In Situ - Shane Great

In 2005, years before I first picked up a camera, a photographer + visual artist named Raph released a photo book on Ginkgo Press - Behind The Beat: Hip Hop Home Studios. I was a budding beat maker at the time, still learning my way around sample chopping and sequencing, and in the total fanboy stage of many of the producers that were featured in this book, including my all-time favorite producer, J Dilla—so it was a must have, as it allowed me to peer behind the curtain of my heroes, so to speak.

Raph’s photographs, shot in medium format on a Hasselblad, served as a double-edged source of inspiration for me. This was one of the first works that aligned with my interests as a music-lover and maker - maybe outside of Francis Wolf’s Blue Note album covers - where I took notice of the photography. Suffice it to say that Behind The Beat was one of the first projects that piqued my interest in making photographs. As began to learn the medium, I told myself that one day I’d approach this concept with my own camera. 

Fast forward to earlier this year. I’d been teasing out the idea of photographing creative friends in their workspaces and studios for some months - finally attempting to follow through with the inspiration from Behind The Beat - and I worked up the nerve to start reaching out to people, getting them interested in the idea, and setting up dates to shoot. The first person I reached out to was the homie Shane Great, a brilliant producer, and to my delight, he was down for it. After a few months of scheduling conflicts, we locked in dates and I made it out to Jersey to shoot him. 

Shane is soft-spoken, thoughtful, and kind. He speaks glowingly, and often, of his fianceé. He pauses his beat-making session to take a call from his mom, who lives close by. I quip that he’s a good son. He laughs and responds “She’s the only one I got.” He’s a gear nerd like me, and a dope photographer in his own right. We reminisce on the first time we made acquaintances, trade hip-hop war stories, and geek out about film cameras.

Shane’s production kit is a model of simplicity - a Technics SL1200 turntable flanked by two MPCs, an MPC 2500 and an MPC One, an SP404, and an SSL 12 audio interface. The monitors of choice are Yamaha HS7s.  Behind him is a small but choice selection of vinyl. He clearly squeezes every bit of juice out of his setup - he played banger after banger for me, and I had constant thoughts of “I wish I made this” in my head. 

My time with Shane reminded me of the importance of getting out of the creative siloes I often place myself in. In a few short hours, I felt more inspired and alive creatively than in many months prior. Creative fellowship is massive for me - the struggles I have with doing it notwithstanding.

Over my career, I've developed a deep love for environmental photography, especially of people in their workspaces/studios. I’m setting up a few more of these to shoot before the end of the year and will be branching out to artists outside of the music space too.

Check out the rest of our shoot below.

KILL SCREEN ISSUE 09

It's finally here!

There's been so much I shot over the past year or so that I haven't been able to share, and I've been eagerly anticipating the moment when that embargo would be lifted, in a sense. I've been working alongside Jamin Warren and the awesome team at Kill Screen to help relaunch the print edition of their magazine. After shooting the first round of game developer portraits last year in LA and San Francisco (some of which would eventually make it into a digital-only pre-launch issue) we hunkered down for the official relaunch print issue. 

In addition to what I shot in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I would also find myself in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Montreal and Seattle, as well as a few pit-stops in New York City. The travel has been one of the best parts of the project, even though I'm typically in and out of a city without much time to sightsee. I'm always meeting someone new, seeing something new... I'll enjoy that aspect of the work as long as this partnership lives on. 

When my personal copies of Issue 9 were delivered, I tore open the box like a little kid on Christmas. I have to give another round of props to Kill Screen's designer Justin Kielbasa, the design is incredible. Being a magazine nerd already, to have my work featured in a publication that I would probably lose my marbles to happen upon is pretty special. 

Here's a few shots I hastily grabbed in a coffee shop - apologies for their muddiness.

Kill Screen is already hard at work pulling together assets for Issue 10 - one I'm really excited about as it will feature some of my favorite photography to date. I can't say enouh about the opportunity they've given me - a long-time goal of mine was to be shooting for print magazines eventually, but I never thought it would come so soon, I certainly didn't imagine I would have the freedom to be creative like I do here (I mean, I'm shooting all of this stuff on medium-format film) and I certainly didn't think I would be a relaunched high-end magazine's exclusive photographer. It's unique indeed. Speak it into the air, folks.

Looking forward to the next step of this journey with Kill Screen. 

Get your copy here.  

Artifact Uprising Unboxing.

Artifact Uprising snuck onto my radar sometime in the last 2 years; I can't remember whether it was a result of their partnership with my mobile image-editing suite of choice, VSCO, or of their own accord, but I thought it was a great idea and mentally bookmarked it for later. As a photographer learning my way in the digital age and taking most of my photos with my phone, having images printed just isn't a regular part of the process. I'd love it to be but the expense of quality printing make a regular practice of it quite cost prohibitive. Artifact Uprising has developed a service (complete with an app) that is built with the idea of bringing digital images from mobile devices and computers, into the real physical world - with relative simplicity. From their website:

LEAVE A LEGACY

we believe in the story that is archived for future generations. we believe in moving stories off your device and into your life.

