I Can See it For You Wholesale

In case you hadn’t noticed, I do a collaborative blogamathing with Karl called 1/125. We post excellent photographs that we find online, we talk about photobooks we’re reading and are generally insightful, perceptive, and dashingly handsome. Or something.

We’ve got a new domain, (http://one125.net) and we’re celebrating that — and the fact that we’ve made it two months (that’s a decade in internet years) by giving away some of prints of our photographs. There’s some really good stuff there, and you don’t have to do anything onerous for a chance at it. For more info, see the announcement post.

So, if you like the photographs I’ve posted here on this blog — particularly the street stuff — please do take a look at the post, and consider following us on Tumblr or signing up as a commenter with Disqus, the comments service we use. You can also fan us on Facebook, but I feel slightly hypocritical recommending that since I haven’t opened Facebook in months…

You should also take a look at what Karl’s posted there. He’s got a couple of fantastic street scenes — the kind that present the utterly mundane in a way that is not at all mundane, but serene and mysterious. He’s also got a wonderful up-close-and-personal soccer (or football for you heathens outside the US) action shot, if that’s more your line.

My contributions are street photography, and include “Lightning,” at top, “Pull,” above, and “Limits,” below.

(Note: We might make some substitutions in the lineup, but we certainly won’t offer replacements that aren’t a step up.)

I am by nature, or at least lifelong habit, always apart from the world around me. Solipsism comes easily for me; connections comes hard. In the middle of a crowd, I am perhaps at my most alone, set off as I am by what I think of as my veil of indifference. Behind that barrier, I am free to live in my head and build pocket universes of private images, ideas, and judgments.

But cameras do not operate in pocket universes. The lens is necessarily a window outward. It is not quite an antidote for solipsism, but photography creates an opportunity to perceive other people with…not necessarily clarity, but with intensity.

Note: strictly speaking, it is not true to say “cameras do not operate in pocket universes–a lot of studio photography is done inside pocket universes. But a camera in the street and a camera in the studio are practically unrelated tools.

Or, maybe it is. But don’t tell anyone, since I’m on record as saying that (a) travel is the most shallow form of human experience, and (b) travel photography is lame. (It’s possible I said it more eloquently than that. It’s also possible I said it much less eloquently than that.)

In any case, I had a great time visiting Andrew in Santa Cruz, and I made a few photographs while I was there. This included a bit of birding and a bit of casual astrophotography. The latter was pretty funny, since I don’t know anything about stargazing and have pretty lousy night vision, and Andrew, who does know about stars and whatnot, and who can see after dark, doesn’t have any experience with my camera gear, and is also currently operating without full thumb opposability, etc. As Andrew put it, between the two of us we made one semi-competent astrophotographer…

I was strongly tempted to bring some medium format gear, but it didn’t seem reasonable to try to take both my 400mm f/5.6 and my RB67. Too bad, because there were some scenes that would have been extremely well-suited to medium format, including some fantastic night scenes. I made do with what I had, though, which was my Bessa R and some of that sweet free Portra 160NC, and I came away with a few photographs I’m quite fond of.

I won’t pretend to have acquired any magical insight into the nature of Santa Cruz. I mean, yes it’s dripping with hippies and white guilt, but we all knew that already, right? Besides, the order of the day was not drive-by sociology; it was bad movies and in-jokes.