Series

In art school, I was required to do a photo series as part of my assignments. To some extent it was the most maddening experience I’ve ever had because I always felt like I was just pulling something out of my arse instead of having this really focused vision of some element of life or subject matter that demanded my attention. Eventually, I’d just do an odd, semi-silly narrative based theme that helped me realize story telling was more for me than serious analytical photography. Thus film school came next.

Years later though, I find myself yearning to go back to my roots. The photo series haunts the nether regions of my mind. One photo I took last year in paticular begs for compainions. I was working on a shoot in the parking lot of some random strip mall in Barstow when I decided to look through the lens of my Canon in search of the hidden beauty of this, the most common of places. I’m not sure that I found any but what I did find was an assortment of garish colors and straight, fabricated lines that when pushed together formed over-simplified icons of consumerism.

This image always had a behind the scenes quality to it for me. I’m not entirely sure were I would go with the examination of this kind of subject matter. I have a feeling I’d get wrapped up in the lines again and lose the point of lovingly mocking the everyday attempts at seduction these places attempt with us.

They try and draw us in with hissing and popping lights, low, low prices and the occasional waving mascot. These places aren’t the big leagues, they aren’t the places you plan to go to, that you want to be in. They’re the place that you end up. Maybe something better was closed. Maybe you’re too tried or drunk to travel farther than safely recommended by your state of mind. In any case, they’ll always be there. Easy to ignore, but hard to forget in a pinch.

Visually it’s a hard story to translate and I’m not sure I’m up for crawling around a P.F. Chang’s parking lot late at night again but I’m thinking it’d be a good exercise for me to attempt. Watch out Five Star Liquor Mart, here I come!

New Additions

Today I received the latest of my new lenses for the Leica, a 28mm f2.8. I contemplated the 35mm for a long time but found that it wasn’t wide enough for the things I wanted to do photographically. So my lovely 50mm f2 is now joined by an 80-200mm f4 and the afore mentioned 28mm. A nice little family of options is growing.

I also got two of the three rolls from my trip up north processed (one’s still in the camera). A&I labs in Hollywood handled the processing, proofing and scans. I have to say that I’m not at all happy with the negative scans they did for me. There’s dust everywhere and everything seems excessively grainy for 200 ASA stock. So for now I’ll simply work off of the proof sheets and see if there’s anything there for me to print.

My exposures are becoming much more consistent now that I’m metering exclusively with the Pentax Digital Spotmeter. I’m learning so many new things about how to effectively evaluate a scene and I’m relearning that wonderful Zone System scale that I always vaguely understood but rarely put into practice because of impatience or lack of understanding or a myriad of other reasons I kept myself at a sub-par level.

It feels good to start trusting your own skill level instead of just throwing a bunch of stuff you thought you learned way back when against your work and seeing what sticks. The next thing I’m going to have to get in the habit of doing is taking better notes. Digital is great because it remembers everything for you short of filters and lighting. As seductive as it is to trust that I “just know” what I’m doing now, it’s better for me to look closely at the details and learn from all that I put into the image. 

Like I said, the scans are pretty bad but I will show you one image from a previous trip I took to Griffith Observatory simply because I could see it as one of those places I’ll find myself revisiting over and over again. I love this building so much for what it holds. It has history, knowledge, and beauty ensconced in it’s heavily ornate, bleached walls. There are few places like this in Los Angeles. I’m glad that it’s here.

So, here’s a Leica shot and though it may not show much of the building itself, it’s hard not to know where you are when you see it. That’s why I love it’s iconography so much.