I decided to give the service a spin, using a mix of mobile images and film scans I've compiled over the years.  AU has many printing options available, from more gift-oriented sizes and quality to actual art-quality prints (which I'm actually most interested in). They also claim to use 100% environmentally friendly, post-consumer waste for their products, and appear to be very transparent about who they source from. I'm not the most environment-conscious person on the planet by any stretch of the imagination, but when a company is really committed to that end, it's definitely confidence-building. 

I placed an order for 25 prints, picking random photographs from my trips to Berlin and Copenhagen, as well as my Lessondary shoot, some random portraits,  and a few shots from my two trips to visit my grandparents.  The delivery came today and I'm not ashamed to admit that I was geekily excited. For starters, the packaging was clean and well-designed (thanks for the precedent, Apple) so I was already relatively impressed. 

Firstly, let me say this - as I described earlier, having physical copies of my work is not something I'm used to, so to see and hold these has a novelty to it that impossible to deny.  As great as a photograph can look on a screen, I'm of the school of thought that photographs are best represented in a physical state. And as the photographer, there's absolutely a unique pride in seeing your work in print. It almost makes an honest critique of the materials and print quality hard to do.  

I love how almost everything came out. As a caveat, there are all kinds of pre-printing considerations that pros do with their images to really make them look great in print, and I'm not well-versed to that end, so any niggles or issues I might have may have been embedded into the files I sent in. I noticed that blacks/shadows aren't reproduced super faithfully - detail seems like it can get a bit lost, at least with the process used for these 5x5 prints. My expectations weren't extremely high though, for the aforementioned reasons, and also because shadow detail is just a difficult thing to reproduce accurately - even the paper used can affect the results.

I thought for what this particular option offers the average end-user, though, everything looked great. The stock of the paper isn't super thick but feels sturdy enough to be handled. To have the ability to take a picture on your phone, edit it and then send it away to be printed and delivered to your door is pretty amazing.

What a time to be alive. 

As I said earlier, I'm really testing out different options for printing because I'm interested in selling editioned prints. I'd love to hear back from anybody that actually reads these posts I put up and see if my work would be something people would be interested in investing in! I have to figure out how all of that would even look, but as I've mentioned in my post about Offscreen - having my work printed is a big deal for a number of reasons, one of which is being able to share  with the world.  

Lemme know!

Ahead Of Schedule.

Worst kept secret: I’ve been producing music under the moniker Aeon for about 14 years now, officially.

(sidetone: that’s insane.)

Just under 10 years ago, I was given the blessing of induction into a crew of MCs and producers called the Lessondary; a collective consisting of some of personal favorite MCs and good friends. We’ve been plugging along in subdivisions, as smaller groups and solo acts: Tanya Morgan (Von Pea & Donwill), Ilyas, Che Grand, Elucid, Jermiside, Rob Cave (FKA Spec Boogie), Brickbeats, and myself. There are other, less active members, but the core (and the focus of this post) are the aforementioned gents. Over the last 10 years, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of providing sound beds for all of these guys, for one-offs, solo and group projects. Fast forward to now, where (under the auspices and guiding hand of Jermiside and HipNOTT founder Kevin Nottingham) we’ve assembled as a full on posse for an entire album. 

Here's one of my favorite songs that I produced, Fool Proof Plan. 

It’s been a long time coming (hence the title of the album) but it’s finally here, it’s real, and we’re super excited to share it with the world. I’ve got a bunch of production contributions on the project. 

In May of 2016, in preparation for the album’s marketing push, we all agreed to hole up in an Airbnb for a weekend and put our noses to the grindstone, shoot some videos, record some music and make some pictures. A dream I’d had for years - ever since I started learning my way around a camera - was to photograph the squad. 

I ended up shooting with my Pentax 67 and my recently-purchased Canon EOS Elan 7. It rained incessantly, so between the work going on inside (we shot about 5 videos maybe, and recorded a song, practically simultaneously) and the weather, the window to pull guys away and do photo shoots was pretty small. For all but a few of the Pentax shots, I used Tri-X, rounding it off with an expired roll of Fuji 160C. There was a little open-air alley/courtyard situation enclosed by the building we were staying in - gave me a little depth and framing options, so we did a quick and dirty shoot outside. Overall I’m really pleased with the shots. Would’ve loved to get some color stuff in there as well, as well as group shots (and a shot of Brickbeats) but we did good for the time, and some shots ended up looking pretty epic, thanks to the unceasing wonders of medium format film. 

