random images

I have a new camera and a couple of new lenses and, like a new pair of shoes, they are taking a little while to break in. You sometimes forget that the new "tools" don't always automatically bring better results. It's like a television, you buy a new one and it's bigger and brighter and flatter with better sound and the remote is really cool but the crap you can watch on it is the same crap that you could watch on your old television, only it's clearer crap, brighter crap, crisper crap, with better sound. That being said, here's some crap from the last few weeks taken with a camera that's getting more and more comfortable in my hands every day.

The Argument



Self Portrait Number Eight (thank you Nikkor 50/1:1.4D)


Nostalgia (this is the same picture that I took some ten or twelve years ago, I have the original and I will scan it in the near future and attach it here)


Ed. There are very few photographs of Ed.


Honestly


And Then

One We Were Here

I have an infatuation with temporary artifacts, small cues as to what might have happened not long ago, fleeting moments that seem so insignificant as they happen but are more important than they let on at the time. It's the little things that are important and it's usually the little things that get skimmed over.

Dining

I should have stopped down on this one a bit, the depth of field is just a hair shy of getting the candle and the lace table cover over the front edge of the table. One stop is all it would have taken I'm sure. But still the image does most of what i wanted it to.

You rarely think about video and photography together but I found this video about a favourite photographer Todd Hido and then there was this video about John Chiara that is pretty inspiring. John is a new one to me and I look at his process and it boggles the senses that he goes through such a convuluted effort to come up with a single image in a day but the images are pretty emotional and chock full of narrative which is something I struggle with in a lot of my photographs. Even though I think I missed today's image technically I think I got the emotion and narrative I was looking for which is why it's here. I'll take it again one day soon and see if I can get the technical side down as well but for now this will do.

hiatus

New camera, a need for software to understand it, and life. It all makes taking photographs confusing. Maybe I should buy a film scanner and be done with it. It was so simple. The day I get CS3 I search the internet for the RAW converter for my cutting edge technology digital camera only to find out I'm already obsolete, that CS4 is rearing it's ugly head to make those of us new to CS3 feel that much more out of date. And a new computer with an uncalibrated screen. For all I know the image for today is lime green and pink. Oh well. I'm sure I will be up to speed shortly and maybe I'll even find a day to take photographs again. That might be alright.

Birthday Jam

Here's the rest of the set from the Birthday Jam.

portraits

A good friend of mine lent me a Leica M3 film camera. "When do you want it back?" I asked. "I'll let you know when, let's leave it at that," he said. It's an amazingly soulful piece of equipment, heavier than you would imagine, and it feels very good in your hands. Since the camera was generously loaned to me by a friend I figured a reasonable first chore for it would be to take pictures of my friends with it. It's been fun but I'm not done yet. There's still film in the camera and it goes most places with me. For now this is a good start. I would suggest clicking on the slideshow button to view the set.

Jarvis

I should take more pictures of people.

An aside, I was recently made away of Elliot Erwitt. He's one of those photographers we all know but didn't realize who he was. A surprising number of his images are very familiar, we've all seen them before, but at least I have never given him credit, never realized they were all the product of one man.