Parma, Michigan
Parma, Michigan is a little burg on the west end of Jackson County – quiet and empty the day I was there.
Shot on the original Canon M with the EF-M 22mm f/2.
photography
Philly in 50mm: Museum District
More 50mm shots from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this time near the art museum (made famous in Rocky).
The hike from downtown to the museum district is a pleasant one, lined with sycamore trees and art installations along the way. At the start, you have the Barnes Foundation, and then halfway down the path you have the Rodin Museum – a space that looks like an ancient Roman edifice left behind by millennia and plunked down into a sprawling, modern American city.
Then you get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with its Rocky statue and iconic stairway, and you can tell this is where people gather. Especially dudes who just jogged all the way here to run up those steps.
I haven’t been to Philly in years, not since my big Revoluationary War tour of New England in 2008, and it was great to see some places I didn’t catch on the original trip.
Shot on the Canon R with the RF 50mm f/1.8 lens.
Philly in 50mm: Downtown
Quick work trip last week to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.
My coworkers and I had a chance to visit downtown Philly briefly. With only my work camera – a Canon R with the RF 50mm f/1.8 lens – I snagged a few pictures around the historic district and the art museum stairs (made famous in the Rocky movie).
These are the downtown portion, in and around the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.
I don’t often do the street photography thing, but it was nice to explore a busy urban area and capture the people and scenes around this important American city.
Grass Lake, Michigan
Capturing small towns around mid-Michigan is an ongoing project. A few weeks back, I grabbed a sunny morning in early September and went to Grass Lake, Michigan, a little village on the East end of Jackson County.
A powerhouse in local football, and an old railroad stop along the I-94 corridor to Ann Arbor and Detroit, Grass Lake has a quaint downtown district with some alleyways great for exploring. It was quiet the morning I was there – very few walkers or browsers on the square – but E Michigan Ave is always busy with traffic.
For this trip, I took the Canon M6 and a mix of 22mm and 28mm EF-M lenses.
This fall, I plan to try and visit more little towns around this area of Michigan. So far, I have visited Springport, Parma, Homer, and Brooklyn.
Embracing Shadows
“I could take the limitations of the camera and use [shadows] to create something even more interesting.”
I feel like that’s a perfect distillation of my style: never be afraid of the shadows.
Friday Night Lights
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.
Marching Band
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.
Light Just Right
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.
Using Older Camera Gear
“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.
Photographer Interview: Zach Huggins
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.