The real goal is to document the squad on tour. There’s a really interesting visual story in the goings on behind really smart, really talented, criminally underrated guys who’ve learned the beauty of making music that appeals to the music-lover in ourselves. Especially the fact that we’ve been working with one another for so long. There’s a camaraderie present that can’t be manufactured. I hope that before long I can be a fly on the wall and really document an overseas tour.

We’ll see.  

You can view the the full shoot posted in my Portfolio. Check out Ahead of Schedule on iTunes, Spotify, and Bandcamp. 

Offscreen Issue 13

I've been meaning to do a full post about this for months now - I think I got my copy in the mail sometime in March. Better late than never, right?

So, the opportunity to shoot for Offscreen was very unexpected. I'm not really sure how the editor, Kai Brach, usually selects photographers for each issue, but I was fortunate in that Jamin - the subject of this interview - and I had worked together numerous times previously, and he was familiar enough with my work to recommend me. Also fortunate that Kai was down. 

The brief was pretty simple. Offscreen has a fairly standardized aesthetic for their photography, the only real directive was to match that as closely as possible, keep things as ambient/naturally lit as possible and get him in as many different scenarios as possible. 

I only decided that photography was going to become my primary focus a few years ago. As the possibilities with that career decision started to crystallize, I realized that a huge rite of passage for any photographer is to get their work in print - especially now, as digital mediums tend to rule the day. You can certainly have a full career in photography without having your work reproduced in a physical medium, but it's an achievement I think we all want under our belt. I didn't know how it'd come about, definitely didn't know when, but it was a goal I set in front of myself. To have it happen in one of my favorite mags, a magazine I've been reading since it's inception (2012), was the icing on the cake. 

I've also been doing a lot of photography for Killscreen's print magazine as well - really looking forward to seeing and sharing all of that. These first few forays into portraiture for print are still about me defining my style, so I'm really hungry to do more, and get it honed down a bit. 

Next up, I gotta shoot some covers. I have a kill-list of magazines I'd like to shoot for, and a lot of what I'll be working on in the coming months culminates in a big marketing push, to get my work out in front of these publications and see if I can't make clients out of them. 

Baby steps!

Family.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on the subject over the past few weeks. A lot of things have happened that have challenged my notions - and made me reconsider the importance - of family.  My beautiful grandmother passed on March 25th, 2016, somewhat unexpectedly.

There's obviously a rush of emotions that overwhelm you when a loved one (especially one as close as I was to my grandmother) dies, but the nagging one was regret. 

Of course.

I began planning to visit my grandparents in South Carolina a good while ago, I'd guess 2012 or so - around the time I got serious about photography and started thinking in terms of projects - but I dragged my feet constantly about committing to buying a ticket, prepping the cameras and buying the film, and making the trip down. I'm not sure exactly what made me finally do it, but in 2014, I got the rare combination of a burst of energy, an infusion of funds and a break in an otherwise busy schedule, and took a train in late April to Amtrak's Kingstree Station in South Carolina. 

I had no real idea as to what I'd shoot - my loose plan was to just take some medium-format portraits of my grandparents, try to get some photos inside the house and maybe take some trips to places that had become familiar to me in my numerous visits to the south, especially in the '90s. My grandparents moved (back) there from Philadelphia in 1990, not long after my grandfather retired. They were both from the area and that was home for them; and as my siblings, cousins and aunts & uncles always had maintained a close relationship and contact with them, it wasn't unusual to go visit and meet up in the summers, for as many weeks as my dad could get off of work. Sometimes we'd stay back when my dad had to return to Philadelphia. Certain sights and familial landmarks became staples during those visits.  For example, my great-great grandmother (1893-1988) Laura's home was a place we'd visit often, and I remember running around chasing chickens in the back, avoiding sitting in the house 'cause it was boring. I didn't understand the immense, unique value that older folks - especially family members - can offer.  I was spending time with a legit ancestor. Someone born before the turn of the century! And she was my blood, my DNA was derived from hers, a living connection to an unfathomable past. Of course, she died when I was 8, so I couldn't be expected to grasp all of this, but man. Some people don't get to meet their great grands. 

There were other places along these lines that I didn't get to photograph, but the center of attention was my grandparents. They - especially my grandmother - were the last real vestige of that ancestral line, because they remembered the way things were, they saw how people from the mid 19th century carried themselves, how they navigated their worlds and managed their lives. They lived so many of those stories, heard even more, and had the keepsakes, heirlooms and photographs to match. Within the last decade, I started recognizing the incredible treasure in them beyond being just a loved one, and I wanted to try to capture some of that. 

