I’m starting to designate the M8 as my new default for digital projects; it’s pretty much everything I’d hope for in a digital rangefinder. I’ve simply found a certain touch with these cameras which I simply haven’t been able to achieve with a typical DSLR. It’s simply much, much less cumbersome, making it easier to operate in the circumstances I tend to shoot in. It really has gotten me to enjoy shooting digitally again. I’d totally buy an M9 if I had insane amounts of cash at my disposal.

It’s already close to the end of my second quarter here in Rochester. I’m satisfied with the way things are going–it kinda feels weird being a “good student” for a change.

I’ve realized a distinct lack of people pictures in the past month or so, mostly because of my slow decline back into hermithood. I’m deciding to dedicate myself once again to watching gesture and shape.

Scanning old negs makes me really want to take the Hasselblad out once again. Time constraints and assignment parameters have restricted me from doing so.

Good news! I’ve finally figured out how to use the school’s Flextight scanners. That means I’m about ready to go on a film scanning spree, when I get the time. These scanners are exactly what I have been hoping for. My biggest gripe about the flatbeds I’ve been using is that the amount of grain I see at 100% is minimal. Even if it won’t end up being seen in the final print, I think it’s important for the overall effect. It let’s me know I’m getting everything as sharp (or unsharp) as possible.

This may have been the fastest term I’ve ever experienced in my collegiate career. I had no clue that it would be so close to November so soon.

I’ve decided to start a cell phone picture mini-blog. It’s just a little exercise in working with extremely barebones equipment. That and I really want to utilize Tumblr. You can find it here. Enjoy!

Since school is starting once again, I suppose I’ll start writing here once again.

This photo is something I keep looking back at. I consider it one of my few success from this summer, not only because of the photo itself, but also the manner through which it was taken. It was one of those rare moments when everything was just right, from my position in the room, to the lens I had on my camera, to the way the situation was lit. This photograph felt so effortless to make.

I might want to mention that I’m also working on another blog for my core photo class this quarter. The assignment involves creating a visual diary, documenting my day-to-day observations and interactions. Basically, it’s a photo-a-day project with more focused intentions. Which makes me nervous, considering that my previous photo-a-day projects were complete failures. I guess we’ll see how it goes. You can find it here.

The summer transfer program here at RIT has been one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had in my entire student life, regardless of academic concentration. For once, I feel like my growth as a student is a direct result of my school work. I am producing something alongside my learning, as well: something I never imagined happening ’till much, much later.

However, I really haven’t gotten much time to shoot much on my own, outside of school. Spending twelve hours a day at the school kind of saps you of that energy you reserve specifically for having the capacity to do anything outside of school. Luckily, this weekend’s workload will be somewhat light (or will it?), and tomorrow’s road trip will give me a little more freedom, as well. I’m taking the Xpan out for another spin, in yet another attempt to effectively use the wide frame.

I have about five or six drafts saved since the day I moved out to Rochester; I doubt you all will ever see them. So it goes.

I’ve kinda halted posting photos up here and on my Flickr a little bit ago. I’m still shooting and developing, but I’ve gotten terribly bored of tracking all my posts and comments on Flickr. Web2.0 has brought out both the bad and good in just about everybody with access to the internet. People have turned into stat junkies; each picture somebody posts and each comment they receive is just another number to add to their totals. Though my eyes light up when I see the yellow “New” light up next to my “Recent Activity” link, I’m tired of contemplating whether or not the occasional praise I get on Flickr comes from somebody who knows what they’re talking about. And though any complement is a good complement, the main purpose for my Flickr uploads is so they can be seen by people who are experienced and perhaps somewhat reputable in the field. Since Flickr isn’t an isolated entity like a website, it has a better chance of being found by such people.

After a long mental battle, I’ve decided that my peronal goal to complete a photo-a-day project isn’t in my best interest. Sure, taking a photo every day is the best thing I can do for myself as a growing artist (I’ll use the term lightly), but, as I have proven with my prior two failed attempts, I churn out a lot of crap that I’m not exactly proud of, hence my recent great purge of all the photos that I’d rather not let be seen. Why publish something that doesn’t truly reflect my intentions as a photographer? I suppose that’s the magic of such projects. People get to see somebody’s picture taking process, including all the gems and fuck-ups, and since it’s under the “experimental” label of the 365-Day project, people just shrug said fuck-ups off. What would the gem-to-fuckup ratio have to be in order to label somebody as a “good photographer?”

It’s the same “monkeys on typewriters” scenario that can be said about Garry Winogrand. He died leaving hundreds upon hundreds of undeveloped rolls of film in his house. How many of those actually contain good shots? Even if there was, perhaps, one or less gems per roll, if we looked at the contact sheets, would we see an intelligent thought process involved–series of shots that displayed a higher form or seeking and capturing? Is that even what characterizes a good photogrpaher? Most of us obviously haven’t seen every last frame on even a small portion of the film he left behind. We know him for the mind-blowing images from the various publications he’s been in (look up “Women are Beautiful” and you’ll see what I mean). I don’t mean to sit here quesitoning his reputation as a photographer (especially coming from a dude just beginning to venture out into the real world of photography), but it simply makes you wonder (what a bullshit statement to conclude such a paragraph with).

If you do not wish to trudge through a load of inner-conflict bullshit, just stop reading right here. You’ll thank me later.

The reason I’m deciding against displaying my fuck-ups (since I started with the term, I’ll end with it) in the form of a photo-a-day project is that I tend to be a huge perfectionist. I always have been, which is the reason I’ve come to stop re-reading my school essays. If I do so even once, there is a good chance I’ll end up with a smoldering lump of what used to be a fine-as-it-it essay when the due date comes around. The same has applied with shooting for me recently. I haven’t really gotten anything done since I always find something wrong, either conceptually or technically, with what I’m doing. This is what school is for, I suppose.

