The world just looks more beautiful through the lens of an SX-70

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Adventures as a Nashville resident

Well, I’m officially in Nashville. And unfortunately, a lot of the things that were originally lined up for my arrival have fallen through. The house I was living in? Not happening. The temp jobs? Not exactly, more like possible freelance jobs (which is still good, but I need something more solid).

So, what the heck am I doing? Well, at the moment I’m living in a house with Chris he got through a friend of his. We’re living with a few other people, and we’re paying to live here till the end of the month. With this time, we’re looking all over the place trying to find any sort of job that can let us get our own place to live. Ideally it would be in another house, but at the moment it seems like it may be the best, most feasible option for us to just move into an apartment complex we’ve been looking at for a while which is giving us a really great deal. But lately, it seems like the plan changes every few days, so who knows what will happen.

Some exciting news to me though is that I just bought a Polaroid SX-70! I got a really good deal on it, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent my much needed money on it. It’s in incredible shape and came with a leather case. The photo on the right is one of the first photos I’ve taken with it. Unfortunately, the thing is about the SX-70 is that although it can take 600 type film, it needs some sort of filter in order to keep the shots from overexposing, since it was originally made for film two whole stops slower than 600. I don’t currently have a filter for it, which is why the photo is overexposed (and that’s with the dial turned all the way at it’s darkest). But, I like it anyways. Eventually I’ll figure out a way to more accurately filter the shots so they are exposed correctly, but I was just too excited to not take some shots now.

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Nashville, here I come

Sorry for my lack of entries as of late. I’ve been pretty busy with editing wedding photos, plus a lot of my family has been in town and I’ve been spending time with them. I also haven’t really had much to update about until now.

The past few weeks, I’ve been trying very hard to figure out how I can move to Nashville. Since I live so far away from there currently, for a while I was stuck in the cycle of “Can’t get an apartment without a job, can’t get a job without a place to live.” I got a little scared that I’d have to put off the move for a few weeks to figure it out. But luckily, things just started to fall into place.

So as of right now, the plan is that I will be leaving Houston on August 9th and driving to Nashville. Me and Chris, a good friend of mine from college, will be rooming together in a house with a couple other guys. We’re paying rent, but there’s no lease and it’s rather informal, which is great just in case we get there and realize it’s not the best place for us, which is the hardest part about moving somewhere so far away from where you live currently. We also have temp jobs lined up, which will help us make some money to pay rent and give us time to look for long term jobs.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the move is that I’m in talks to start an apprenticeship/internship with an incredible photographer, David Molnar. I’d be doing a lot of the same things I did for Visage Photography, but also assisting on shoots. I think having a connection like this is going to be invaluable for getting my own freelance photography business off the ground.

So for the next week, I’ll just be getting ready for the move. I’m also excited a friend of mine, Lauren, is going to be in town this week. We’ll be hanging out a little while she’s here doing crazy dance stuff and some photography too. Which reminds me, if anyone is looking for some crazy awesome photos to put on their walls and would like to help support her trip to Africa, consider buying a print.

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Wedding #2

This was my second wedding shoot. I felt much more prepared for this one in many ways. Since I’ve shot a wedding before, I already was prepared for the kinds of things that would happen. Also, I was much prepared gear-wise, since I practiced a bit with my new camera and did a lot of research on using flash.

The wedding was of course in Portugal in the town of Porto at a place called Casa Das Ribas. It was outside around 4 in the afternoon. The setting was near perfect in every way. It was easily the most beautiful setting I’ve ever shot. Overall, I’m very happy with the photos. I primarily used my new Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens, and it’s so amazing how sharp the photos came out. The above photo is probably one of my favorite shots from the whole wedding. It was shot at f2.8 at 50mm. In terms of post processing, I actually did very little. Liz’s eyes were so piercing even in the raw file.

Now I just need to go through the hundreds of photos that need post processing. I think I’m going to try and keep them relatively natural looking rather than doing too much cross processing or anything else too intense, which should hopefully cut down the PP time.

Today I started a weekly thing I’ll be doing. Every Monday, I’ll be taking an abstract photo. Here’s my first.

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Back

I think this is my favorite polaroid I’ve ever taken. It was taken in the Dublin, Ireland airport while going up the escalator. I’m not sure I originally intended for the woman’s legs to be in the top left until the very last second (while moving on the escalator, mind you). Looking through the viewfinder, I saw the legs and the pink bag, and I was just hoping that what I was seeing through the viewfinder of my Polaroid ProPack would translate to the actual photo, since it’s not SLR. Also, on the ProPack the focus is manual, and there’s no way of previewing what’s in focus; rather, you have to guess how far away your subject is and set the lens to focus at that distance, hoping you got it right. Anticipation built as I tried to find a trash can out of the way so I could peel apart the film and throw away the negative. I had a bag on me I had to juggle, as well as figuring out a way to accurately time the development of the film and where to store the photo after drying, all the while in a very busy, very crowded, unfamiliar airport. But after 90 seconds of developing, as soon as I peeled it apart and saw the image, and it was a great feeling.

I don’t mean any of that to sound arrogant or pretentious. I just think there’s something about Polaroids that I’ve discovered recently, and that something explains why a lot of times I feel uncomfortable shooting it, despite my complete love for the medium. The medium, and to a certain extent much of film photography, is an uncomfortable medium to work with when you’ve learned all you know about photography in the digital age. While there is the coinciding of instantly being able to view the photo you just took, with digital a bad image can easily be deleted and nothing is lost, and in fact you gain more space to shoot another photo. With Polaroid, each shot is completely unique, and when it’s a bad shot, you have one less shot you can take, with each shot costing you sometimes over $1, and the inevitable doom of Polaroid film always hovering over you like a dark cloud of despair. To top it off, most Polaroid cameras (including the 3 that I own) are not SLR, which means looking through the provided viewfinder is merely an approximation of what photo I’m taking. Also all the controls are automatic with only a small amount, if any, flexibility. And last but certainly not least, there’s the fact that there’s no photoshopping a bad photo into a good one with Polaroids. So every time I press that shutter, it’s a flurry of excitement, fear, and apprehension as I wait for the photo to develop, never quite sure if what I had in mind will actually turn out at all.

And I think that’s why I actually don’t shoot Polaroid often. Part of me wants to be one of those people who would go out all day without a digital camera and only take a polaroid and be able to get a ton of amazing photos, or be like this photographer, Colie Parks, who practically shoots all Polaroid and gets beautiful results. But every time I get that kind of opportunity, I almost always chicken out and hide back in the comfort of taking my digital with me too, and then inevitably I don’t use the Polaroid at all for any number of excuses I can think of. While in Europe, I only took 3 shots with my Polaroid the whole trip, despite having two whole packs of film available.

And yet, when I do use it, and I get a photo like the one above, I experience fully what everyone is talking about. It’s something I can’t quite put into words other than what I’ve already attempted to express so far. I suppose given my perspective of being so deep into digital photography, there was something beautiful about all these unsure elements and struggles and imperfections all coming together into a physical piece of art in my hand that I was actually completely happy with. It’s a photo I would really like if I had just seen it randomly on flickr. And that’s a good feeling.

Sometimes, digital is too easy.

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There’s a new photo on A Collaboration of Days that we actually did before I left for Europe….

Which reminds me, Europe was awesome. I’ll write more about it later. Suffice it to say, I have a ton of photos to work on. There’s some photos from the wedding on my Flickr right now. I’ll write about that whole experience more later.

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