Especially figuring out where you want to take yourself with a hobby. I’ve always been awestruck with photography, and I remember borrowing my friend Kathi’s camera to shoot hardcore shows. By 16 (I think?) I had saved up enough to buy my first camera. It was a Canon AE-1 with a 50mm f/1.2 and boy was it great. I didn’t know squat about what the hell I was doing, I was just looking for the meter needle to be in the middle. I upgraded a couple of years later to a Nikon n90s as it had this nifty feature where the SB-28 flash would sync at 1/8000. That was mind blowing to me and I just had to have them. Little did I realize how expensive this was.. the body itself was $1000. The SB-28 was like $350 or something, but I got one off of ebay along with the SC-17 extension cable. I didn’t do much with it, sadly. Shit, that just reminded me that I took a picture of this Frank Gehry building in Iowa City with T-MAX P3200.. high speed black and white film. Little did I know it was actually ISO 800 pre-pushed two stops (if I’m remembering correctly) but man, I need to track down the film strip with that image and scan it. I actually made a print of it, but the contrast was flat and it just looked spooky.. but the grain! The grain was prefect. That’s my one gripe about digital photography.. chroma noise. Barf. It just makes things look like shit. Luminance noise on the other hand is great. I see luminance noise and to me it just makes the image come alive. That being said, I shoot mostly color slide film, ISO 50/100 Velvia, Fujichrome T64 (tungsten balanced film).. Moving on.. I brought my camera with me when I moved to the East Coast, even though I didn’t really shoot that much. I think I used it at my dude Brian’s wedding. I still haven’t developed that roll of film. Oops. I basically had dropped out of photography due to poor financial standing. It’s an expensive hobby. One day though, after playing with my friend’s Nikon d70, I was like, shit I should really get back into this.. this is fun, take photo, see results instantly. Perfect! I read up on a bunch of articles online about the Nikon DSLRs because I was familiar with Nikon bodies. I chose the d200 which at the time was a hell of a camera. A button for each function, a great feeling body, a good amount of weight to it. I was sold. I spent my nights reading Ken Rockwell’s site about all the different digital bodies, how things worked, whitebalance, stuff I knew at one point but had forgotten and it all seemed to click now. What happened next I would’ve never expected.
I had started going to The Rub on New Years of 2005/2006. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a monthly hip-hop dance party in Brooklyn. By far the best party I’ve ever attended. Anyway, I’m a relatively shy person in social/party settings. I spent my 5-6 hours at this party standing against a wall enjoying the music and watching people dance. It never bothered me that I did this, but my friends would tease me for what they considered odd behavior. Fast forward to October of 2006.. It was right after Sabbath in the Park, and my first time out with my camera.. it was the Halloween Rub so it was the best time to take pictures of people.. they’re all in costume, I don’t feel guilty taking pictures that way. You may be wondering, “why the f would you feel guilty? that’s what photographers do you tool!” but in my mind, I always think of Schrodingersnge’s cat. (google it) If you’re observing, you’re affecting the outcome (this is a given), but if the subject knows you’re observing, I think it makes them react differently. This may or may not be the case all the time, but I digress. There are a lot of little details to fill in, so if you’re still with me.. thanks. It gets better, I swear.
After The Rub I emailed Ayres and said, yo here’s some pictures I took, use ‘em if you’d like. I didn’t hear anything for like a day or two but he replied and said they were great and could I come every month and take pictures. Hell yeah! The camera had me interacting with the crowd more and I was learning more about taking pictures in that type of setting as well. I knew about the partyography scene (my word.. just remember that!) but I didn’t have much of an interest as a lot of it to me seemed like people hamming it up on purpose, which is what I don’t like. I’m interested in capturing the action of the moment as it happens, not as it’s directed. Conversely, I envied the ability to do that with people, to get them to pose, to lay naked on a bathroom floor, tug at someone’s underwear with their teeth. I don’t have the guts to do that.
