12.30.24

Oh wow I fell off, unsurprisingly quickly as well. Here’s a very brief recap of mid October to late December;

I spent October and the first half of November primarily making street photography, becoming friends with local street shooters, reconnecting with old dawgs of Downtown Crossing, and making work I am very happy with. As daylight faded I spent less time downtown and more time in JP, returning to my roots and my routine of post sunset walks. December gets hectic for me at work, but I kept plugging away, I had some work in a group show at Panopticon (it’s up for just over another month, if you even care…), made a couple late season solargraphs thanks to the winter solstice, and now, as the year comes to an end, I’ve got a couple accelerated lumens in progress, feeling the pull of alternative process that had waned in the late days of summer. Here’s a couple shots from the last idk weeks.

Summer to winter solstice 2024

Long late afternoon walks across the city partially defined my November

Oh I got an infrared modified camera, expect a lot more of this come spring and the return of lush green (er, red) across the land.

Until next time

xoxo

john

10.13.24

A lil love letter to street photography, and an apology for leaving you for so long, but not really, because everything is street photography, and none of it is, its all just MY photography.

When I was a fledgling little photography baby, like so many other photography babies, I tried everything, sports, birds, sunsets, flowers, macro, action, panning, abstract, just throwing things at the wall, and I enjoyed a lot of it, but it wasn’t until I was in Downtown Crossing one now forgotten day in 2007 where I met Johnny Mac, Bobby, and Joe, the three old timer street photographers who stalked the busiest parts of Boston making what to me felt like momentous and unimaginably cool work. Working fast, daring, sneaky, bold, brazen, gonzo, they shot people without a care for anything but getting the shot, I took my first baby steps into the work that would come to define me as a photographer for the next 9 years.

I was hooked immediately. As often as my school and work schedule allowed me I would make my way downtown, or to the back bay, newbury st, central square, wherever there were crowds, and especially office workers on lunch break, or going home all at once at 5pm, and through this singular focus to my work I fell in love with specific focal lengths, lenses, ways of working. I learned sunny 16 through street work, zone focusing, scale focusing, dragging the shutter, I learned how to look like I was cluelessly futzing with my camera while surreptitiously snapping shots a foot from someones face. I learned to deflect conflict, and how to court it. I learned when it was best to walk away, and when to stand my ground. More than anything I learned that the tales of artists sitting in Parisian cafes sipping espresso and discussing the nature of art was a thing that still happens, here, in my city, in Dunkin Donuts, sipping the most dogshit coffee ever brewed, but the conversations made it more special than you can imagine.

But I walked away from those endless sessions downtown, my life changed, I got busier, I got rejected from grad school, and sat and thought about my work with a detachment that caused me to pivot, hard, into work that was wholly different, and at the time felt right, and for a great many years I didn’t look back, I had found my voice in photography, found my calling, my work, my niche. And for a time I had, and then that ended and something rose from it’s ashes, and that felt right, and still does, and then a new facet revealed itself, and that became important, and one day I realized I was, and could be, many types of photographer all simultaneously, and not take away from any one way of seeing or making photographs.

In just the last 6 weeks it’s truly dawned on me that all the work I make, if I enjoy making it, is worth making, and the big takeaway from that is that I want to return to the streets, and at least once or twice a week when I can work a little shift downtown, take it seriously, rehone those skills, even if it’s not the work that grad schools wanted to see, even if it doesn’t “do numbers” online, even if I just take them because I enjoy being among the crowds, and spending time with my fellow street photographers, I still run into Johnny Mac downtown after all, he’s never fallen off, even if it’s just for fun, it’s worth doing, and worth doing well. So I’m doing it. And all the other stuff, I have the energy and desire and drive, I can’t not do them all.

9.23.24

Fall and winter means night photography for me. And for me, night photography means handheld, I’m just not into tripods for anything smaller than large format. I want to work quickly and loosely, wandering quiet night streets, keeping a low profile, able to recompose or shoot the same subject quickly without setting up a tripod, making myself obvious. So a good night photography set up is a camera with fast lenses and really good image stabilization.

