A few selec­tions from September/October/November of 2017.

Leica M3, HP5+ at 1600

Gray weather per­sisted for a visit to Asheville. HP5+ 400 devel­oped at 1600 in D-76. Leica M3.

From space where the soil is sand.

San Fran­cisco, June 2016. Ilford FP4+ and HP5+ in Leica M3

Every­thing is hazy in Austin. A beau­ti­ful city with much more to explore than what I pho­tographed. But so hot, so dusty!

Every few months I travel to Raleigh, North Car­olina and on these vis­its I try to explore down­town a lit­tle bit. This month I had another trip and took my Leica M3 and my (new to me) Mamiya C330. These are some of my favorites from three ses­sions — one late after­noon and one night­time walk with the M3, and one mid­day with the C330. The M3 had a roll of expired 400UC and the Mamiya was loaded with Ultra­fine Extreme 400.

I’ve got­ten to a pretty com­fort­able place with the Leica, but the C330 is still very for­eign to me. In fact, on three of my images the lens didn’t acti­vate — no idea what I did wrong there. I had switched out the 80mm 2.8 for a 180mm 4.5 and some­how didn’t set it up cor­rectly. Will read more and bet­ter luck next time. Big thank you to Karl Abbott for the roll of Ultra­fine — it turned out great in a Microphen stock dev!

I was for­tu­nate to be the Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015 pho­tog­ra­pher, and as always there were many incred­i­ble ses­sions of the­ater, aeri­al­ists, pup­pets, and music. There are many, many, many tac­tics one can uti­lize when pho­tograph­ing per­for­mances. Long expo­sures, high-ISO cap­tures, processed images to high­light the per­former — all are good options. Another option on engag­ing the sub­ject: shoot once, process none. Shoot film, process, and take what develops.

In addi­tion to the actual live per­for­mances, I was also invited to check out some rehearsals, includ­ing the work of the FALL com­pany. It was pretty incred­i­ble to lis­ten in and hear some of their process as they rehearsed through the work, and to try and unob­tru­sively cap­ture some of the dis­cus­sions in pho­tos. Below are three of those images next to one of the per­form­ers dur­ing the rehearsal set.

FALL Rehears­ing, Side Show Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015

Giv­ing up some con­trol with the medium lets me work in the avail­able light­ing and motion with­out stress­ing over the upcom­ing post-processing. A chance to pho­to­graph the mood and ambi­ence in the unpol­ished envi­ron­ment. A bit of a looser, yet more focused, feel­ing from the per­form­ers seems to come out in rehearsals. When the dancers are con­tin­u­ing the com­mit­ment of their work to mus­cle mem­ory it’s almost like a photo cri­tique. Peo­ple are look­ing for input, look­ing for encour­age­ment, but also any­thing that helps rise the level of the work is welcome.

Many thanks to FALL for allow­ing me to shoot the rehearsals!