The more I shot The Rub, the better I got, and also the nerdier I got, I started noticing color casts due to mismatched white balance and flash lighting tends to cast towards cyan too often. I became frustrated, starting gelling my flashes and then getting stuck on what the color temp actually is now that it’s gelled and setting to tungsten white balance seemed to make things too warm. By this point I had moved on to the Canon 5D, full frame sensor, could actually use a 16mm f/2.8 and have it actually be 16mm. It’s a wonderful, but I loathe Canon’s ergonomics. The 5D is extremely clunky to use, but takes amazingly sharp and vivid pictures, whereas the D200 felt soft in comparison. I continued to learn and buy more gear, mostly to learn but also because I could. It was awesome to have an array of lenses to be able to photograph pretty much anything. I found myself slipping away from the party scene because more and more things were attracting my eye.. sunset/sunrise/nighttime city shots/stars/etc. By the time the Nikon D3 was released in early December 2007, I felt kind of disconnected. I still enjoyed shooting The Rub because it was always fun, other parties didn’t have the same kind of magic so I became frustrated, because I can’t make that magic happen, it just has to be there. I started going to other parties with my camera, but never taking it out. Then I started just not taking it at all. That was weird, because often times I’d get ask, where’s the camera? Sometimes it felt like, hey I’m a person too, you know? I’m not just the quiet guy who takes pictures.
I have no idea what even got me back to film, but I started to miss the sharpness of my 5D and rather than go out and actually buy a 5D and some lenses/flashes, I thought, film is a million times sharper than digital ever will be. (sidenote: try out the Foveon X3 sensor)
A few months prior I had bought some film and actually rode around taking some pictures, but I just didn’t get the same vibe I did with digital. I was a lot more afraid of actually firing the shutter than before. Digital really makes it too easy to screw up, fix, re-shoot. Film, you don’t see until you develop it, so it’s important to take notes and learn from that. So what, you say? People shoot film all the time! Yeah, I know you’re right, but there’s still something that’s scary about it once you’re exposed to a world that doesn’t follow the same rules.
I’ve been writing this entry for like… 3 hours I feel like. I keep getting sidetracked with work. So my apologies if this seems all over the place.
I’ve gotten myself a used Nikon F6 that I absolutely love.. with a 50mm f/1.4 attached most of the time. That’s what I shoot most stuff with, but I’ve even started using it at parties. It’s a bit different though, being unable to shoot, realize oops I need more ambient light, open aperture up a stop and reshoot. I need faster slide film, to make my flashes use less power and keep shutter speeds average so I can still get good subject lighting, with plenty of ambient light, without the huge light streaks.
What the hell is the point of this entry? I don’t really know, I just started asking myself recently, how did I even get here? Where do I want to go?
I want to go where the film is. Until digital fixes moire/softness and starts behaving like film, I’m staying put right here. That’s what you’ll see here. Film. 35mm, 6×7, maybe some large format if I ever get around to acquiring a large format. It probably won’t be a lot of party stuff, but things will be interesting nonetheless, I promise. If it’s not.. tell me. I love feedback, positive or negative. It helps me learn.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you, and present you with one more image.
I love that image. Shot with my Nikon n90s, Velvia 50.
When I was trying to look something up related to work in my gmail, I couldn’t believe my eyes… someone had found my light meter! I quickly emailed back and then realized there was a number there so I called and this wonderful woman answered the phone and I meekly said “Hey, I’m uh calling about my lost light meter I posted about on craigslist.” She quickly said “Yes! I have your light meter!” and so we worked out the shipping details and that was that. I received an email from her later that night telling me what model it was, just so I could be sure that it was mine. You never know, someone else could’ve lost one as well.. though I’d hope no one was as careless as I was that night. I want to extend to most gracious thank you I can to a stranger who was so kind as to return an item that was found. You could’ve kept it for yourself, gave it to a friend, sold it for a decent chunk of change to a camera store, but no you did the right thing. Thank you, Pascale. I hope the favor is returned to you if you’re ever in need.