Anyway, I got down there, and shot what I could without access to a car. And even though I'm regretful that I didn't get to finish this project with both of my grandparents still living, I'm so thankful that I did make that trip. My grandmother wasn't in the best of health when I visited but she was still able to get around, still trying to wait on me hand and foot ,even though her pockets weren't deep and her energy wasn't what it used to be. My grandparents still got dolled up when I asked them to sit for a quick portrait session for me, my grandmother found her whitest sheet and hung it over the clothesline outside for me to use as a backdrop, and they dressed for the occasion; my grandmother put on her make up, even had on her perfume. lol

They were both a little winded by the end of the session, but we got it in the can. And I'm really grateful for that. I know there's more I wouldve liked to do, photographically and otherwise, on that trip and and all the other trips I hadn't made in the last 15 years, but I have this, and that trip; those moments mean much more than I'd ever hoped they would. For me. 

My grandmother was the griot of the family, for sure. She had endless photo books, pictures of family as far back as 5 generations, and could tell infinite stories - many from personal experience - about them all. During my visit in 2014, most of the time I spent with her during the day was consumed by relating stories, sharing photos and other keepsakes from a time I had very little concept of.  I wish I'd recorded these conversations, some of the details I'm sure to forget. I think she understood that her time was short - she really made an effort to just share.

Sometimes, it takes the crushing impact of a death to rattle your perspective into shape. Being around that much family (for the funeral), seeing all those expressions of love for this person, who she was, how deeply she affected every one, watching my nephew read her obituary on the way to the funeral and get excited to see his own name mentioned as one of her surviving family, a picture started to paint itself of how powerful a strong family can be. Not just to face up against outside forces, but to deal with internal struggles, to always have a home. A haven. A place where when you enter, you are welcomed by unspoken love. And I haven't really been considering continuing that, until now. 

I don't mean to prescribe this as a necessity for everyone, but I had these feelings for a reason, and I did a lot of thinking about them on the way back to Philadelphia. Every part of my family needs more attention, from siblings, to parents and my remaining grandparents, cousins, nephews, all parts of the family strata, and of course, the family I'd like to have in the future. 

It's fresh so I'm thinking deeply, but the feelings are there and I can't ignore them. And maybe that's a final gift from my grandmother - a gift of clarity. 

I'd planned to return to South Carolina in the weeks leading up to her death, as she'd fallen somewhat ill. She texted me two weeks prior to tell me she'd fallen, and I got really anxious to get down there, but I didn't make it. It's funny- in retrospect, any reservations you had only end up looking like procrastination when the worst happens. My biggest regret is that she never got to see the pictures I made of her. Almost no one's seen them, really. I had grandiose plans of doing a gallery show of some sort around them, and that may still happen, but that was really me losing sight of my original purpose. Giving myself reasons to not share the work. 

Anyway - above is some of what I shot on my trip in 2014, and my most recent trip in March of 2016. 

Love and miss you dearly, Grandmom. 

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*

OFFSCREEN MAGAZINE

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So, in the fall of 2015, I was commissioned to photograph a colleague of mine, Jamin Warren (founder of Killscreen and host of the PBS Gameshow), for one of my favorite print mags - Offscreen. If you're not familiar, Offscreen is a print-only publication that focuses on and documents internet and technology entrepreneurs, designers and other creatives. So glad to finally be able to talk about it! 

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one of my photos of Jamin for Offscreen.

I highly recommend grabbing a copy - not just because my work is in this issue. The folks offscreen highlights are interesting, talented and typically would go unnoticed otherwise. I love the culture that creator Kai Brach has developed around the magazine. He has a blog where he's super transparent about the ins and outs of publishing Offscreen, touching on such topics as how he makes and spends his money, and problems with diversity among the people he features. It's also a great testament to what can be done with an extremely small team, he basically puts the magazine together by himself, with the help of contributors, of course. It's also really nicely designed.

All in all, it's a really great opportunity for me, and I'm definitely motivated to get my work into more of my favorite magazines - I've started on a kill list of mags I'd like to shoot for. Gotta dream big. 

Happy 2016!

WEDDING IN TOBAGO

So, in June I shot a wedding. While I've always avoided weddings as they're not really my thing, this particular opportunity jumped out to me for a few reasons. Obviously, an expenses-covered trip to Tobago is really hard to turn down. Aside from that, though - I've been considering doing destination weddings for a few months now, the opportunity to travel and make compelling images was something I hadn't originally given thought to. 

The wedding was really beautiful. I think when you have a good looking couple, a good looking party and a great location (like a Caribbean island), it's pretty hard to screw up. We did have one unexpected issue of an endless deluge of algae from a nearby country that basically rendered the actual beaches where we were useless, but I think we were still able to make the most of the situation. 

