The focused traveler

Another shot from the many many yet to be published shots.

Another great quote

"A successful artist is a person who is able to create something that manifests their truth...a perception that they feel they need to bring to the world. A successful creative person is someone who continues to create no matter what happens. I respect many artists. They are not all extremely successful in the art market, or in the art status structure. Some are, and some aren't. Some of the ones I respect have been overlooked. But I still consider them to be successful, because they have succeeded to give the world their vision, even though the world does not always acknowledge their worth...In other words, I define a successful career as much more than just external validation." -- Jan Harrison

Stolen from http://www.aphotoeditor.com/ again!

Possibly the end

Well, that was fun.Lots of work. Not a great deal of reward. A lot learned. A few friends made. LOTS of time wasted. Photography, I need a rest. Thanks for all the kind words over the several years. Time to get on with my life. Bye.

Resting

Resting up outside Bic Camera in Shinjuku.

Shibuya Investigation

Another scene from a different film

Infected

So yesterday I managed to have my computer infected by a very nasty Trojan that, in a matter of minutes replicated itself and took over my machine. I've gone many years of PC usage (and Mac usage for that matter) without this happening to me. No less that 84 viruses found on the drive with the OS on it. I could not get rid of them. This lead to a complete re-install of the system on a new disk. And I figured while I was in pain I'd inflict a little more by installing Windows 7. Having just gotten my machine almost to normal I have to say I'm very surprised by the performance of this new OS. All my apps seem to work without an issue. Drivers? Everything is automatic. I Did have to download a printer driver, my scanner and the Wacom driver but everything else related to the machine was taken care of by the OS. The speed of the new OS is noticeably faster than XP pro which I'm happy about and the interface seems to be an improvement (function wise) but I'll still need to get my head around these new permission issues.

Computers - fucking waste of time.

(and you mac people...spinning ball of death...yes, I know about that too).

Virus image By Solitaire Miles

Out with the new and in with the old or out with it all?

So I started shooting medium format film for a few different reasons. I like the "look" of film. I like the mood it gives you. I like it's unpredictability. I like that it's not easy to get right. I like that it can give pictures a timelessness. I like that medium format photography is a slow process. It's manual focus. It's slow lenses and manual winders (most of the time). You can make big prints. And when you manage to get all of the details correct you can make a great picture (or so I've been told).Another reason I changed formats and mediums is because I realized that my old digital photos were easy to copy. And when I realized this I understood that what I thought were great pictures were not. Anyone could take them. So I thought I should try harder and set myself a challenge to try to shoot the same subject matter with a different camera. Give myself a challenge to see what I could achieve. And so after countless rolls of film and a huge amount of time trying I finally realized that I suck at medium format photography. A friend of mine took a look at my pictures recently and told me not to give up on the old stuff I'd done. I think I'm slowly starting to see his point. And what's interesting about this is that what he's saying not only is that my old stuff was better but, given it was so easy for anyone to replicate even the old stuff was not much good. I think I may need to revisit the whole idea of taking pictures.

and the point is?

I watched a video the other day about a man who came up with his own set of rules to live by. One of them was "always try to do your best" and another was "don't try to be better than anyone else". I like these. I think they would not be bad to adopt. And so, when I apply this to photography it appears that I've been encountering a few issues.One is, I genuinely believe my immediate friends take better pictures than me. So, this should be a good thing. I'm in the company of people with great skill and eye's that can see what I'll never be able to. This also inspires me to try to take "good" pictures. Unfortunately, out of the insane number of photo's I've taken within the last two and a half years I'd say that I'm happy with maybe 2 or 3 of them. I've poured a lot of time and energy and money into this and what is interesting is that, in the process I've managed to make more good friends than good pictures (I don't quite know why given the quality of my shots). Now I'm sure a few of my friends would argue that I've managed to make more than a handful of great shots and that would be nice of them to say but I don't think I have. And if the reason for doing this for me is, just that, to make me happy and for me to make pictures that I am happy with then is there a point in continuing when I have clearly failed? Have I really tried my best or could I do more? And what is ones best anyway? Where do we draw the line? What and how much do I need to sacrifice in order to really, genuinely do my best (the job, the wife, the friends?) Photography can be a bit on the evil side. You can try all you like and not make a good picture. But because of the nature of photography we're lulled into this idea that "maybe the next shot" will be the one. And so you continue in the hope that the next one will be better or be good. At what point do you stop and admit defeat?

What's also interesting about photography for me is the idea that pictures that are unique to an individuals perspective. This and the idea that no one moment in time is ever the same makes every picture (almost) unique. This is suppose to be one of the main attractors of photography. But what if no one finds your viewpoint interesting? What if, as you look around you discover many people have a more interesting view of the world than you do? Is there a point to continue when everyone passes you by, uninterested in your view of the world?

47 minutes

Jim O’Connell. The man seems to have a knowledge on photography that knows no bounds.I've been trying different developers for a while and have found the process a huge time sink. Half of me enjoys it and the other half just can't stand sitting around Agitating every minute. So, over a flickr on the Magnum group (no, the other one) where we seem to have all kinds of crazy discussions, the question came up about Rodinal by Jon about how long to develop for. Jim answers "For that, mix 1/100 with tap water, mix well, pour it in, shake it like a martini for 5-10 seconds and then let it sit for an hour before fixing and washing." but I remember hearing from either him or second hand that 1 hour didn't cut it when he changed to a new batch of chemical so he dropped the time to 47 minutes. So I tried it on 2 rolls of TMax 400 @400 and they "look" like they came out fine. Also tried it on 2 rolls of TMax 400 @800 and THEY look like they are ok too. The real test was to see if I could do a roll of TMax 100 and Tmax 400 at the same time. Result! I can't confirm this 100% until they dry and I've done a few scans but it's looking promising. I think the moral of the story is, if you have a question about B+W film dev just ask Jim. Stay tuned for results.

Quote of the day

"Today, I went on a first date with an Egyptian/Cuban sorority girl. I asked her what language she was brought up speaking. She said that her mom spoke to her in Spanish, but that she only ever replied in English. I said, "Oh, kinda like Chewbacca and Han Solo?" "
Thanks to Jon for twittering this site

Shinjuku Station

So I often find my favorite place to shoot these days is on the way home from somewhere. The great thing about stations is that people are transitioning and are usually not in one place for that long. They don't want to move from their place in the que and are often in their own world wasting time until the train arrives which is the perfect environment for me to be shooting in. Why go find the people when you can let them all come to you? The difficult part is that a hasselblad or rolleiflex is not subtle and a regular rangefinder or slr is very obvious so you still have to pick your moments.