What can I say about the first lifetime retrospective of Joel Meyerowitz’s work, with comments throughout by Meyerowitz himself? If you’re the least bit aware of Meyerowitz and his practice, you probably know something about his trajectory, from 35mm street shooter to 8×10 landscape and still life, and Where I Find Myself has it all.
Continue reading “Joel Meyerowitz – ‘Where I Find Myself’”My Little Game (part 1)
Last Friday, the Online Photographer shared the first part of this Little Game. I don’t know what the rest of the game involves, but I have a few suspicions. Time will tell.
The gist of part one is as follows: take pen and paper, look through your archive, and list out 25 categories of things that you like to take pictures of. These could be genres, subjects, scenes, whatever, but they should be things that get you moving in some way, and not things that you do just to sell or get likes from.
I limited my archive to film, shot in the last 3 years, and still had some 12000 images to scroll through. It was at turns exhilarating and depressing: exhilarating to see all the really interesting/pretty pictures I’ve made; depressing at just how much I’ve shot and (seemingly) how little I’ve done with it (though I’ve written hundreds of posts here, almost all with a handful of pictures or more). But overall, this little game has been quite engaging and fun, so far, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.
Here’s my list, with some examples.
Continue reading “My Little Game (part 1)”Khalik Allah – ‘Souls Against the Concrete’
Several years ago, I took a screengrab of a photo for my ‘Inspiration/To Try’ collection. I’ve returned to it many times, wondering how to get the light, the focus, the blur. I had no idea who took the photo, and at the time, I really didn’t care. It’s a portrait of an older man, close up. His mouth is chopped off by the bottom of the frame. His eyes are intense, bloodshot, looking, questioning, emerging from shadow. Most of the light in the frame bounces off of his forehead and nose, with a bit on his cheek. His hair falls away to a soft blur, and the background is just smooth blobs of light blue and peach.
I had a bunch of thoughts about how to create something like it in my dingy apartment, or with my darling, adorable wife in our lovely home, thinking of strobes and gels, trying out some strobist-type stuff, but I never did anything with it.
I saw a few shots, out in the world, that might work, but I never quite got it, never even got close really, and I forgot about the photo for awhile, moved the ‘Inspiration/To Try’ folder to an archive drive, and focused on… well, whatever it is I shoot.
Imagine my delight when I found it in Khalik Allah‘s Souls Against the Concrete.
Continue reading “Khalik Allah – ‘Souls Against the Concrete’”Mitsubishi MX-III first roll review
Recently, the good folks at the FPP found a cache of 2006-expired Mitsubishi MX-III film. Peel the label off, and what do you have but some nice Kirkland Signature 200! Sadly, there’s no label to peel off, as with the ShurFine 200 I wrote about last week, but given the country of origin (and film canister) it appears to be a Konica (or Konica-Minolta) stock, possibly VX100. Just as soon as I finished the roll of ShurFine, I loaded a roll of the Mitsubishi into the Ricoh 500 ME, and wow! I like this stuff! Continue reading “Mitsubishi MX-III first roll review”
The Beatles – ‘The Beatles’ (The White Album) Fiftieth Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
In March of 1990, an English band with the excellent name of Candy Flip covered the Beatles’ classic “Strawberry Fields Forever.” I turned 12 a month later, and one evening around that time I was riding back to my dad’s apartment after a day hanging out in the back of the Ritz Camera at North Hills Mall, where Dad worked at the time, in his hand-me-down forest green beetle, and the “Strawberry Fields Forever” cover came on the radio. (Listening back now, it’s pretty weak and undeniably 1990, but it went to #3 in the UK, and was something of a radio hit on 94.5 The Edge back then.) I turned up the volume and proclaimed my 12-year-old appreciation for the song. Dad wasn’t impressed, to put it mildly, and was surprised, and very nearly derisive, that I didn’t know “Strawberry Fields Forever” was a Beatles song.
Little did he know that the tiny bit of knowledge he imparted at that time would have a long term effect… Continue reading “The Beatles – ‘The Beatles’ (The White Album) Fiftieth Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition”
Jo Ann Walters – ‘Wood River Blue Pool’
Jo Ann Walters’ Wood River Blue Pool is a collection of her photographs of mostly women and girls, photographed around Alton, IL and all up and down the Mississippi river, mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It comes with a companion volume, Emma Kemp’s Blue Pool Cecelia, a wonderful meditation on violence and the Blue Pool of the title. Together, Kemp’s essay-thing, Walters’ photographs, and the afterward by Laura Wexler form a portrait of women’s lives, and the history of racial and sexual violence that surrounds them, in and around Alton, IL, and indeed, all over the United States. Continue reading “Jo Ann Walters – ‘Wood River Blue Pool’”
ShurFine 200 (Kirkland Signature 200) first roll review
Recently, the good folks at the FPP found a cache of 2009-expired ShurFine 200 film. Peel the label off, and what do you have but some nice Kirkland Signature 200. I quickly put a roll through the Ricoh 500 ME, partly at EI 100, partly at 50, and here’s what I found. Continue reading “ShurFine 200 (Kirkland Signature 200) first roll review”