Small town Friday night? That means football this time of year.
With Aiden in marching band, that means we head to Jackson High for a beautiful September evening and watch our hometown Vikings win against Tecumseh.
Shot on the Canon 5D and EF 50mm f/1.4.
It’s a false summer night – part of a week full of those final warm days before autumn sets in.
Autumn means marching band season, so Aiden and I headed to Jackson High’s football field for his first practice session. It gave me a chance to catch some of the light and colors around the stadium.
Shot on the Canon M200 with the EF-M 15-45mm kit lens.
A note about waiting for good light.
The above is the same house taken at the same time of year, within a day or two of each other, just at different times during the morning.
I drive by this little house a few times a week. For months, I’ve thought to myself: “That would make for a good photograph.” Finally, one morning, I had time enough to pull over and take the shot. The first attempt is the one on the left.
The light is okay. There’s a touch on the front porch and a bit on the left near the chair—that golden morning light hitting halfway between the front door and the stairs.
But something felt off when I got back and imported the picture into Lightroom. The house itself is too much in the shade, while the lawn and the trees on the right have a neutral, even light. The fluffy clouds in the upper left are a nice touch though.
So I gave it another try, this time earlier in the morning when the sun was hitting the entire house on the side, coming from the East on the left. Angled shadows hit the lawn and the front of the house, and the sunshine lit up that (cursed) Ohio flag. The porch is a bit more in shade, but there’s still a touch of light hitting the chair.
The temperature of the light, too, is different in the second shot: it is more golden and a bit harsher, painting the scene with a more dramatic brush. I do miss those fluffy clouds from the first image, though.
Both are fine. I’m glad I took another stab at it. The light was worth waiting for.
Here’s the final photo:
Both images shot with the Canon M6 and EF-M 28mm f/3.5 macro.
“Rebelling against the standard” – that’s all the excuse I need.
Martin Castein makes a good case for using older gear, but one point he missed:
Save money.
Instead of $1,000-4,000 for a new camera, how about using a five- to 10-year-old camera for $500 or less? There are so many great deals to be had on fantastic cameras.
Year after year, Flickr keeps trucking along. It’s still my favorite photography social/sharing platform. I’ve “met” so many great photographers on the site.
One of my go-to favorites is Zach Huggins out of Texas.
Where are you, and what do you do?
I live in Oak Cliff, a small neighborhood in Dallas, and I work as a scanning technician at an art printer. I scan artwork for printing.
How did you get started in photography?
I had a few cameras when I was a kid and in high school, and I loved snapping shots with those, but I didn’t really get into photography until college. I was a film major and I took my first digital camera on set to take behind the scenes photos, and that was when I was hooked.
What do you like about your photography, or photography in general?
I draw a lot of inspiration from movies and film, so anytime I get a photo that looks like it could be a film still, it’s a win for me. I like it when my images imply a story that started before that frame and continued after it. I love visual language, and to me, filmmaking and photography are siblings.
One of the things I love most about photography is that it has kept me curious about the world and people around me. It really is the art of seeing.
I got to know you through Flickr, where you manage several groups and bring a real sense of community to fellow photographers. What do you enjoy about building communities and sharing with other photographers?
One of the things that keeps me inspired is looking at others’ work, and Flickr is still one of the best places to see a wide variety of photography and meet other photographers. I also appreciate that, unlike a lot of other photography-oriented sites, I’m not inundated by ads and bots trying to sell me things. It keeps the focus on photography, and that’s why I have stuck around.
Originally, I started getting more active in groups to keep active on here when COVID shut down the world and I wasn’t able to go out and take the kind of images I’d like. I’ve found it’s a great way to find new photographers.
Your photos feature friends, your community, and different events you attend. Do you keep a camera with you at all times? What inspires you to shoot what you do?
That’s another thing I like about photography! It keeps me social and going out. If I want to take interesting photos, I have to go interesting places and meet interesting people.
I started carrying a camera with me at all times a long time ago, and that’s the number one thing I recommend to anyone wanting to get more into it. I got tired of seeing cool things and not being able to capture them (this was before cell phones had cameras worth a damn), so I started carrying one every day.
