What to Do…

When my daughter was born my wife told me that failing all else, I’d always have a willing model.
I took that to heart over the weekend and during a walk that culminated in hang time for us at the playground, I snapped a few of my daughter. She loves to have her picture taken, always saying after the shutter-click, “I wanna see!”

I was playing around with some post processing ’cause I came across this blog the other day. I like the overall tone of some of his recent stuff and think I might wanna try later.

No Peeking.

Another shot from the recent shoot with my graduate friend. Those two MFAs look pretty sexy on her, no?

A Short Treatise On Being Away For A Long Time.

School’s winding down and I’m absolutely mired in end-of-the-year stuff. There will be photographs soon. I just scored the use of a darkroom to process some black and white film.

In other news, I found this place (among others) ’cause I think it’ll make a nice location to shoot and I’ve got a few people lined up. It’s gonna be a great summer.

You’ll see. Gimme some time and this blog’ll be full of new newness. Honest.

Working the Land(scape).

I’ve been looking at a lot of work by other people and, as I’ve mentioned here before, I’m not really all that thrilled with my landscape photography. Beyond that, I have this Holga camera that seems underutilized. I was truly inspired by this fellow to just kinda shoot stuff with the camera and see where it took me.

With all that in mind, I went traipsing around the city back to some of the places that I thought, “That’d make a great photograph.” as I’d passed them before and grabbed a few.

I scanned them and then toned them the way I might’ve if I’d been printing them and I kinda like what I got, although I’d probably print a film border and a bit of a vignette. Whatever the case, here are 4:

It’s interesting how the lens bends things in its sight. It’s an aberration I wasn’t expecting but I’m really growing to love when I see straight lines captured.

It’s Still Cold.

And this is as much as I can muster to remember the warm days past.

A Lady, Darkly.

The first time I met Tatiana, she was still an undergraduate in college. These days, she’s a bartender and a graduate who’s thinking about law school.
Fortunately for her, she’ll always have a second career.

The Sunny 16.

In a fit the other day after dropping my daughter (the Small) at daycare, I threw a roll of cross process film into my camera. I’d had this notion to shoot some of the pretty skies that abound these days in an attempt to practice shooting stuff without people. I got one frame (that I didn’t even scan) and put the camera down.

Then Sunday rolled around and she (the Small) woke up from her afternoon nap in an great mood. She mentioned “outside” in the funny patois that she has so I figured in typical dad fashion, “Why not?”

I grabbed my camera knowing that I probably wasn’t shooting any more sky pictures. The issue with using a Hasselblad with someone like the Small, someone who’s in constant motion, is that there’s no time to meter. There’s barely time to focus. I used the Sunny 16 Rule and did my best, constantly telling her to stop moving so much.

I’m really glad I did:

Keys to the Kingdom.

As promised, the door in color. All told I think I got 5 from this endeavor (shot something like 60) and they were the ones I knew I wanted before I even started.

Had another personal project set for yesterday, but haven’t processed negs yet. I’m flyin’ kinda high on all this.

Door Number 3.

Unfun: (1) Shoving that door into my car although I got it in and had enough room left over for me, the model and some extra equipment. (2) Convincing the door to stay up and not fall on the model

Conclusion: I need an assistant for stuff like this; I just don’t know where I’d put him (or her, I suppose).

Anyway, the fruit of those labors:

There’s color to come.