2 seconds, iso 800, f0.95, lumix g9

My current night photography workhorse is the Panasonic Lumix g9, a top of the line, but shockingly affordable flagship stills camera with just as good an m43 sensor as m43 sensors get. I bought it a few years ago, used, for the reasons stated above, it has phenomenal IS, and there are quite a few superspeed lenses available for the m43 lensmount. My primary is a Mitakon 17mm f0.95, affordable for the aperture, and actually quite decent wide open provided you use a the included hood, avoid unwanted flare, and accept a little vignette. Which at night is not an issue, for me at least. Night is dark, I want my night photography to be dark.

1/3rd second, iso 200, f0.95, lumix g9

The one major downside of the g9, and all m43 sensors in my opinion, is poor dynamic range compared to modern full frame cameras, especially at higher ISOs, this is offset by being able to use base iso with the fast aperture and extremely good IS. Of course a full frame sensor with an equally fast lens and capable IS would be even better, and for that reason when used Sony a7rV prices dip far enough down for a mere mortal like myself, I will be all over that. I even have the lens, a Laowa Argus 35mm 0.95, which gets some night action on my Sony a7rII, it’s sensor is much nicer than the g9’s, but both IS and viewfinder resolution can’t compare, and so whatever sensor benefits might exist are mitigated. But of course the combo is a blast. Mostly I’m hoarding the lens for a a7rV, for fear that I won’t be able to find a good copy in 5-10 years.

1/10th second, iso100, f0.95, sony a7rii

I’ve got a million things to say about night photography from an experiential and aesthetic perspective, but this is just tech talk. I spent about 1200 on a used Lumix g9/Mitakon 17 combo in late 2022, now you can find them for well under $1000, probably closer to $800 if you’re patient. There’s more superspeed lenses out there too, if the 35mm-e focal length isn’t your scene. I can hardly imagine a better m43 camera than the g9, and despite not using it much outside of this particular type of photography, I highly recommend it.

9.21.24

I'm a little over 4 years deep into solargraphy, the chemicalless & darkroomless analog large format process that got me back into large format and eventually developing my own negatives at home.

But this isn't about caffenol or making actual exposures on paper or even the still very new to me accelerated lumen process that is becoming closely tied into my solargraphy work, it's about the placement of the homemade pinhole cameras that shoot my ultra long exposure solargraphs.

Most recent round of pinhole solargraph cameras filled and ready for "planting".

Making them is simple, it's a seltzer/beer/soda can with the top taken off, photo paper stuffed inside, a pinhole poked with a needle, and taped up to be light tight. A few zipties will hold it in place well enough, provided no one takes it down, crushes it, or otherwise messes with it. And therein lies the true challenge of solargraphy.

Digital snap taken the day the following solargraph was harvested.

I've spent the last 4 years placing dozens and dozens of these cans all over, across the greater Boston area, always walking the knifes edge between picking a potentially interesting view and wanting the can to go unnoticed for months on end. There's been many successes, and far more failures. You can't let it get you down to come back to some dangling empty zipties after months of anticipation, it's inevitable. Through both success and failure I've slowly begun to get a better sense for what sort of places will be left alone, and where I'm most certainly going to return to find nothing.

7 week exposure, same location as above photo. 4x6in paper negative solargraph.

There's plenty of places that feel like no man's land, but really are the realm of the unhoused population, and plenty of places that are just too risky to try, despite how amazing the views would be, I leave bridges and mass transit property free of my cans, lest some overly vigilant passer by call the authorities on an empty can with a blank piece of paper in it. For the same reason I don't use Liquid Death cans, even though they fit an entire 5x7 paper negative in them. Polar, as a local company, seems a safer bet.

I always make a mental note of the spots that survive a few months AND give a good interesting shot. Solargraphs are so different each time, repeating a composition is worth it, and a proven safe spot is rare indeed. The example above I think I'll be placing more soon, hopefully one that'll expose all winter into the spring. I'll be waiting.

