Blue Ridge Geor­gia. April 2017. Mamiya Pro TL, Ilford FP4+.

A mix of Fuji Acros 100 (in the Leica M3) and Ilford Delta 3200 (in the Mamiya Pro TL). Walk­ing around Zilker Park, Rainey St, and 6th from BookPeo­ple to downtown.

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!

Shad­ow­ing Lizard Walker dur­ing a cou­ple of aer­ial classes at abra­sive­Me­dia. We are start­ing to explore a long-term col­lab­o­ra­tion which is very exciting!

Sep­tem­ber 2015. Delta 3200, Mamiya 645 pro tl

Extended trip to west­ern North Car­olina in June 2015. HP5+ 220 in the Mamiya 645 and Supe­ria 400 in the Leica M3.

This is the roll of Tri-X 400 that I picked up from the Imag­in­gUSA Kodak booth. I haven’t shot any medium for­mat Tri-X before (to my rec­ol­lec­tion any­way) and I was very impressed with the breadth of tone that could be pulled from the scans.

As always, I loved walk­ing around with the GA645. Just a great cam­era. So sharp, so reli­able — my only com­plaint is that it shoots 15 instead of 16 on a 120 roll (and 30 instead of 32 on 220). But being able to use the same equip­ment for 120 & 220 with­out adapters is pretty awe­some. Which reminds me.…I have a roll of FP4 220 that needs to be used!

Since I first started play­ing gui­tar I had wound my strings into a lit­tle round object as they came off for new strings. It was really more a func­tion of keep­ing the strings in place as they came off the instru­ment and not lay­ing around haphazardly.

But over time I started to really love the cir­cu­lar shape and I tried to put a lit­tle inten­tion in how I wrapped the strings. I cer­tainly am not the first (or ten thou­sandth) to do so, but I did really like the way they looked. Espe­cially the older strings when I was lax on chang­ing them. Their worn down feel was beau­ti­ful when woven together — all the dif­fer­ent thick­nesses and mate­r­ial in and out, with enough nat­ural flex and resis­tance to man­ual posi­tion­ing that each set of strings was a lit­tle unique.

At Kanuga this past June, the time came to change strings on site. I’d been delib­er­at­ing on tak­ing a photo of the cabin wall by itself, but I real­ized that what I really needed was to make a photo of the strings on the wall. The con­trast of the organic wall with the two nails (which have been there since who knows when) and the metal cir­cles all came together very well in a late after­noon long expo­sure (I believe it was 2 sec­onds at f/11).

Cabin Wall with Gui­tar Strings. June 2014. FP4+ 120 film.

I am grate­ful of my his­tory at Kanuga. I’ve been going there twenty years this sum­mer, and it con­tin­ues to be as for­ma­tive then as it was that first year. I’ve almost always stayed in the #30–36 cab­ins and the tex­tured green walls are as famil­iar as my own skin. I’m pleased with this image, as a remem­brance of a quiet time and place in the midst of a hec­tic life.

Using the cam­era as a tool to record a staged event is of mixed regards, and the ten­sion of still life vs more “street” or “organic” com­po­si­tions still goes back and forth in my own aes­thetic. How­ever, I do believe that it is pos­si­ble to cre­ate a clearer state­ment of place and/or time by lay­er­ing objects delib­er­ately and then record­ing that con­tent than by wait­ing and hop­ing to chance upon arrange­ments that speak the same. If we are to have clar­ity of our mem­o­ries and our rec­ol­lec­tions, we must be able to express those same through what­ever tools we have available.

Now, an inter­est­ing step fur­ther is that I left the strings there on the wall. If another pho­tog­ra­pher was to come onto the porch and see those strings and make an image, they would have the oppo­site rea­son­ing for doing so — their record­ing of a found for­ma­tion as opposed to my inten­tional cre­ation. Would they feel any con­nec­tion to my work? Would their prints be at all related to mine of the same scene? Maybe next time I visit Kanuga they will still be there and I can inves­ti­gate, at least con­trast­ing my own estab­lish­ing vs find­ing work.

We had an extended visit to West­ern North Car­olina in June, and one of the stops was the always fan­tas­tic French Broad Choco­late Lounge. Great cof­fee, great treats.

Shot with the Mamiya 645 Pro TL and expired FP4+ 220 film.