A few things:

• I really enjoyed shooting the party getting ready for the wedding. They were kind enough to grant me all access, and I got some cool images of the bride and groom in prep mode, the super calm, leisurely (and timely) guys and the frenetic, down to the wire girls. lol. That portion of the process is rife with story telling opportunities, which is what I'm drawn to in general. 
• Traveling to Tobago is a crap-shoot. This was my first and only time (come to think of it, I remember the last time I was in Trinidad, it was on the table but there ended up being a reason we couldn't) but sitting in an airport for nearly 12 hours waiting for a standby flight was torturous. And that wasn't even the worst travel experience of the weekend. Not complaining at all, though. 
• Shooting a wedding is a long day, physically grueling. I can't describe how hard I slept that night. 
• I didn't get to shoot any film. I brought my Pentax 645n, and plenty of film (Tri-X, some expired Fuji 160C, some Portra and some Ektar) but I left the batteries I had just purchased - specifically for this trip - home. Of course, the batteries in the camera died as soon as I tried to autofocus. smh. 

Overall, it was good experience. I shot everything on my 7D with a 135mm/2, 50mm/1.2, and a 16-35mm/2.8, which surprisingly got the most work. I ended up not needing the 135 that much, and with the crop factor of the 7D, the 50 was too close for a lot of the shots I wanted. It was a lifesaver in the lowlight situations, though - especially the reception. 

Ultimately, I definitely warmed a little more to the idea of weddings in general, and certainly am looking forward to my next destination wedding. I'm trying to decide whether to build out another site specifically for wedding photography services or just to add a page here. I'm leaning toward the latter until I have more portfolio material under my belt. 

Photo Book Finds.

One thing that I love doing but haven't posted about here is finding and buying old photography-related books. These could range from essays, technique and theory books, portfolios or monographs, and stuff from any time period - in fact I tend to go toward older books for a number or reasons, not the least of which being that they tend to be the most affordable. 

I find these books almost anywhere, used book shops, "vintage" stores and thrift shops, online - and the great thing about technique, approach and work in photography, is that their soundness will always hold up, no matter the era. Even if old film-related information didn't specifically apply to my style of shooting, the techniques and general practice is largely the same, and one could stand to learn a lot from writers who taught and talked about older, slower processes of photography. 

On a recent visit to a local used book shop on South St. in Philadelphia, I came across these two books (and a third, a biography of Diane Arbus that I opted to eschew to save a few bucks) and had to snatch them up. 

The first is Fashion: Theory, by Carol Di Grappa. Written in 1980, it contains essays and anecdotes of fashion photographers of the time, including a few luminaries like Arthur Elgort, David Bailey and Horst P. Horst, along with selected images from each photographer's archive.

I've only read David Bailey's essay, but have yet to see any theory aside from a few recommendations he has about what type of models to work with and when to shoot on the beach, but nonetheless it's interesting and something uninitiated fashion photographer wannabes like me wish existed but have trouble finding, especially regarding photographers of years past. It's definitely a cool little addition to the collection. 

The second is called 100 Studies of The Figure, the late John Rawlings' safely-titled 1951 book of nude figure studies. John Rawlings was a famous photographer for Condé Nast, featuring prominently in fashion for Vogue Magazine in the 40's and 50's. As I've been increasingly curious about shooting nudes myself, the book jumped out to me for that reason alone. What sealed the deal for me, however, was his totally unnecessary but graciously-included detailed notes on each image, including camera, lens and film used, developer and printing chemicals used, and time of day photographed. I don't think I've ever seen that included in a photobook that wasn't intended for purely educational purposes, definitely not an art book. But I like it. His decision to share his technical data in an otherwise purely artistic endeavor gives me the feeling he felt the way I do about photography, and was a total nerd to boot - just like me. 

I really enjoyed reading Rawlings' introduction - when I think of 1951, I don't imagine a general American society that was particularly supportive of works like these, although I couldn't say for sure - but the fact that he gets right to the point and spends most of the introduction dealing with the controversial nature of human nudity and morality would suggest that I'm not far off the mark. He pushes against the prevailing notions of morality and quickly does what he can to liberate the proceeding images from any unnecessary baggage the moral atmosphere of the 50s may have otherwise wedged between the reader and an appreciation of his work. It's dope. 

The photographs themselves look terrible - although this could easily be due to the book's age -  but the compositions are nice and I enjoy his approach. I won't pretend to be a photo book critic at all, but I've seen some really sub par photographic figure studies, so I do have some perspective. He works with one model for the entire book, and I think there's something to be said for that, though I'm not sure what, exactly. Mostly I would imagine that a prolonged visual conversation between photographer and subject allows for more to be seen and shown, no pun intended. Spending time with your subject and developing a working relationship would seem to be the preferable path, especially with something as intimate as nude photography. 

I'm rambling now. Just wanted to share some photo book finds, finally. 

100 More Years of Analog Film.

There's always a few really amazing projects you can get behind on Kickstarter. 

This morning, while skimming through my YouTube subscriptions, I heard about the Ferrania Film Kickstarter via Ted Forbes' really good podcast, The Art Of Photography, which I've talked about here before briefly.

The Ferrania Film project is an awesome attempt to jump start an old film production facility in Italy that used to make great film stocks for still and motion picture, including a lot of classic Italian films like Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, and Pier Paolo Pasolini for many of his films. In the years proceeding 2007, the company slowly went into production decline and ultimately laid off most of their film production team in 2012.