Even now that smartphones are pretty good, I like to have a camera because it makes me a little more intentional with my shots. If you are lugging something around and the only thing it can do is take photos, you’re more likely to do just that. 🙂
You shoot with a variety of cameras, on film and digital. Any favorites? What’s your go-to gear?
At this point, I will shoot with just about anything, and I like being able to pick up almost any camera and figure it out. During the pandemic, I started buying older cameras. I found a Youtube channel called OneMonthTwoCameras about using older ‘outdated’ equipment and fell down a rabbit hole of early 2000s digicams. I started buying cameras that I couldn’t afford when they were new, but you could get for garage sale money now. There’s something very satisfying about getting a really cool image with an old digital camera that is as slow as molasses and has limitations that modern cameras don’t.
As far as favorites, I have a couple of newer cameras I love: a Panasonic S5 and a Fuji X100v, and those are amazing for paid gigs or shows. For older digicams, there’s three that come to mind: The Canon S70, just a great all-rounder, a perfect party snapshot camera. And two Olympuses, the C-7070 and the C-7000. The 7070 has some of the best ergonomics of any camera I’ve ever used, and the C-7000 has a certain something about it that I can’t explain. On paper, it doesn’t sound great, it has a weird focal length, a slow lens, the camera itself is horribly show. But something about it clicks with me. 🙂
Any upcoming projects or shoots you’re working on?
A friend of mine released an EP last year, and we’re in the pre-production stages of making a music video for it. I take any opportunity I can to get back on set doing BTS photos; it will always be my first love with photography. I’m also hoping to do more portrait photoshoots this year, and I’m putting together a zine that I want to get printed before the year is out!
Check out more of Zach’s work on Flickr.
Meckley’s Flavor Fruit Farm is a local institution.
Think apple-cide-and-donuts orchard in the fall, and Meckley’s is the place to be.
But instead of trying to beat the gigantic crowd that gathers here in late September through October, we visited the farm in August to see the nearly-done apples and sunflowers in full bloom.
A warm summer night, the sun setting, and hard cider off the tap? Hard to beat in all its midwestern glory.
Labor Day weekend. South Haven, Michigan. Climbing the dunes along Lake Michigan.
So long, summertime.
Shot with Canon EOS M and 22mm f/2.
I moved around a lot as a kid, but I call Brooklyn, Michigan, my hometown. It’s the place I lived the longest, went to school the longest, and really grew up.
Brooklyn is a small village in southern Jackson County – the home of Michigan International Speedway, the Irish Hills, and Hometown Pizza, my first jobby-job through high school and even into college when I came home for breaks.
My family still lives in Brooklyn, but not in town, so I don’t get to see the village square every day like I used to. That’s why I took a hot August night, grabbed some pizza at Hometown, and hit Main Street for a photo walk using my trusty Canon 5D and 40mm f/2.8 lens.
Fujifilm X cameras are known for their film simulations. Fuji owns and creates several film stocks, so it only makes sense that they build those film emulations into their family of cameras.
As a Kodak film user, however, there’s nothing like Fuji’s film emulations for other cameras – like my own, preferred Canon lineup.
That’s why it was great to learn that Canon’s own Picture Style options can be adapted to loosely match other film stocks out there. With that, I learned Thomas Fransson had created a series of Kodak film styles for Canon cameras. In this case, I downloaded Thomas’s Crowdak film simulation and applied it to a Canon M6 with an EF-M 28mm lense for a quick test.
Some initial thoughts:
I’m eager to try out Thomas’s other film styles, and several more from Cinescopophilia.
Many thanks to the editors at Flickr for selecting one of my Hot Air Jubilee photos for their selection of “Flickr Through the Years – Flickr Staff Favorites” blog post.
Jackson’s local Hot Air Jubilee is one of my favorite annual events to photograph, and it’s easy to understand why: summer, beautiful Ella Sharp Park, and all those colors.
All these years later, I continue to find value and appreciation in Flickr.