I meet Gordon almost every Sunday morning at Saint’s Café to review our respective photographic lives for the week, to cajole or shame each other into further work, and to keep alive the dream of a creative life we heard rumored in graduate school. The 3 Prints Project (two rolls of film and three prints every week) began almost three years ago and has continued ever since with a few detours into digital and plenty of excuses for showing up without work.
On Friday I got an iPad2. Minutes after turning it on a strong desire to shoot film washed over me. The iPad may have been the digital straw that broke my analog back.
To be fair I like he iPad and acquired it to evaluate, test and monitor the release of the magazine I edit as an iPad edition. The measure of digital continues to grow in my life.
Friday afternoon the Leica is hanging around my neck, an extra roll of film in my pocket, and the world is revolving at a bit slower pace. Such seems to be the effect of shooting film.
Roll 521. I have to thank Matt Alofs of the 1PT4 photography blog for the idea of numbering by rolls. I have a mess of negatives and I have gone through many schemes of keeping track of them. Following his Flickr site I saw that he assigns roll numbers to sets of pictures. While I have no idea the meaning behind his numbers I thought it was a marvelously simple way for me to have a system that I could track.
The number 521 comes from the month and day I started using it. After that everything will just be sequential. I’m working on 522 now.
Matt has an amazing volume of black and white work that I have no idea how he finds time to produce. He documents the things he sees in life including ongoing portraits Kate (wife, partner, girlfriend, significant other?) in a manner that most partners would find withering. To shoot so much film is pretty amazing. If I find out he is not scanning negatives I’ll be really depressed.
Gordon arrived with digital prints of images made with his camera phone and a couple others made with a digital SLR during his drive to work. I’d arrived with a single print and contact sheet from the one roll of film I managed to shoot.
We’ve sustained a level of output over the years generating a steady stream of personal work, questioning process and intent, criticizing, supporting and tending the fragile flame of creative expression amidst the daily grind of earning a living.
Morning. Mount Nittany in the fog. My camera has pointed this way many times. Photographing the same subject over and over reveals something about the subject and the photographer. For me, this is home.
The iPhone and Camera+ app continues to impress me. This shot was made using the Clarity effect.
Last night I developed a single roll of black and white film. A familiar ritual repeated thousands of times over the last 20 years in this particular darkroom. The iPhone is always handy and this time makes a recording of the path less traveled in photography.
Looking at the contact sheet I realize I see the world differently with the Leica. Different than I do using a digital camera. Not better or worse, just different.
The ride into town was quiet with almost no traffic on US 322. Sporadic fog continually changed the landscape allowing me to ride from magical place to illusion and beyond.
I have a great capacity to be sloppy, something that does not incur many benefits in a darkroom. Rushed to make this proof print of Junior so I would have something to show at Saint’s Café. Flat, lifeless, drab. No digital effects to save me, mask the deficiencies of the image. And strangely, I am enjoying the process.
Again.
My printing skills and general late night sloth betray the magic a silver print can possess. Maybe next time I’ll work harder.
On towards town and a brief stop to exchange stories with a small herd of Penn State quarter horses.
On through the fields, fog beginning to lift and reveal a gray day with threats of rain. The Vespa is indifferent and moves on and on and on.
After Gordon and I exhausted comments and ideas we parted company and I headed home on a slightly longer route. Climbing to the top of a hill along the road I was offered the opportunity to photograph these two motorcycles speeding in the opposite direction. Everything looks insignificant from this altitude. A reminder of how careful I need to be on the road.
At Café Lemont, a spur of the moment stop for tea and a Neiman Marcus cookie (love these things), I pull up next to a 2002 BMW R1200 GS. If the Vespa is ready to riding in and around town the BMW looks ready to ride in and around North America. Inside the owner pretty much confirms that assessment.
His name is Mark and he tells me he’s getting ready to ride to Nova Scotia and then on to Labrador. I ask if he’s ridden in Alaska (he has) and he tells me that he and his wife have ridden in Europe a couple times through Edelweiss Tours.
I mask any jealously and envy.
We talk for awhile, shake hands and go our separate ways. On the way home I think about what it might be like to ride for weeks on end or travel to some exotic location. Rounding a bend covered with gravel my attention returns to the road and I grow satisfied with the adventures I create within a 200-mile radius of State College. It’s what I can manage now with work and family. And I love the riding.
Not far from home I pass a barn with a horse gazing out the window. I went past and continued on for several hundred yards before I couldn’t get the image out of my head and made a quick U-turn to make a picture. Would never have done it on that big BMW K1600 GTL. Just saying.
And I’m still working on those reviews.
For now I’m just glad to get out and ride a little, make a few pictures, and spend some more time in the darkroom.