Fast forward to 2013 and the production line was acquired by new company FILM Ferrania s.r.l, which rehired old Ferrania technicians and took over their equipment and buildings. Here's where their Kickstarter campaign...kicks in.

This is a really cool project to get behind, and will likely be the first Kickstarter project I've ever pledged to. Film's future is very much up in the air, and a lot of people whose opinions I trust speak very matter-of-factly about its eventual extinction. As an avid film shooter who wants to shoot film for the rest of my life, such an eventuality would make me very, very sad.  I'm sure I speak for many people shooting now, and those photographers and film makers yet to come along. Its kind of an imperative for us to support this project and do all we can to keep ideas like this alive. 

Photographer of the Day - Richard Avedon

 

I have a ton of favorite photographers. They range across a wide swath of disciplines from fashion to journalism to celebrity portraiture. The one photographer who's constantly at the top of my list is the late Richard Avedon, who I believe should be on the short list of the greatest American artists of our time.

I grabbed the recently-released Avedon Archives app from the app store, produced by the Richard Avedon Foundation. The app is great; it gives you a bird's eye view of the breadth of the highlights of Avedon's work - it's really amazing to see. I've mentioned him a few times on my blog but I realize his story may not be well known outside of photographic circles, so I wanted to take a little time to talk about him here.

I think if there was any one photographer's work and career I could replicate moment for moment, it'd be Avedon's. He was able to maintain a signature that transcended technique, and apply it fluidly across a wide range of photographic genres. I especially love his fashion and celebrity work, but he was equally brilliant working outside of those contexts, as can be seen in his book In The American West.

Richard Avedon's career spanned from the '40s all the way to 2004, the year he died. Some of the most iconic images of some of the most iconic people of the past century were produced by him. He shot for Look, Life, Graphis, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, and the french magazine Egoïste. He's done ad campaigns for Revlon and Versace, shot the Pirelli Calendar, released numerous books and photographed nearly every important person of his time, from Marilyn Monroe to Dwight Eisenhower to Pablo Picasso and Audrey Hepburn, Malcom X and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Louis Armstrong, Prince and, in something of a stroke of prescience, a young Senator Barack Obama in 2004.

In 1964, he- along with high-school classmate, lifetime friend and another of America's greatest artists, James Baldwin- collaborated on the book Nothing Personal, full of each of their artistic musings on the country they called home. Some of Avedon's landmark images fill these pages.

His photographic style was characterized by his abillity to communicate the vitality of his subjects - or lack of such - so viscerally in still image. Fashion model Erin O'Connor described his style as wanting to capture the moment before the moment; the intention of a movement before the body would actually reach a particular movement - readily apparent in his photographs of Veruschka and Twiggy.

He helped introduce movement and life into fashion photography, which at the time of his ascendance into notoriety was very much a static, stoic landscape. Models were posed and statuesque; Avedon danced with his subjects and snapped them in motion, the results of which would revolutionize the way photography featured in fashion magazines. I assume much of his technical skill - especially as it pertained to print magazines - was honed under the guidance of such legendary figures like Alexey Brodovitch and Diana Vreeland, his creative director and fashion editor (respectively) for many years at Harper's Bazaar. He had a flawless sense of design in his photographs, from symmetry and asymmetry to contrast, color and general composition. Most importantly, though, he was able to couple all of that technical skill with the skillful presentation of the human condition - devoid of bias - in his portraits.

The way he deftly moved from portraiture to fashion to reportage without missing a step was a thing of beauty, and when you look at the overview of his legacy, it's quite staggering. That kind of insatiable curiosity to see the world through his lenses is something I try to emulate everyday. There's endless things to say about Avedon, but really, nothing communicates his greatness like his photographs.

Subjective.

Fashion photographer Nick Knight has been doing really cool stuff with his SHOWStudio production company - one of the many photographers who’ve taken their careers and influence beyond photography. SHOWstudio produces/houses a ton of dope content around fashion, from fashion films to interviews and lots of stuff in between. One of their recent projects is aptly titled Subjective, an interview series where Nick talks with various models about their experiences with fashion photographers. It’s a really interesting and not-often explored perspective, especially as most of the photographers they’ve done pieces on have passed away. I wanted to share this one on Erin O’Connor’s experience shooting with my favorite photographer of all time, Richard Avedon.

I’m keen to watch this series as it grows. They’ve done interviews with Alek Wek, Kate Moss, and Kristen McMenamy, to name a few, on folks like Avedon, Helmut Newton and Corrine Day.

In other news - tons of new stuff to share over the next few weeks. It’s an exciting time, just trying to keep it going.