In less than four hours, I’ll be on a plane to Rochester, New York, where I’ll be attending school for the next three years (or more!) of my life. Hopefully. People say this too much when they know more than they think, but I honestly don’t know what to expect with this transition. I’ve never been to New York; hell, I’ve barely even stepped foot outside Califorina and its neighboring states. I suppose it was a similar case with moving to Santa Cruz (I didn’t really know anything about the area besides the constant “I heard there’s a lot of liberal counter-culture going on over there” from my comically worried parents), and I hope everything in Rochester will click as well as it did at UCSC. I can see myself very easily falling into the same “I’ll just sit at my computer for the rest of the day” hole as I did in Orange County. I suppose this is how people fall into solo drinking habits.

Without further ado, goodbye California!

My Flickr “pro” account expired today. I will mourn its departure for seven days now, Jewish style. I’m taking donations for a new one.

I’ve been doing a little exploration in terms of photography this past week. I dug up a red filter in my dad’s old camera bags the other day, so I decided to go out and make some ’scapes. Good day, too. I suppose it’ll be one of the last cumulus-cloud-filled skies I’ll see for a while, so I tried to make the most of it. I walked up to “the rock,” up in the hills behind the orange groves. From there, the better part of the valley is visible. The clouds’ shadows made patterns atop the sea of orange trees to the east, and illuminated and enshrouded the buildings (obscured, of course, by olive and palm trees) to the west.  This day was an example of one of my favorite picture-taking situations. Unfortunately, I left the rolls of film I was meaning to bring on my desk, so I could only get twelve shots in before I had to turn back, and by the time I got there, the sun was setting, and I sadfaced. Pictures from that in a little bit.

Today I found an article about creating a simple developer from almost normal household materials. I jumped on that idea and shot a test roll. After spending three hours trying to find the right materials, I mixed the (rather stinky) solution and cooked the test roll. I even decided to hand-develop, mostly I had barely ever used my steel tank and reel. Their recommended 12 minutes is a little short for Tmax 100; next time I’m going to try 20, as folks in the Flickr group are recommending. I’m just now realizing that this is something I should’ve done before I developed it. I suppose I was too excited to think about it. All in all, it works. However, it does leave a really weird gray tint to it. I’m not sure if it was the process (I’ve had a couple rolls come out that way after I hand-processed them), or the developer, or something else. I’ll have to look into it. The real test with this developer will come when I finally decide to do some printing. I’ll post whatever is, you know, good, in the next few days.

I’m broke. I need a job.

I’ve been shooting digitally for a few months now, and in spite of the tone of the following, a digital SLR was probably one of the best investments I’ve ever made. I made the purchase during a time when I didn’t have access to a means to develop film at a reasonable price, and that inconvenience, I felt, hindered my growth at a period of time when growth was crucial. I never mind having to wait a day or two to get around to processing a few rolls, but at that time, it was agonizing to have hundreds of latent images in rolls I exposed three months ago. And “hundreds” is no exaggeration. I went through periods when I could go through three 36-exposure rolls on a productive day. This was a period when I had just started getting my chops back, after a long hiatus.  I needed the quick feedback, and I had no way of measuring my progress. A digital SLR was a godsend for me at the time.

About ten months later, my film developing situation has changed, and my poor 40D is sitting between my Olympus OM-1 and my EOS 3 on my “cameras I use…occasionally” shelf. In place of it, my two Canonets and my (borrowed) Hasselblad have become the cameras I bring with me when I go shooting. I’ve voluntarily (or, perhaps, the opposite?) chosen a fast-aging process over something much more convenient (and, in the long run, cheaper). I suppose I’m rediscovering why I was so hesitant to switch over to digital in the first place.

Some folks claim they like film for the “romance” involved in the process and the overall appearance of the resulting images. I suppose such a manual, involved process is a “romantic” experience. From the lovely chemical perfume that permeats from a freshly-opened canister, to getting fix and its undeniable scent on one’s fingers, to turning the lights on to reveal a print, film creates a level of intimacy which simply cannot be achieved by dragging sliders and moving curves. There is nothing like dedicating an entire day to the process, going through fifteen music albums and an entire tank of gas scouting out spots to shoot. Like I’ve said, I have no qualm with waiting a while to get results.

The look of a film photograph is also something to consider. Obviously, the composition of the material gives it a much more “artistic” texture, and the fact that this can be adjusted through so many different inexpensive mechanisms–push-processing, different films, different developers, different dilutions of developers, etc.–is really appealing. This is complimentary to the fact that a digital sensor simply doesn’t react to light the same way a piece of film does. Digital cameras simply have not achieved the flexibility that film has had access to for decades. They’re coming close, though, and this is part of the reason why I can’t say that the overall “look” of film makes me “prefer” it to digital. I’m sure that, with practice and the right camera, one can get a digital image to look like any kind of film. (I’d probably get a lot of angry responses if I told this to the wrong group of people.)

The true reason I’ve preferred film over digital in recent days is the fact that I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands. One might call my appeal as “romantic,” but I’d say it’s just a fixation on a joy I’ve had since birth. From my primitive pre-preschool drawings and writings, to piano lessons more than ten years (holy shit!) ago, to extremely enthusiastic and thorough chem labs, I’ve always gotten great satisfaction out of creating something, tangible or otherwise, with my hands. I hand-made two pieces of furniture in my house. I’ve never paid for an oil change. I take broken stuff apart just to see what its guts look like. My film obsession is simply another part of the fixation. My images are a product of my hands as much as they are of my eyes. Film photography is a multisensory experience for me.