Dektol in the Sandbox: I <3 Photography

i'm trying to develop my tech abilities a little more, which is tough since i've never been particularly tech-savvy. always been fine w/composition, which occasionally makes up for it.

I like that son

using the 'amateur' thing to play the pro huh

re: spooling disasters etc., I now have a fair number of, say, misloaded rolls, or rolls where I set the flash sync speed wrong, shots that were just way off (focus, etc.) and these things all used to just KILL ME, but by now it's not really much sweat. Having thought I shot a roll on a trip some months back only to realize the camera was empty, it just kind of didn't even matter much to me anymore. If the film isn't loaded, or I ruin a roll somehow (oh yeah, also through disastrous processing at some local shops a while back!) it's almost like no big deal. I never saw the thing anyway so I've got nothing to miss. If a beloved negative went missing or something though that would be different. I guess I figure all of my shots might as well be disasters until I actually get them scanned.
Plus I get really used to discovering that all of the OMG CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT THAT AMAZING SHOT pictures are generally nothing to write home about, with some exceptions.

PS NICE MIDS!!

thx riv and schlump~

using the 'amateur' thing to play the pro huh

― Never translate German (schlump), Thursday, December 29, 2011 12:21 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha, i deliberately didn't put a comma in there to avoid this

yeah i think its best to just take photos and then wait a while so you forget all the ones you're crossing your fingers for.

I 'finished' that eggleston book - some interesting stuff in the interviews & articles towards the back

-wish I didn't know that it was curated by michael almyreda or w/e his name is - doesn't 'feel' like an eggleston book or at the very least has a different character to it. a lot more 'people' shots, and I think that was intentional, to distance itself from the other egglestone books out
-eggleston majored in painting in college & still paints (hey him and HCB). apparently knows a bit about color theory, probably more than he lets on
-sometimes he shoots the same thing more than once

good book though, I'll have to return to it

yes. p much. there are exceptions. i remember meeting jim jarmusch when i was young & a young man & living in new york & shooting a couple of pics of him & someone taking pics of me talking to him (i wrote my dissertation on him so it seemed like this weird quintessential moment) & them just never printing, i couldn't even work out (because of my backlogue-disorganisation) which roll they'd been on, my olympus would sometimes jar on 24 & shred the rest of a roll. & that was sad. but it just sorta isn't the same thing. i wrote down an index from memory of one of the recent rolls i lost & that exists even if the film doesn't, it's just different. & to go an extra philosophical mile, anything i shoot after a mis-fired role wouldn't exist had i spooled that one correct, everything would be different, so you deal with what you've got. people are always like WELL GUESS IT'S TIME TO GO DIGITAL when i lament some classically-analogue failure but its limits & risks are cool with me, it's just a different thing to the documentation i'd be pulling with digital.

OMG CAN'T BELIEVE I GOT THAT AMAZING SHOT

ha, yes.

looked through yr recent flickr stuff CV, real good, these guys-w-ties are so good, they're a series in themselves.

ha, i deliberately didn't put a comma in there to avoid this

― river wolf, Thursday, December 29, 2011 6:27 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

i still jumped all over you on it, it happened. have you been shooting, btw, i only worked out your sandbox disguise identity a couple of days ago & wondered.

-sometimes he shoots the same thing more than once

sitting here tearing pages out of william eggleston's guide right now

I specifically chose to go to a digital showing of mission impossible 4 today instead of a film one

*impales self*

gah no, i haven't :(

i mean, i've got a few rolls from the m6 that need developing, but i haven't really been anywhere or doing anything that i thought merited documentation. need to be better about a) bringing the cam with all the time b) being more fearless about whipping it out (!!) and c) getting that shit developed in a timely fashion

hah I just developed 5 rolls yesterday from the summer that I had forgotten about

still would love developing stuff (almost asked for that for xmas) and a scanner

I have three rolls of medium-format film and a roll of Tri-X on my desk that have been waiting for me to build up enough film to send off for development.

I actually think backlog is good - the Instagram/Flickr/etc. 'need to post something on the reg' is not necessarily the best. I mean, you wouldn't mail a curator or gallerist one print at a time as you did something, you'd amass a body of work and display it. Better not to die with thousands of undeveloped rolls (ala Winogrand or Vivian Maier), but some space between what you did and what you're seeing on the light table/in prints is not a bad thing.

Discovered an A+++++ meter app for the iPhone - Fotometer Pro.

Works like an old Sekonic, essentially, uses the forward facing camera for incident readings if you want to. Much better than the other light meter apps I've tried

I am totally envious of everyone's backlog on here. I got way too caught up and now am not in a shooting mood :(

I just wish I had a billion unscanned rolls for the cold winter.

And I hate the pressure to always be putting pictures online but I am in THRALL TO THE THRILL. It's about time to dip into the boring stuff.

still would love developing stuff (almost asked for that for xmas) and a scanner

― river wolf, Thursday, December 29, 2011 6:40 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

yes, psyched about getting a secondhand scanner but dayo's do-it-yrself instructions are still a kinda carrot on a string i'm thinking of pursuing, maybe next time i'm feeling settled somewhere

And I hate the pressure to always be putting pictures online but I am in THRALL TO THE THRILL.

yeah this is fun. adventures in curating.

http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2011/12/photos-how-much-time-does-the-reality-leave-to-a-dream/

so this is crude and blunt and manipulative but it punches me in all the right places and now I want to cry

http://bremser.tumblr.com/post/14980111410/my-own-favorite-photos-of-2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8McHbjaxpbA

Has anyone seen this? It looks great (You gotta love Joel Sternfeld's hair!)

I'd love to see that. Of course it's also got me wanting to pony up for some Steidl books.

lol I've heard about that. the photographer lives in a little hut for like 3 months while they go through the proofing process.

the steidl books I have are, well, magnificient

please can we have I Love Photography: fuck the midtones

lol I was just thinking that would be an excellent motto

jeff wall! was trying to remember his name along w/ gregory crewdson and philip-lorca dicorcia

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7160/6602205383_f3dbf49d0b_z.jpg
Untitled by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

amazon increased the price of neopan 400 from $3 to $6

:(

There were rumors it was getting discontinued, but I dunno what's up with that. Maybe Fuji let production lapse to make price increases more palatable.

I ordered 25 rolls from Midwest Photo Exchange for cheap and they were supposed to be recently expired. But they ran out of the expired stuff before shipping mine, took a month to get more, etc., so I got a steal on film that's still good 'til late 2013.

I need to buy film again

yeah B&W film stores forever, if frozen

can I just

http://i.imgur.com/QtXfu.jpg

<3

I think dumb fashion collaborations have reached a new low:
http://www.rubyhornet.com/carhartt-x-powershovelqblackbird-fly-camera/