Photographer Of The Day - Peter Hapak

I belive I came across Peter Hapak’s work during a random search of photographer portfolios on the popular portfolio platform, Cargo Collective. I like to try to keep abreast of what other photographers are doing and how they’re presenting their work, and this particular time I was also considering making an image-only portfolio with less bells and whistles. Still up in the air about that - trying a few more things here.

Anyway, something about Peter’s work froze me immediately - his portraits were powerful and emotive, simple yet provocative, and extremely intimate: they bring you almost uncomfortably close to the sitter, catching them in a brief burst of laughter, a wry glance, a moment of action - some short conversation between the eyes, mouth and camera that quickly ushers you past formality and pretense, and into a sort of understanding of the subject. It’s really brilliant work.

One of my favorite portraitists (photographers for that matter) is the late Richard Avedon, and he was famed for having mastered the intimate celebrity portrait, stripping away excelsior and retrieving something from a sitting the viewer hadn’t seen before from the subject. It set a very high bar for portraiture for me and I’ve seen few photographers hit that mark consistently. I don’t mean to draw an unfair comparison between Avedon’s work and Hapak’s, but I will say that I feel some of that same emotional strength in Hapak’s portraits.

I’m excited to watch his work over time.

(You can see more of Peter Hapak's work at his site, here. It stretches beyond celebrity portrait commissions, into documentary/photojournalism. There's a nice video/BTS of a project he shot for Time Magazine about protesters here.)

All images © Peter Hapak.

Couture Vulture S/S 2014 Lookbook Shoot.

I'm not sure where I first made acquaintance with Couture Vulture owner/designer Dominique Negrón, an honest guess would be somewhere in my first visits to Hylo Boutiques a few years ago, but back then I was unaware of her work or aspirations, as I'm sure she was equally unaware of mine. Serendipity would have it that our paths would continue to cross and we'd eventually find a project to work on together.

I was super honored that Dom reached out to me to shoot this year's lookbook, and wanted to make sure that the images I delivered were high quality and really showcased her pieces well. We went with a super-simple setup and shot against a white brick wall with one light, high and to the right of the model. The modifier was a beauty dish on a B800 with the sock off for a harsher and brighter light. Most of the shots that were used for the lookbook were digital images, but the ones I've posted here are all film - Portra in medium format (6x4.5).

For the shots on the rug, most of these are actually naturally lit, again on Portra 400. The detail that I get in a roll of medium format film is always exciting to see. The results I got from this shoot, especially with the film and lights, got me excited to try new things this summer. I'm looking forward to working with Dominique a lot more on future projects.

You can check out the new collection and buy Couture Vulture here.

Ikire Jones S/S 2014 Lookbook Photoshoot.

This year I had the pleasure and honor of again working with my friend Wale Oyejide on the visuals for his menswear line, Ikire Jones. This shoot was different from the many I’ve done with him in the past, in that for the first time there were other gents modeling Wale’s looks. Once I got to the location, it was really exciting to see these guys walking around in his pieces - the patterns and colors are really something to behold, and- seeing them swirl around one another and really come alive- I knew the images would come out dope without a ton of work from me.

After we shot the primary images, I pulled out my trusty Yashicamat 124g twin-lens for a few photos of my own. Between the 12 frame limit on my single roll of 120 Portra 400 and the below freezing temperatures and wind chill we were fighting, I didn’t have much luxury in getting my shots, so I moved as quickly as possible, set the guys up and made 7 photos (7 looks). The meter on my Yashica broke during an unfortunate fall a few months ago, so I metered with the pretty solid Fotometer app on my iPhone and hoped for the best.

The more I shoot film, particularly in a fashion sphere, the more my respect for early photographers shoots through the roof. The limitations these men and women learned to fluidly work around were tremendous. Manually focusing, changing film backs, finding interesting compositions, keeping the talent engaged and game - it’s amazing to think that people did this all year long and were really good at it. After a shoot like this, it’s hard not to wonder whether I’ll ever get to that point.

Photography truly is a lifelong practice.

I’m pushing myself to get to the point where I can rely totally on my film cameras for professional work like this, and it’s a huge gamble because of turnaround times and the aforementioned limitations. I know I’m not totally there yet, I’ve still some learning to do with my equipment, but I think these next few months will provide ample intense concentration to help move me up the ranks.

(You can check out Wale’s designs and get some pieces for yourself at his site, Ikire Jones.)

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.

Out with the Old, in with the New.

I wanted to make sure I squeezed in a looking back/looking forward post in before January had slipped away, so here it is, albeit quite late in the month. It still counts!

Looking back, 2013 was a year of wake up calls. Some good, some…just very needed. I hate to talk about these types of things as finite experiences that aren’t as amorphous and persistent as they actually are, but there were very specific things that happened over the course of the last year that really shed light on what I’m doing right and wrong, and I want to try to make the best use of those experiences.