9.20.24

Truth in photography. There is none! Don't try! Or don't get caught up on it. Please I'm begging you, embrace having a point of view, embrace the knowledge that photography is an exclusionary medium. We're presented with the sum total of the world and we by choice exclude all of it but a very small slice every time we take a photos, and that photo doesn't present any platonic truth, just a perspective.

lens chosen for its low contrast foggy bloom, edited to resemble Daido Moriyama's work in 71' New York (in vibe more than literally)

If you want your work to be as true to real life as possible that's no less worthy a goal as any other but just recognize how many aesthetic choices are made for you by your choice of lens, film stock or digital sensor settings, by the plane of focus, by white balance manual or auto, all of these things and more push you away from some ideal of truth, so why not lean into it?

Harman Phoenix shot at ei100 developed at box speed, scanned low contrast to give max flexibility, then contrasted back up to taste.

You saw something that made you want to take a shot, you felt something that made you want to take a shot, there is nothing wrong with molding that shot, before, during, or after exposure, to better align it with your vision or memory of the experience. The more you embrace a point of view, especially aesthetically, to your photography, the stronger it will become.

At the very least give it a try, crank the knobs to 11 and then dial them back, see how it feels.

9.13.24

Large format has been a part of my corpus since college, but after a 10 year lull, I’ve shot more LF this calendar year than at any point since I used a technical camera to do street photography for an undergrad project.

The big addition to my stable this spring was a nearly 100 year old Agfa Ansco 8x10, which I specifically got to shoot portraits with, and I have used it for that purpose, and it’s an amazing tool, humbling and frustrating in turn, but I’m just in love with the huge paper negatives I’ve pulled from the soup this year.

Jamaica Pond boat docks, 8 seconds @ f45, 250mm.

However portraits are not the only thing I like to shoot with LF, and so, craving a little exhaustion, I loaded the 8x10, tripod, and a backpack full of the bits and bobs needed to make even the simplest exposure, threw it all on my cargo bike, and spent a few hours making a few frames around the neighborhood.

On the shore of Jamaica Pond, 30 seconds @ f32, 250mm

So is it worth it? Hauling the massive beast and it’s accessories out to make these shots? For me, on paper, the way I shoot, no, it’s not. Maybe occasionally, but by and large no. One of my significantly smaller, lighter 4x5 options, one of which is featherweight without movements and the other slightly larger with limited movements and a wide lens selection, just make so much more sense. I am sure there will be times when I haul the big boy out for not portraits, but when I shoot LF around town it’s an extension of how I shoot smaller formats, wandering, looking for the shot, working deliberately but quickly, and moving on to the next, and while 4x5 does slow me down in comparison to digital or 35mm, I’m still in and out with the shot.

This really reinforces something I had always known deep down, which is that 8x10 to me is all about subject separation with the longer focal lengths inherent to the format. Full body environmental portraits, 250mm, f11, that background is a beautifully blurry field that contrasts so nicely with the crisp and deeply detailed subject. On paper, which is again all I shoot in LF currently, the difference in detail stopped down near infinity between 4x5 & 8x10 is largely lost, and makes for sometimes unmanageable file sizes. So I’ll save the big sheets for people, for human connection, and always have it in my back pocket when I simply want to carry 50lbs of camera gear on a bicycle.

9.10.24

9.10.24

Since this is my blog and almost no one will read it I'm allowed to get a little spicy, so I'll go ahead and say it:

Film is not a personality. Portra 400 does not make the photo good, nor cinestill whatever, lomo purple, expired ektar 100, none of it makes the photo good in and of itself. Film is not better than digital, it's not worse either, it's just different.

