Shots from the Road

Summer is just started and it's already flying by - a few shots from the car window as we make our way out to Senica, WV for a bit of camping, relaxing and rock climbing.

Honfleur - Impressions of an Art Opening

I attended a fun photo opening at a very special little gallery in Anacostia last weekend. You can read about the Honfleur Gallery here. The show was a collaboration between 4 pairs of local fashion designers and photographers and was co-produced by Rachel Cothran (Project Beltway) and Heather Goss (Ten Miles Square).

WARNING: Photo Geek Stuff Ahead (Please feel free to skip ahead and just look at the photos.)

In my continuing effort to deconstruct the "art-gallery-event-opening" genre of photo journalism (just kidding - sort of - but see here anyway) I handheld my rangefinder camera set to f16 at 1/2sec. and finished off a role of Delta 3200. f16 gave me a DOF of between 8' and infiniti - so basically I just set it and snapped away.

The idea came from an image that I took while in the Dominican Republic. The image is sharp in places, but it also has a softness from both the DOF and from a slower shutter speed - probably about 1/30 of a second. I really found myself being drawn into the photo, and I wanted to try and recreate the effect - plus the rangefinder isn't a whole lot of fun to focus.

So ... here's a quick selection. The rest here.

... and one last photo, the only one of the bunch where I changed the exposure or focused - really just happy about this one, because I guessed at the camera settings based on the pics from the Easter shoot the previous weekend.

A Russian Easter

I've been doing a 4 week photo essay workshop with Frank Van Riper at Glen Echo Park, and it has given me a great reason to make some fun photos (not to mention gotten me back on my bike for the ride out to Glen Echo). I think that photographers at all levels would benefit from this kind of motivation - for this reason alone the class has been well worth the time and money.

For the class we are encouraged to come up with a set of photos (12ish) to form a narrative. I chose to photograph Easter mass at a St John, a Russian Orthodox church in North West DC. I had photographed the mass there 2 years ago, and I wanted to expand on the idea of those images by documenting the preparation for the holiday, and by meeting some of the people in the church community.

I photographed on two days. The first day I shot was the day before Palm Sunday when the church spruce up happens. I even got to ride the lift that was driven into the main gathering space to dust the chandelier and change the old incandescent light bulbs to energy efficient LED's - is their anything better than "camera privileges". The second day I shot was Easter mass, which is celebrated by candle light late on Saturday night. The bells tole as Saturday becomes Sunday and Jesus rises. (The Orthodox church celebrates Easter a week after the Christian church)

More shots here.

The first set of photos was shot with my Nikon F3 using a 50mm or 28mm lens with old school Kodak ISO400, C-41 type black and white film. The candle light mass shots were taken with either my Mamiya 7 or my old Canon L-2 rangefinder camera using Delta 3200. Using available light I hand held all the shots at f4 and w/ speeds of 1/15 or 1/30 of a second.

A special thanks to Father John and the church community who showed me around, and made me feel most welcome.

The Piano

Quiz time:

You are a professional photographer. A friend who you havn't spoken to in several weeks (Mike, I don't care if you have been in Tanzania all month) calls you up, because he needs help moving Joys piano. Do you:

1. Reply "Hey sure, how hard could that be?"
2. Confuse him with the line rhetorically sticky line about "a friend in need"
3. Tell him your back if feeling a bit tweaked and you hurt your shoulder throwing the tennis ball for the dog - not entirely untrue.
   
4. Explain to him that you are a photographer and do not work for free.
5. Grab your camera and go.
   

Continue on for the answer.

It's a beauty, made in the mid 1800's in London.

Why does Joy look so worried ...

... Oh ... right.

It was a bit tight. Lucky for everyone I had my leatherman in my camara bag, so they could remove the top and get it into the back of the van.

We still almost lost Rob.

Justin's new facebook photo?

Faux-hawk portraits.

Doesn't look that heavy to me. In case you were wondering I did ask them to turn the piano around, so the back wasn't facing me. These guys were so not on the ball.

Spring Cleaning

I'm re-vamping the portfolio, removing photos that don't fit and in the case of the Pogues' 9:30 Club show, making a new home for them on my blog. It isn't that I wouldn't want to be known as a concert photographer, each week ticking off another show from the list of 100 acts to see before you die (or before they do?). But .. well .. take a look here, and tell me who the rock star is.

***

Set one: Shane takes a drag from a cigarette and spits into the mike. The packed house howls and sways, and we raise our drinks and pretend to understand what he is saying. Shane plays on. His body is old and broken. His music is not. Two songs, and he takes a break, exiting stage left, down the stairs and into the blackness (or as Shane might say, "blech"). I get the impression that he is being taken away to his dressing room on a two-wheeled dolly cart. Set two: I raise my camera, a 1957 Canon rangefinder L-2, into the air and snap a photo. The bouncer points and tells me, "No professional cameras!" What this old thing? .. well yes the lens does come off .. but this old thing? Come on! "Fine" he says smugly, "Not enough light without a flash anyway. You're just wasting your time." snap, snap, snap. Thanks .. and in case you missed it, Shane is smoking on stage again.