As a noob freelancer, I’d managed to live a somewhat charmed existence. I came into the world of freelancing not having to do much in the way of marketing before I landed some pretty stable, repeat clients. This was awesome as it allowed me to generate income purely through photography - I didn’t HAVE to take on extra work to make ends meet, keep the bills paid and do cool extras like travel or feed my gear acquisition syndrome (GAS) - but what it also did was lull me to sleep as far as building new clientele was concerned, and as fate would have it, client work dried up suddenly, and quite categorically. The sneaky second issue was that I was ONLY shooting gigs - not work I wanted to highlight in my portfolio, and certainly not personal work I wanted to be hired to do at some point. By the end of 2013, work had come to a screeching halt - and while there were lots of opportunities to shoot really cool things and work with really awesome folks in the future, I had to scramble (and suffer) to make ends meet.

It’s a curious balance, divvying up one’s time between paying bills, lobbying for new clients and also honing your practice and producing portfolio work that helps your business grow and progress. You never know when you’re OD’ing on the wrong third of the equation. I won’t even pretend that I’ve figured it out, but I think the greatest potential lies in working backward from creativity. Working every measly gig that comes your way and never making time to flex your creative muscle means you stay in the same spot forever. Of course, you have to find time to market yourself and your work, and I’ve started to develop a system that makes it easier to integrate some of those efforts into my process, but I really do believe it starts with personal work.

...until further notice, that is. Ha!

Last year I also slowly came to the realization that I would like to explore the fine arts side of photography. I can’t ONLY be a photographer that works from briefs. It’s hard to just be a tool when you have ideas that could probably blow the brief you’re executing out of the water. Even more so when it comes to ideas that have nothing to do with promoting a brand. I guess what I’m really realizing is that there’s a place for everything I want to do. Some things deserve (and demand) precedence, and that’s the trick - prioritizing and managing my time accordingly. For instance, I also produce music, and there’s a music project that’s been bubbling inside of me for years now that needs to get out. Shooting gigs that don’t move the needle at all to the exclusion of stuff like that is a travesty and a personal tragedy.

Aside from life lessons - I have been shooting a ton of cool things that I can’t wait to show folks. I shot the S/S 2014 lookbook for my friend Wale Oyejide’s Ikiré Jones menswear line  - including some film stuff - and it looks pretty awesome. That should be launching soon, so I’ll be able to share images from that. Also, I’ve been working with my partners Taj and Rashid at WJS Creative, and we’ve got some really cool projects on the horizon, including a profile series we’ve been hard at work on called Short Journeys. I’ll go into detail about that with a full post when it launches, but it’s given me an opportunity to try things out, particularly with medium format film.

I’ve also been on the ground a lot more trying to shoot with models. It’s a tough grind - I find that between timing and desire, it’s hard to lock something down, but I like that since I made the decision to really push with these types of shoots, I’ve been pretty consistent with my efforts, and when the opportunity has presented itself, I was there with camera in hand. I’ve got a lot of learning to do but I know when I’m not willing to put forth the effort and it doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Much of what I experience professionally and creatively can often double as a metaphor for how I’m learning to live my life - do what you believe in and learn to do it better every day - much of what you want will follow. Kanye’s quote above really rings true with me. He’s expressed this idea in other interviews of late and I think it’s something he’s sat with a long time - I also think he’s working to get very comfortable with bucking that trend. Being creative and doing new things is very much about developing a process that starts with accepting those facts and pushing against them, often to the disapproval of the people around us, or to our own extreme discomfort. Not to get too philosophical here, but especially as time passes and I somehow keep getting older and older, the internal pressure to do what feels right regardless of conventional wisdom ramps up infinitely. I’d like to just keep these things in mind throughout the year going forward, whatever I may be doing.

Here’s to a happy, productive and amazing year to come for everybody!

Photographer Of The Day - Oliver Stalmans

Been excited to talk about Oliver Stalmans for a while. I can’t really remember where I happened across his work - more than likely one of the many fashion blogs I follow. there’s not much more to say about his photography that - for his age, especially - he’s freakishly talented.

Oliver, 25, is a french-born fashion/commercial photographer. He’s been racking up accolades of late, including 2013’s Danish ELLE photographer of the year award, and rightly so. He’s shot covers for ELLE, Tomorrow Journal and Muuse Magazine. His simple, crisp, and extremely mature approach to fashion portraits reminds me of Peter Lindbergh. I personally enjoy his black+white photography the most, his understanding and control of light and tone contribute to help him create incredibly dramatic images.

I think he hits a lot of the marks I’d try to achieve to in his work - simple, strong compositions. The subjects look strong. The fashion looks good. Good fashion photography is a complex task: there’s the portrait, then there’s the commercial considerations, the art… photographers who can combine all 3 seamlessly are veritable geniuses in my book.

I’m going to enjoy keeping up with his work.

You can keep up as well here on his site, and on his instagram feed.

(all images © Oliver Stalmans)

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!