I’ve been looking at a number of photographers lately who have an incredible way with miniatures and I decided to come up with a technique and give the idea a shot.
These images are another set of sketches. I was thinking about the things we enjoy to excess that eventually lead to (or at least, can lead to) our deaths. Because it was off the cuff the “sins” aren’t so bad, but I’m largely happy with the results.
Here’s me digging in the depths of my images to find something to post while I await a new scanner and several rolls of film. That being said, the photo pipeline is, how do you say, backed up?
On the downside, the black and white film I meant to process kinda got lost in the shuffle. I ended up heading to the gym instead.
So this is my daughter being nonplussed. She’s bigger now and wrestling her into those headphones again would be nigh impossible, but this is an old fave of mine.
I’m leaving town Thursday and am probably not going to be near a computer.
I’ll leave you with this image from waaay back when I started cross-processing film. I bought these flowers (which I think Jim has since co-opted) specifically for the colors they’d make on my film. Interestingly, the place I got them has closed its doors forever.
Gotta love using the sun as a hairlight.
My maternal grandfather died shortly before I graduated from college, in 1994. As an interesting side note, I was such a crummy student that he was one of the few people who knew I’d eventually get out. I think it’d tickle him pink (one of his favorite ways of describing things) that I grew up to be a college professor.
My grandfather was a bunch of things in the 79 years he was alive. He’d served in the Army during World War II, he’d been the principal of an elementary school, he’d been on the highly acclaimed Virginia Union basketball team called “The Dream Team,” and he’d been a Mason. The thing that I remember best about him though — not that I remember a lot of the stuff that I mention here — is that he always had his camera around. I’m certain that the first 15 years of my life are well documented through the lightproof boxes he had.
This is what makes this post interesting. Since his death, no one from our family has really been through his photographs. In fact, since my grandmother died a couple of years ago, not many of us have been in the house. On a recent foray, my father found twenty some odd medium format negatives which he gave to me and tasked me with scanning. We looked at them in the kitchen of my folks’ house and speculated on who the people in the images are. I’ve scanned them and I can honestly say I don’t know who any of these people are. I don’t recognize them.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t seem to have really interesting stories, however. I’m planning on printing the lot of the images and giving them back to my mom so that perhaps she can figure out who the people are. Everyone else in her family who might be able to help has died so I’m counting on her.
Anyway, here are a couple.
UPDATE: My mom and dad have had a look and it turns out that the smiling face second from the left is my grandmother! The only pictures of her I’ve seen are when she must’ve been in her 30s. My parents speculate that she was in high school during these. I can hardly wait to get the prints to my mom.
This was another from the day with my buddy, Matt, one of the cool kids.
This was actually my favorite of the bunch. It was lit well, the angle was right, and it wasn’t so hard to correct the lighting. It would’ve been fun to have had several colors of scooters to futz with for the day.
The reason for the trip to England was that some very good friends of ours were getting married civilly united. It’s funny, ’cause folks of the same gender can do that there. I’m not going into the larger argument that’s begging to be addressed just now. It’s been overdone anyway.
What I am gonna do is talk about (briefly) what I wore when I attended and how entertaining it is to see a big black man in a kilt.
Big cheers to Rob Wheal, the photographer for the event who, upon entering the room, walked right up to me and said, “Scotty?” to which I nodded assent. He then shook my hand heartily and said “Respect.” Right then, I knew I had made the right decision. Have a look at his site. He’s got a killer eye.
This is one of the shots he got. For what it’s worth, this kilt’s rented (“hired” if you’re English) and it’s not my family tartan.
Here’s one of the shots from the day that I got to re-work the shoes in the street shot.
My bud Cynthia and her beau, Mike, were kind enough to be my people for the shot. I actually shot 3 rolls of film. I got lucky and had time to process it the day after the shoot but I didn’t get around to scan it for a couple of days.
Overall, I’m pleased with the images but I’m a little upset with myself for shooting too many images in duplicate. I only shot black and white, but I used the Holga (which is actually a Woca — a Holga with a glass lens) and the Hasselblad. The mixture of sharp, clean lines and the foggy haze that is a plastic camera is kinda cool, but I find myself wishing I’d done a little color, even if it was just negative film, for the contrast.
I’m thinking that a few of these images will be the ones I clean up to re-work the shots on the main page.
You really can never understand why people are so interested in their kids until you have one of your own.
This is the most important person in my world.
Well, this one and the one who gave birth to her. The most important two people, I guess.
photographic ramblings of thomas scott 