Salome

From the July 12 shoot in Lake Forest, Illinois. Not much more to say, the picture does that for me.

spiral

I know better... but in spite of it, they very nearly got me, those damn corporate marketing people.

The foray back into digital started it. The product had been improved enough to do away with pretty much all the complaints I had last time around. So when the bug bit to play in color this time, there was no excuse not to try again.

I'd only skipped one generation, about three years. But everything was so much bigger-better-faster. Maybe it's just the blinding speed of modern technological change. Maybe it's planned obsolescence. It doesn't really matter which. But everything else "needed" to be upgraded.

My ancient version of Photoshop wouldn't read the new RAW files. Easy enough, $89 upgrade, and I liked the new product better anyway. But the new version of Photoshop is too big to run on my 5-year old laptop, as is the newest version of the camera manufacturers RAW converter software. So I seriously thought about upgrading the laptop. And now, after a few months of shooting, the hard drive on my newer desktop machine is pretty much full, and that may very possibly mean some new storage.

Except that I stopped long enough to take a deep breath.. that, and doing five shoots in two weeks in Chicago has me temporarily satiated, so I'm in no hurry to fill the remaining 2.9 GB of space on that hard drive. Which gave me time to think.

I got around the need to immediately do a laptop upgrade by buying a couple more CF cards, and waiting to download til I was back at my desktop machine... $50 instead of $1700. And I'm in no hurry to shoot again at the moment, so I can take my time to think about storage options, and in the meantime I'm backing things up with what I've already got to work with. Slow, but effective. And most importantly, I've made a decision to return mostly to film for my artistic work, saving the DSLR for things where speed is essential... work things, special events, rush things. For my model shoots, there's usually no rush. And I'm getting better work in B&W anyway. As the Chicago trip progressed, I shot more film and less digital, and didn't even need to use one of those extra CF cards.

That means I can get by with my ancient 12-inch G4 Powerbook for a while longer. It's a perfectly adequate e-mail and web machine, and it's smaller and lighter (a little over 4 pounds) than anything but the Macbook Air... which really needs to go through one more generation of growing pains. I'm still going to need to address the storage issue, but now I can do it at a more casual pace, and maybe more simply than would be possible if I kept shooting at a pace of 4 GB of RAW images per event.

So my world has slowed down again, become just a little less complex. I'm back to making changes at my own pace, not at a pace dictated by someone else.

savanna

The first five days of the trip have been busy ones, with early mornings and full work days. After the mild weather of the coast, it took me two or three days to fully acclimate to the warm, humid conditions here.

Today was the first day of the trip not devoted to work, and after the morning thunderstorms had passed through I called Salome and told her I was on the way. We drove up into Lake County, to a 500-acre oak savanna site where I'd done some research in the past and so knew my way around.

It was a 15-minute walk in, mostly on gravel trails. There was a little sun at first, then the clouds returned. There was enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitos down, and to make it a pleasant day. We circled around off the trail into a small wet depression not very visible from the trail or from the multi-million dollar Lake Forest homes just a quarter-mile away.

We did most of the shoot with Salome standing knee-deep in the wetland; for part of the time she held a two-foot long garter snake we'd captured on the way in. Then we crossed into the nearby oak savanna, one of the best remaining examples of this community type in the world, and did another series (sans snake, we'd released it near the first wetland) standing in the dense sedges of a smaller marsh. Both of us, because to get the shots, I had to be knee deep in the marsh too. We kept it shorter this time, there were a few more bugs in this area more sheltered from the wind.

As usual, Salome served above and beyond the call of duty in the name of art. Her legs were pretty scratched up by the time we got back to the trail, and she had picked up a few readily visible mosquito bites. I've shot with her 7 or 8 times now, and it seems she endures heat, cold, wind, freezing rain, mud, or something equally challenging each time.

It may be a while til I'm able to post photos. I shot with three cameras this time, 35mm and medium format B&W film, and digital with two lenses including a rented 18mm wide angle. But I only have my work laptop with me this trip, so will probably accumulate CF cards and download them all at home in about 10 days... three shoots to go, and one of those may be all film. I have five 2GB cards with me, used one today, and can easily get more if I run short. I'll probably get a head start on processing film while here, but of course have no easy way to scan til I return home.

viewshed

Yesterday I processed two rolls of Neopan 1600, and the results reinforced what I've been feeling recently about the relative merits of shooting digital vs. film.

This one is from the recent shoot with Amy. The digital shots that I had a look at within minutes of downloading the cards were gaudy, bright red, attention grabbing. But once past two or three images that I liked a lot, I found myself struggling to find any substance in the rest of the images. They were close, but my attention faded after a few seconds.

