STEPH (& WHY I'VE KEPT PROJECTS A MYSTERY)

Steph & I had talked about shooting together for months - I think I have to get used to these things just taking their time, especially when it's purely a creative endeavour. After a good deal of plans falling through, we were able to connect for a brief, unproduced shoot on an unseasonably warm but still chilly day in January, and I was able to FINALLY shoot some medium-format film again. 

I have a problem with talking about the things I'm working on before they're ready to be consumed by the general public. It's something I know I need to work on - I even bought a book about the subject to try to convince myself to be more transparent - but as it stands, I manage my obsessiveness towards perfection and the crushing feeling of not doing work that is satisfactory to me by not talking about it - I've done it with my music, my photography, anything I do for/by myself that's remotely creative. I don't mean anything by it when it happens, it's just how I've dealt with it. If I'm honest, most times, the results tend to prove the cagey methods unnecessary. It's just very difficult for me to know that before hand. So I sometimes don't promote anything I'm working on. 

Anyway, enough about that. The shoot was cool. I can't remember the name of the location, but it's an abandoned warehouse (factory?) in Philadelphia that Steph suggested - not my aesthetic generally speaking, but a great location nonetheless, albeit cold and pretty spooky. I brought 2 cameras, my Pentax 645n with the 80mm 2.8, and the massive Pentax 67 with the 105mm 2.4 (my back was killing me!), and a grab bag of random color film:

• Portra 160
• Fuji 160C (expired)
• Kodak Ektar 100

We wandered through the space for about 2 hours, generally following the sunlight, and I shot as much as I could. Pentax glass is so good. I shot almost everything at ƒ4.0 and up, with the exception of some wide open stuff in the darkest areas we visited. The color rendition and sharpness are fantastic, and so forgiving, seeing how I wasn't being extremely precise with my focusing for speed's sake. The shoot wasn't hiccup free thought - I was very worried that I wouldn't get anything out of it, actually. It wasn't until I finished the roll of portra and removed it that I realized I'd shot the entire roll at 400. Not a huge thing, but color film can be very testy if you try to push it. I'd forced myself into that situation. The rest of the film I shot at box speed, but as we were losing light quickly, I ended up losing quite a few shots to camera shake blur. 

The 645n's mirror started sticking after every shot, which was very disconcerting. I wasn't sure that I wouldnt have a roll of extremely overexposed shots, so my confidence was zapped at that point. I'm still not sure what was up with that, and it's still doing it - I'll chalk it up to being an old, second-hand camera that I probably could stand to replace - but the shots came back okay. So far. I still have a roll to develop, but maybe everything worked out. 

We happened across another photographer, Israel, doing some UrbEx stuff - exchanged information and what not, and he was kind enough to share a great location on the other side of the building, in the middle of an overpass bridge, complete with broken glass, a desk and chair. We went searching for it and when it appeared, it was like a creepy vista. Very cool indeed. 

Steph was great - her work that I've been privy to is fantastic, so even though we'd never worked together before and had no pre-existing chemistry, I was confident that if I managed to do one thing correctly, we'd have at least one keeper. She was a trooper too, it couldn't have been more than 30º inside the building, in the sunlight. Hoping to have the opportunity to shoot her again. 

Overall, it just felt really good to shoot again, especially now that I see the results and had a few pleasant surprises. In spite of second-guessing myself every step of the way, and stifling myself about it. lol. It is what it is, as they say. 

*shrug*

Short Journeys.

For the last few weeks, I've been working on a few projects with my partners Taj and Rashid, under the auspices of our collective creative agency, WJS Creative. One of our ongoing projects is a photo/interview-based profile series we’re calling Short Journeys.

With Short Journeys, we interview really dope and interesting people about their life and experiences through the lens of travel. It’s been a really fun adventure so far, hitting the ground guerrilla style and getting up close and personal with some awesome individuals, figuring out workarounds for the different locations we’re working in, and having a great time along the way. It’s put me in the position to be shooting pretty regularly, and I’ve tried to make the most of it - I’m primarily shooting medium format film, and I’ve shot every negative size I have in my possession, 6x4.5, 6x6, and 6x7.

(Maybe this year I’ll get my hands on a big old 4x5 and really get crazy. That would be epic.)

This project has really tested my abilities as a film photographer. As of the writing of this post, all of the cameras I’ve been shooting with are big, clunky, manually focusing cameras, only one of them with an actually TTL meter that works - shooting run-and-gun is a substantial task. It’s also a task I brought upon myself, of course - but for the most part I’m enjoying the challenge. I’m hoping that I ultimately get comfortable in these situations; it can only make me a better photographer.

I’m really excited to see this project hit the airwaves; we’ve been producing some pretty fantastic content, and I think it highlights the team's abilities as storytellers, which is what we’re trying to perfect with every move we make. We want that to be our claim to fame, our distinction, our excellence.

Be sure to check out our first Short Journeys post on the awesome photo story platform, Exposure. We’ll be updating pretty regularly - drop us a line to let us know what you think.

*behind the scenes photo by Taj Reid.

On New Work/Pentax 67 First Impressions.

 

Over the past few months, much of my focus has been devoted to trying new things, shooting things that are actually of interest to me, and through those experiments, building a portfolio worth showing to potential clients. As much as I love photography and working with images before, during and after the actual shoot, I’m still very new to the idea of actually being a photographer in the proper sense, and so there’s a lot of guesswork at play in finding out my voice, shooting style, preferences, etc. I’m a gear head for sure, but a large portion of the reality behind my constant GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) is that I’m looking for the right pieces that compliment my nature the best, and help me to produce the images I want to produce. Every step is like a small but integral piece to a very large, unending puzzle.

Most recently, I’ve been spending time organizing shoots with models. This is very new for me and I’m not completely in a comfort-zone with the ask, so it’s been a slow-go, but this part of the process is a skill set I have to get in my pocket.

Along those lines, I took the new Pentax 67  (along with my EOS3 and 7D) out to Penn’s Landing last weekend and had a quick shoot with Rebecca, a model I made contact with on Model Mayhem.

The Pentax, in my opinion, handles great. It is definitely heavy+huge, definitely old school, but it’s a great camera with its own charm and quirks - and the negatives it produces are just beautiful. The copy I own came with a non-metered prism, so I had to use a separate meter (a Sekonic L-318B cine light meter that works in shutter priority mode only) and pray. Most of the shots came out beautifully. These are low-res scans and even at the low-res, you can see how sharp the 90mm 2.8 lens is. I also love the small depth of field; I didn’t shoot wider than ƒ5.6 (it was extremely sunny, I typically shot at ƒ8 and above).

I’m going to commit to this camera for most of my personal work going forward, and keep the 7D and EOS3 handy as backups.

I enjoyed shooting the black & white, especially Ilford's awesome Delta 100, but now I'm really excited to see how the lens reproduces color, so I got my hands on a pro pack of Kodak Portra 400 that I'm going to try to blaze through.

'Til then!