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!