I've shot a lot of film in my life, and after the last 12 years shooting almost none, I've shot an incredible amount in the past , 8 or 9 months. I'm waiting on 6 rolls from my local lab right now. I love shooting film, 35, 120, and of course large format. But it's just a medium, another vehicle to get to a desired outcome, which should be at a baseline, a good photograph. I know I'm not breaking any new ground here, but the landscape of photography on social media in 2024 is so heavily film-pilled and grain drunk in a way that is both inspiring in what it means for the medium and deeply saddening because there's no message behind 99% of it.

In the early days of digital I thought of film as a grounding experience, forcing me to slow down, or if I worked quickly, to think and act with intentionality. To make each frame mean something as best I could, and accept that each time I fired the shutter I was one step closer to a predestined end to that roll of film, and the disruption to shooting that it would bring, sometimes ending the roll ends the shooting entirely. I know I'm being a major old man yells at cloud right now, back in my day, as if my day wasn't long passed the heyday of film. I came up shooting digital, came to film afterwards, I'm just as guilty of being Johnny come lately to the medium as any zoomer with a Vivitar ultra wide & slim or god forbid a fully CLA’d m6. Am I better because I have this loftier ideal of photography? No. I'm better because I'm a better photographer, I can only hope that all these kids with their Kodak Gold 200 propacks will, in time, be better photographers than me 10 times over.

9.9.24

I fell into street photography very soon after I fell into photography, and even my earliest work could be seen through the lens of a nascent street photographer waiting to be hatched. By my own estimate I was at my peak of street photography capability in 2007-8 and again in 2015-6. Between then and since then I have not made much street work, it has faded from my repertoire, from my skill set, and in its place the more contemplative, personal, and pointed inward work that has come to be what I make most often.

But the streets call to me, and the last two days the call has been very strong. Both days of my weekend I spent a few hours trying to slip back into that mode of shooting, wide, loose, quick, sneaky, from the hip, pretending to not understand my camera, fiddling and snapping surreptitiously. I am rusty, very very rusty, that specific set of skills that good street photography needs has been put away, lost in the mess, and now I can only find bits and pieces, the totality still buried inside me somewhere. Most of all I’ve lost a lot of the nerve I had as a 20 year old, which is shocking because I had no nerve in any other facet of my life, in contrast to me today, 38, more confident and comfortable in my body and in the city than ever before. I guess I’m just scared of conflict, and that will always hold you back.

Here’s a selection of shots from the last two days, some with my Sony a7 & Minolta-m 28/2.8 and others with my og x100 and it’s lovely 35mm-e lens.

That’s all for today, I’m mulling the idea of “working” one street shift a week to really get back to it, hone that skill again, and have it in my back pocket. I do think it informs my other work, and my other work absolutely informs these shots, it’s all one body of photography, no matter how different the genres or images may end up.

xoxo

john

9.9.24

I’m looking for something more casual than a full update to my website, but more intentional & long form than social media. That’s a blog by any other name, so here’s my blog.

Something I’m working on slowly is getting a handle on the new to me Accelerated Lumen process. The idea of adding an accelerant to paper negatives that allow it to produce a development free latent image came from John Beaver in his recently published book Lo-Fi Photography: Art from Do-It-Yourself Chemistry and Physics. I won’t give out the recipe, do buy the book, it’s worth it for that alone but also everything else in its 374 pages.

So here are two self portraits, both taken on a homemade camera built from Cambo spare parts and a Delta-esque rear projection lens. Accelerated paper negatives, 5 & 6 minute exposures, respectively. Washed, dried in subdued light, scanned, inverted, and adjusted contrast. While I now have a really robust large format portrait set up, shooting paper, developing in caffenol, fixing properly, and scanning/inverting, it’s always been a dream to have the ability to make solargraph/lumen portraits, through the application of accelerant this now feels possible. I’ve sat for 90 minutes in direct, late day sun a few times, but it’s simply unfeasible to ask others to do the same, 5-10 minutes however, is totally acceptable.

Anyways thanks for humoring me, and thats exactly what these posts will be, photos and a brief bit of behind the scenes about their creation, mostly because the words are rattling around in my head and I have no good place to put them.

xoxo

john