It's An Oldie Where I Come From

The Sleepies

It's a shame they don't allow smoking in bars. It's a shame that smoke machines are probably worse than cigarette smoke.


The Knockdowns

Also, happy birthday Corin Tucker! Please come back to us!

Motion To Previous Question

It seems that I remembered how to do things correctly and now I want to shoot with film more often. What's that about hubris? Real scans WILL BE DONE, but that WILL take a while. Gimme a week or two.

For those who come in through the front door on the Blog, the rest of them are here and there will be more going up shortly.

Brute Force Works Sometimes

So my refrigerator died, which is a dumb way to start a post about concert pictures. Anyway, my refrigerator died which means that I had to clean it out so the little men who took it away would not hurt themselves before bringing in the NEW refrigerator. In my cleaning I found fifteen or so rolls of long-since expired Fujipan 400 and I, never being one to leave an expensive stone unrolled (or whatever), decided to shoot Fiasco's goodbye show at Market Hotel.

Long story short, I realized I should probably do a clip test because God-knows how long I've had that film in the fridge and who knows how well it's held up. Plus I have no idea what I'm doing in general (fun fact!).

This is the clip test. Scans of the real deal to come soon. Or not. I have to shoot my brother's wedding so that will take up a lot of time.

Another Retroactive Post to June 24, 2007

The one thing I always liked about the prairie is the way the weather patterns shift minute to minute. We landed in Denver just as a summer storm was passing through and the tailing end of it made one of the weirder sunsets I'd seen in years. We walked outside after drinks (martinis) at the Cruise Room in the Oxford Hotel and it was like someone had put a Tobacco Filter on the world.

Neko Case, 4/6/06, Webster Hall

Even as I tool around with the new 5D, I'm still trolling through my negatives -- the recent ones -- and re-scanning them myself. As with anything worth doing right, it's best to do it yourself, and it's sort of astonishing just how lousy the lousy low-res lab scans are when compared to a high(er)-res scan done to your parameters. I'd written off these pictures from last April (April 6, 2006) as an example of poor lab-processing wisked together with my rustiness with film stocks, but further noodling shows them to be basically what I intended. Of course, I always say that it's no longer whether my pictures 'come out' or not, just whether they're 'any good' and as I struggle for constancy it's nice to find that I've kept true to that idea of goodness winning out over a base-level outcome.

I've linked to this post and this version of the picture off the Flickr site because my aversion to having larger images swiped or manipulated is suddenly less important than having the image seen at a viewable size. The idea of a proper viewing distance isn't new, and I'm discovering that dimensions 500px by "X"px at 150 dpi aren't going to get the job done, even at a viewing distance of 1'-2' on a computer monitor. Add 'Vanity' to the post labels.

Lesser Koodoo and Mountain Nyala

Lesser Koodoo


Mountain Nyala


This is an experiment in webtraffic (made up of bad science). Thank you for visiting. The Nyala is hosted on the Daddy Site and the Koodoo is hosted on Flickr
.

I've Been Holding Out On You

So the gallery that was my one best (easiest) shot at a show was passively interested, so for the time being the fate of the Museum Project (lame working title) is in my hands... and I don't know what that means. I have a good 40 or 50 photos laying around that I was withholding for exclusivity's sake, holding off Flickr and the Daddy Site until I got word back and now that I have the word I have, I'm sort of torn as to whether I should unleash them all or not. An alternative to a show involves self-publishing, which is something I have a similar level of advising-access, but also a similar limit to help that that implies.

There is no conclusion to this thought at present.

Bringing a Camera to Knife Fight, 3/17/07

I finally got around to seeing Knife Fight live after many years of broken promises and late-night cancellations due to late night calls for work the next day. They played Union Hall (no link, see previous entry) which I had been to in a drunk capacity, but not in a music show capacity and I can't say that I enjoyed it (the venue; Knife Fight is AWESOME) -- too-low lights caked in red and blue gells making white-balancing a motherfucker to figure out. I did get to fiddle around with remote flash placement, an example seen here,



The flash was propped up haphazardly on the stacks, and I might try it again with two next time, but it'll depend on the venue. There were also low-hanging speedrails that I could have mounted a unit on if I had packed a maffer or similar. Something to think about carrying around in the future. More on Flickr

My life is about to get heavier. As per multiple friends, I'm going for the 5D. As per examples of the quality of the ASA at 3200 posted on Flickr, it's really a no-brainer.

These Are (Still) Powers

So got the film back after switching labs, and I'm disappointed with the results. Poor scan quality (looking at the negatives there's clearly more information there), and some of them had hypo-stains drooled all over them. To be fair, the little man behind the counter said they would be low res scans... but still a capital "M," Major, captial "B," Bummer. So the side-by-side comparisons might not be too worthwhile. Project abandoned.

I wonder though, what they process B&W with because I remember getting very nice, soft results with Ye Old Art School Standby D-76.



We'll try again this week with some Ilford ASA 3200 when Knife Fight plays Union Hall on Saturday night. No hyperlink to Union Hall. If you don't know where it is then...

Those Are Not Powers; These Are Powers

More from your new favorite band: These Are Powers at Tonic on 3/8/07. I should be able to do some nice side-by-sides once the film portion comes back from Duggal (I switched labs after Baboo fucked up again).



Most exciting was a successful Gordon Parks moment:



I was looking for an example of the zoom 'n' shoot that he did to link to, but I couldn't find one. Oh well. More of these on Flickr.

Ironic Photos of Monticello New York Kennel Club Dog Show, Secaucus, NJ, 2007

This is another series that came about from a work situation, and the pictures I took might hint at my frame of mind more so than I'd like to make public. I speak of course about my great dislike of most people and fondness for animals, who are of course innocents in all of the nonsense of this world. And at the dog show, both my likes and dislikes collided in spectacular fashion.

There's a Bresson quote about a connection that needs to be made between "...the eye and the heart" and while it may be true, the question is what I see in my heart when I take something like this:



Bresson and Avedon and Penn and Edward Steichen and all the other great photographers had and have a great fondness for the people of this world and the connection to their place in it is what made and makes them great. My distrust and distaste for people shows through, I think, and I wonder if it holds me back creatively. Suze (see previous entry here), in one of her finer moments said that I can't take pretty pictures of people, that I took 'warts 'n' all' pictures and that my inability to do an unselfconciously flattering portrait was a great talent that I should embrace. It's all well and good, I suppouse, to be gifted (if true) with a predisposition to recognizing ugliness or some God-awful truth about humanity, but it doesn't really sell. Even Natchwey sees something beautiful in the struggle. I don't know if I do.

And back to my previous thoughts about the Flickr web-hit flow of traffic. Assume for a minute that I take unflattering pictures as a rule and that someday I am great at it -- I wonder if someone will see these pictures, and know a person in them and understand that I take unflattering pictures. Or if they'll see them, and ask they be taken down because of it.

Bad Things Happen In Threes

Dominique



I've been on this kick for a while now, possibly just to make myself feel responsible when it comes to editing my stuff -- restrict it to a 3-image set. This gesture is empty and pointless and gets me into trouble when I do event coverage and I give the client three times as many selects as they really need... and they decide they want them all. Anyway, there are two more for this set on the Flickr site.

Back to the subject at hand -- I remember one of my professors (whose opinion I still trust) mentioning that one of my short films was 'shot spot-on, but... I don't know about your pouty friends in it.' Now in their defense I'll claim that it wasn't that my friends were particularly pouty but rather that I shot and directed them poorly. Then there are the subjects you can't direct, like this one, that you can wind up and let go.