Archive for January, 2011
Sunday, January 30th, 2011
Project #3 of the 52 has been tougher than I expected it to be. We were asked to shoot an editorial still life, as you would do for an magazine cover assignment. We were given some of the same parameters as if it was a paying assignment. We were asked to shoot an image that would fit within an 8×8 square layout. That seems easy right? Well in the real world, you would be given constraints outside of the size expectations. You would be given the layout, complete with type fonts and placement, and you have to shoot around and make the image relevant to the copy, luckily this was just an exercise. The only way to really learn, is to go out and shoot!
I approached this wanting to make an image on white seamless, pretty standard stuff. I went around and around on what objects that I would place in the final composition. I wanted to take a tech approach, I had some hard drives that had been taken out of my G5 and replaced. I wanted to use them along with some other elements of home computer DIY repair: zip ties and a soldering gun. I bought all that and took off toward the studio (first time using the studio for a still life), and guess what? I left the house in such a hurry I forgot some important things…Like the hard drives…and I was planing on using my tripod…never the less, one thing about being on the road to becoming a professional is that you have to come back with an image, a good image, even when things are going right, when you forgot some equipment, when your sick, etc, etc, etc.
I played around with some different compositions with the ties and the soldering gun, but something hit when I was trying to uncoil the electrical cord of the gun, it kind of wrapped itself in a star shape, which looked kind of cool. I then took some different colored zip ties and arranged them in a fan pattern, and along with the star shape of the electrical cord, it made this interesting combination:
Thinking that I had the shot in the bag (another lesson learned), I was ready to head home when looking through the props in the shared co-op studio I was shooting in, I found a gas mask…and it might have been that I was feeling some euphoria from the still life that I just shot, or the hour it took me to arrange those zip ties, but I wanted to do something fun, so I snapped a self portrait:
I have to remember while I’m on this journey, I have to remember to have fun, because if I’m not having fun with this, then I should just keep a day job and sell all my gear…
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Sunday, January 16th, 2011
A very popular lighting blog that I follow called Lighting Essentials has started an interactive learning project called Project 52. It’s designed do a few things: Give guidance to those beginning their careers, and show those of us who think that they want to do more than dabble in this profession, the tools and knowledge that they need to make that happen. And expose your weaknesses, so that you can build upon them. One of my weaknesses is procrastination, I plan to change that over the course of this year.
Our first assignment was to come up with a mission statement that says the type of images that we would like to be making (not necessarily what we are shooting now) and shoot an image around our home to illustrate that statement.
My statement:
I create bold but simple images for a modern world.
And due to my problem with procrastination…I missed the cutoff time by like 5 mins…
I’ll learn,
or else I won’t grow.
Oh, can’t be a post without an image. Here’s what I shot:
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Sunday, January 9th, 2011
Kodachrome. That name stirs up many emotions. Floods the mind with many images. Countless of them that you’ve probably seen at some time and point in your life. Time, Life, National Geographic, all had photographers who shot with the iconic (I don’t even think that that word does justice to the emulsion) Kodak slide film. Paul Simon sang “Please don’t take my Kodachrome away”…but Kodak did, no longer producing the film or the infamously toxic chemical process used to develop it K-14.
A little over 5 years ago, I found myself in a closing Ritz camera store in the Grapevine Mills mall. They were trying to unload everything that they could, including rolls of expired film of all kinds. Black and white, Fuji color, Kodak color print, different slide films, 110 (when’s the last time you’ve seen 110 film??). Digging through the bin, I didn’t see anything that caught my eye….until I saw a couple of boxes of K64, expiration 2003. I grabbed them (there were actually alot more than the two I picked up…why didn’t I buy more rolls is beyond me), and I was off. I knew that it was hard to get Kodachrome processed then (I believe that Dwayne’s and one other place still processed K-14 at that time), and I knew that I would have to make the images count, that I had to use them for something special (so I thought), so I brought them home and threw them in the freezer, to be thawed out for that imaginary occasion in the unknown future.
Those rolls sat unused for 5 years.
When the announcement came from Kodak that they were ending the 75 year production run of the film, and support of the K-14 process, I knew that I couldn’t wait forever, that I had to shoot something with the film. The imaginary special occasion was the experience of using this film, and being one of the last groups of people to have Dwayne’s process it (my film made it there around Dec 10th). I shot one roll of K64 (the other roll I gave to Grant Meeks for him to have fun shooting some Kodachrome) and a roll of K200 that I found laying around(I have no idea when or where I bought it!). I decided to shoot the K64 as an exercise in seeing and shooting with limitations; one body (My trusty and war torn Nikon F3), one lens (one of my favorite Nikkors, the 20 2.8 ais – really a limitation in seeing, shooting with only an ultrawide angle lens).
***The First and Last frame***
Tags: Film, Grant Meeks, Kodachrome, Kodak, Laidric Stevenson, Laidric Stevenson photography, personal, Slide film
Posted in Film's Still Good!, GOYA!, Kodachrome RIP!, personal, photography, Random Film Love! | Comments Off
