anything past levels or color correction (things that in the past could be tweaked while developing the photo) seemed innately wrong, somehow.

I ended up asking myself what I'd do if I gave myself license to play around with the images I took? What if I was honest from the outset about my intent to treat the images only as starting points, to use all my print design tools (cropping, color management, etc.) to create illustration and evocation, not just denotation?

This is the collection so far. Only 24 photos so far; there's much left to do. This week I added three shots from a flag-raising, just because rich, bright fabrics stood out so much in the muted palette of winter colors:

I also decided that I wanted

to be available for public view as well. I've had that photo friends-locked for over two months and hesitated releasing it; it is not the image that any public entity would want to present, but it is reality, and it is accurate, and to pretend otherwise bothers me. I wish I had been able to shoot that photo with a tripod, because the final image was blurred, but this was not the kind of situation that lent itself well to stopping and saying, "May I take your picture?"

I had to ask myself what my purpose was: photography, or public relations? It's a difficult line to walk, and it's a choice I will have to make with every photo I post. Sometimes honesty has to be tempered with discretion. But reality isn't always pretty. Sometimes it's scary and frightening and damn near breaks your heart while it happens.

But that is life, and that is what I see.

(Those of you who have spoken to me in the past day or so know that two paragraphs up, I'm referring to a very specific incident that happened earlier this week. I'm not ready to write about it yet. Maybe soon. Originally I thought about linking to the news article, but it just doesn't feel right to do so. Not yet.)

Life's rich pageant, &c.

2007-12-21T16:39:47+00:00

I board a plane for the Beer and Cheese Tour of Seattle at six a.m. next Thursday.

(Have you guys noticed over the past few years that every trip, project, etc. always seems to get a title after it's been in my life a while? By naming it, I bring it into existence. Or something.)

Why a six a.m. flight, you wonder? Sanity. Limited number of vacation days + the prospect of catching a 2:00 brewery tour next Thursday afternoon == determination to get up at something like four a.m. and sleep on the plane. If I only have X floating holidays to take, why fly out at noon and arrive at 9 p.m. Pacific time, having wasted the entire day, when I could get up earlier, be equally bored a bit earlier in the day, snooze fitfully on the plane, then touch down in Seattle in the early afternoon?

See? It sorta makes sense that way. Insane, yet vaguely sensible.

My working theory is that I'll just mainline coffee for the rest of the day. I mean, I've heard they've got that sort of thing in Seattle. I'll ingest enough caffeine and sugar to kill a couple of small rodents, top it off with good microbrew, and by the end of the day I probably won't know whether to sleep, stagger, or vibrate at high speed.

My flickr account has been seeing more of a workout than my weblog account. We picked up a new lens for the camera recently, and I'm pretty stoked about taking the setup out West. My photography is competent at best -- it is literal, reasonably-well composed, but not art -- but stalking good shots is going to be a recurring theme of the visit.

Tis the season of holiday gatherings, when you get together with friends you haven't seen lately: (links go to larger versions of photos, or you can go straight to the entire set here)

...and if someone is saying "'tis the season," that means there's a slew of Christmas concerts, which means Jeff is somewhere out there in a tux, mastering the art of accidentals: (link goes to album)

The last portion is one I'll put in a separate post.

a cat in grayscale

2002-10-02T05:04:56+00:00

…is a lovely thing indeed. I'm not sure why I like working in black and white better than I like working in color, but it's always been that way for me. It's not unlike drawing - by subtracting the inessential, you're left with only the subject's essence.If you want stellar photography, go visit Noah's place for a while. Me, I snap things that show up in my life, things that make me laugh or remember or just sum up life in general. That, and the cats have no problem whatsoever in posing for the camera, given that they're attention-hogging little catsluts when it's just the three of us in the house. So here's what life has been like for the cats since we got our new digital camera:

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I am most definitely coming back as one of my cats. Updates soonish: trips being planned, various holiday bits being finalized, and for the three million of you who are expecting emails from me, you'll be pleased to know that I did another hand-of-God on my inbox today and reduced it from about 150 down to 70. Not to mention that I've got to do something about this backlog of photos that's building up on my desktop. I foresee a general image-dumping post in the not-so-distant future. Don't worry, it won't be that interesting.