Another Life Waits Beyond
Jackson, Michigan
photography
Something Of A Legend
Thomas Fitzgerald on shooting with classic gear, like his old Canon 5D:
Coupled with a 50mm lens, it’s a great option for street shooting. It feels like shooting with a film camera in some respects. I’ve grown quite fond of mine again recently, and I’ve been shooting with it more and more lately.
“Like shooting with a film camera” – I get that, too, especially because all it does it shoot straight-up stills.
The Grind
The Grind isn’t the photographs.
The Grind is the selecting your location, choosing which equipment to bring, selecting a film stock, lining up subjects, finding an open slot in your schedule, making time to send/respond to emails, editing the photos when you’re finished with the shoot, picking your favorite picture to present to the world, sending a select few to the subject, backing up your Lightroom library…
But that’s what “photography” means – it’s the photographs, and it’s the Grind to get them made.
Lately, it’s the Grind that has me feeling overwhelmed. If I can pick away at it, bit by bit, I do okay. Otherwise, I feel like I’m swimming in “photography.”
Better learn to love the Grind if you really want to accomplish that project.
Studio Space Unlocked
My long-sought idea for having a studio is now complete. I just signed on a summer agreement with a merchant in downtown Jackson, and am super excited to get started.
There’s a bit of clean-up and moving to do, and I’ll need to get comfortable with the space. But it’s mine for a few months.
Let’s get started.
Camera Mall Interview
Interview with me over at the Camera Mall Facebook page, touching on my projects and style.
Many thanks to my photo pal Jamie MacDonald (above, on one of our urbexing trips) for the questions, and to the Camera Mall for the post. They’re my go-to place for film purchasing and development here lately. It’s nice to have a retail location two blocks away from work here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Call A Plan A Guess
Pulaski, Michigan
Jason Fried at Signal vs. Noise:
Busting your ass planning something important? Feel like you can’t proceed until you have a bulletproof plan in place? Replace “plan” with “guess” and take it easy. That’s all plans really are anyway: guesses.
As my old boss used to say, plan the work and work the plan.
But I take the same approach to planning as I do for traveling: set up the ground rules and structure, and then let real life interject – as it always does.
Olympus Trip 35
If constraints help to fuel creativity, then consider the Olympus Trip 35 film camera my new constraint.
I picked up my copy on eBay from Light Burn Photo’s store last year – a great selection of re-skinned film cameras. The brown leather wrap is right up my alley.
Get this: You have four focusing zones. Close, near, far, and very far. That’s it. You have 1-6 meters to focus, or infinity.
And you can set the aperture, but the camera only has two shutter speeds: 1/200 and 1/40. The ISO dial goes from 25-400. Talk about constraints.
The results are pretty great, though, from what I’ve seen. I loaded a roll of Lomography 400 color film and picked away at it since the fall.
One niggle: the zone focusing is tricky to master. Quite a few of my shots had the wrong zone picked. I almost prefer full manual focus to this system.
It’s super small and light, and almost fully automatic, meaning I can take it anywhere and shoot. And boy, have I.
(Side note: film photography is saving my butt lately. It’s the one experiment that I can mess around with when I feel like it and not feel any pressure to post recent photos. It’s no-pressure photography, and I’m really digging it.)