Yesterday I had no problem finding 10 B&W film images to scan. Considering I shot more than 200 digital images, and 36 on film.. that means I really like about 2 percent of the digital images, and more than a quarter of the film images, and actually it's more than that. Some were sequences, similar images except for perhaps expression or a slightly different framing. Often any of a sequence of three or four would have worked well, and I had to choose one of the batch. And I found myself excited about doing that.

Maybe I've just been shooting B&W so long that it's natural for me to see that way. But I feel like I know exactly what I want with film, and tend to drift with the instant gratification of digital.

I'll be shooting more film on the trip these next two weeks.

in the beginning

The not very good photo above was taken in 1972. It's from my first "real" shoot with a model. It was the day I learned the power of the camera.

I was about 16, had been shooting for the school paper and for various local suburban papers for less than a year. Sandi, the model, was a year older than me; she was a senior, I was a junior. More importantly, she was the captain of the cheerleading squad, the homecoming queen, easily the most popular girl in school. She was the kind of girl who normally wouldn't even have noticed a guy a class behind hers.

I don't remember exactly how the shoot came about, but it was her idea. I knew her from all those football games and basketball games, the ones both of us spent on the sidelines. It was inevitable that I'd get to know her and others like her, we had plenty of time to talk. In any case, I found myself in Sandi's yellow 1967 Chevelle, with another cheerleader, a tall thin redhead, the three of us riding to a small lake in Park Ridge. It was a small public park with grass and a few trees, surrounded by upscale residential neighborhoods. Sandi seemed to know everyone, cars honked, people leaned out of windows and waved.

I don't remember a lot about the shoot itself, and this is the only surviving print. I knew enough by this time to keep her out of the harsh summer sunlight, to avoid strong shadows, but I didn't quite nail the exposure on the tough backlighting. Still, it's a good shot of Sandi, she looks good, and looks looks taller and thinner than she really was. Ignore the distractions of the branches, ignore the lack of a good black, and the rest is OK. At that early stage in my experience as a photographer, I could have done a lot worse.

The important thing though, is that the experience taught me a lot about what a camera was really good for, and that it was as much about attitude and expectations as it was about the camera. The photographer thing could go either way. I had a fair amount of prestige at school as a staffer on the paper, it got me out of class sometimes, and into sporting and other events for free, and a lot of people knew who I was. I'd been in the teacher's lounge, a forbidden zone for most students; I'd given direction to top administrators during those few precious moments when it was my photo shoot to direct. But I'd also just shot a wedding for money, for a neighbor, and been treated badly, as hired help. At best, I was ignored, in the background. At worst, I was expected to do the bidding of a bunch of drunks. I swore then that I'd never shoot another wedding for pay, and I never have.

This comes up because these past few days I've seen an unusually high number of posts from photographers who are obviously feeling put upon, and they seem to think it's everyone's fault but theirs. They're feeling disrespected in various ways. And it's made me remember that it's been a very long time since I've felt that way, and that there are reasons it worked out that way. It wasn't an accident.

Although I wasn't a very good photographer yet in those high school days, I was part of the local elite. I was reliable, so I had the backing of the newspaper advisor, and plenty of assignments, usually the better ones. I worked closely with a few of my counterparts on the yearbook staff, people who shared my status. Even then, we were aware of those who wished for our opportunities.

I shot less in college, but usually for pay when I did... model comps, product work for corporate clients. Then came the punk years, when once again I quickly found my way to the inner circle... largely because of circumstance, being in the right place at the right time, and capitalizing on the opportunity. I drank with and photographed people who are household names today, and thought nothing of it. Sometimes I still smile when I hear their songs on the radio.

Although I took a long break from photography after that, ever since those punk days I've photographed what I want to photograph, not what someone else wants me to photograph. Just last week I turned down an offer of a paid gig, referred the person to a local pro.

I have no idea what happened to Sandi, I never saw her or heard anything of her after high school. But thanks Sandi, wherever you are, for helping me learn a very important lesson about how to use a camera to visit interesting places and meet interesting people, and never look back. The camera only opens the door, it's up to us what we do with it after that.

planning

I fly to Chicago on Monday, and jump right into project work the first few days. The shoots start next weekend.

I have two set with friends, models I've worked with a dozen times or more, known quantities. One is precisely scheduled, and the place and the concept are firm. The other, we're winging it. We'll talk on the phone once I'm on the ground, probably grab a cup of coffee the first night or two, and figure it out from there.

The other two are with people I've not yet met. Both are experienced models, one a very alternative girl from Iowa of all places (we're meeting halfway, in a place neither of us has ever been to), and the other is a local art model.

I'm debating whether to pursue any more than that. There are a couple of other photogenic friends, not models really, but people I've photographed before, and they don't even know yet that I'm going to be there. I haven't delved too deeply into the usual online sources either. But even if I don't know yet how aggressive I want to be about booking, I do know exactly what I want to shoot. Splitting it between B&W and color this time... or more accurately, returning partially to the old familiar B&W... has made it all clear again.