Been doing this work for a while, and the other day Mike called it out on twitter as ‘architectural stuff,’ and I suppose it is, in that it’s pictures with a lot of buildings. It doesn’t really bear a lot of resemblance to real architectural photography, though. It’s more urban lanscape-y and an attempt to see where we are right now.
I keep asking myself that question at odd moments, almost like a koan: “Where am I?” Usually trying to figure out where I am in whatever thing I’m doing at that particular moment, but also this implied “Where am I going?” that’s really more interesting.
Posted on 2018-05-30T20:13:40Z GMT
I’ve been sort of debating the whole film thing, and really the things that appeal to me about it are not really the film aspect as much as the form factor of shooting with a rangefinder. I don’t like scanning or developing film, but I do like shooting with the CLE, and to an extent, I like the tonality I get out of the film cameras, too, although that’s a toss up; as I’ve said, it’s something I can do with the digital files if I want, but it’s also pushing against the strengths of the material.
So, I don’t have the camera here, but what I do have is a pile of files. So I went back through them and found a few more that I liked. I’m in a place now where I’m thinking what I thought were problems with the camera may have just been me not being used to its quirks. So I might just plunk down the 7k and get one sometime in the next decade or so. Starting saving…. now.
In the meantime, I’m going to develop the film that I have and go back to shooting mostly with the fuji.
Posted on 2018-05-29T06:24:11Z GMT
Working on these was a struggle. Lightroom kept crashing while I was spotting dust, and there was a lot of dust. I think it was the confluence of several factors: I had a bazillion desktop apps open, and like the title says, these are scanned from huge negatives, at a really high DPI. They’re 400MB tiffs. So, I closed a bunch of the apps I had open and then it started working better.
I’ve been hanging around SFMOMA quite a lot these days, just because I can. They have good wifi and good coffee, and I have a membership; I think it’s 125 or 150 a year, and I get in for free as many times as I want. Really an excellent deal. As much anxiety as showing my own work in galleries gives me, I do love just hanging out in them.
I’m not sure how much longer this film project is going to last. I’m already tired of spotting out dust from things. It’s hard to get the same tonality from digital. Most of these pictures would actually be HDR shots; if you shot at low ISO and underexposed a stop or so, it’d work. Maybe.
I took another look at the Leica work from when I rented that one in December, and I might have to get one. There were some nice things there that I overlooked, and I may have been too hasty in dismissing it. There’ll be a whole post about that soon, because I also really like shooting with the CLE. I’m just not sure it’ll make it to permanent use, because film is kind of a pain in the ass.
Posted on 2018-05-25T06:55:14Z GMT
I dunno. Haven’t blogged in almost a week, but the backlog is still low. Shooting film is super slow, what can I say? I’ve got some rolls to develop sitting here right now; and a bunch of stuff scanned that I need to get spotted.
Also, this isn’t my only project… I’m once again wearing many hats. Well, at least one, with a Cubs’ logo on it.
Posted on 2018-05-22T05:02:02Z GMT
