I Can See it For You Wholesale

It’s nice that Kodak isn’t just gradually eliminating film types from its lineup. They’re also adding some. Ektar 100 — available now in 35mm and soon in 120 (a particularly good sign), this is a super-fine-grain, super-saturated, high-contrast film. It appears to look best somewhat overexposed, which — unfortunately for handholders — means shooting it at ISO 50.

It’s not really my cup of tea — I prefer Portra 800, with its more neutral colors, and its lovely grain. Not to mention its high speed But the Ektar definitely has its own charms. And working with the slower shutter speeds and wider apertures dictated by working with Ektar handheld can lead to some interesting results…

I’ve started trying to take some time on a daily basis to write briefly about what I photographed, and why, and what the results were. The rationale is this: when I’m trying to learn some technique or get fluent with some piece of gear, it’s easy for that to become the point of the work I’m doing, or to subsume the original purpose of it.

I spent an hour or so working with this piece of charred broccoli, two flashes, umbrellas and diffusers, different backgrounds, etc., along with the bits and pieces of Light: Science and Magic that I’ve been absorbing intermittently (and incompletely). And when it was done, I had a couple of images that are a bit interesting, and I had largely forgotten why I had started shooting that subject in the first place.

Almost immediately after I finished, I had filed the whole thing in the drawer of my mind reserved for technical exercises and shut it.

But when I sat down to write my debrief of the day’s photography, stuff started popping back up:

Today I shot some tabletop macro stuff with a charred piece of broccoli I noticed last night while trying to relight a pilot. It was unususal — for a bit of scorched food-stuff — in that it was fully recognizable and indeed had retained its structure down to a rather fine level of detail. The scorching created a fantastic effect — the surface was highly glossy, but color was still faintly visible below the surface. It was like some sort of beautiful, horrible demon broccoli from another dimension.

That moment of minor revelation — of pure seeing — in which I first noticed that burnt bit of vegetation was easily obscured by the clutter of all the thinking and adjusting and reacting that I had done in playing with the lighting. If I hadn’t stopped to write it down, then the thinking — and not the seeing — would have become the whole story of the thing. And within a few days, odds are, that story would fixed in my memory. Stopping that night to write it down gave me an opportunity to change that story.

I suspect that if I can keep this up, it will play an important role in staving off the disaffection that sometimes comes over me when I’m working instensively on black triangles (technical stuff), and keeping my eyes — as it were — on the real task of photography, which is seeing (and allowing others to see), not mastering techniques.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS NO PICTURES, JUST MANY THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME. AND MANY INSTANCES OF THE WORD “AWESOME.” AWESOME.

Okay, there aren’t pictures associated with this post yet. But I had a very exciting day (for mostly non-photographic reasons), and I want to get this down while it’s still fresh.

Went to SF today to see a live taping of You Look Nice Today with my mom and sister and Andrew

Some things that happened:

We had delicious things from Miette, Mijita, and Delica RF-1.

Andrew fought an epic battle with an eldeberry “refreshment drink.” And yes, there will have been blood.

Later, I spread cheese from safeway on other cheese from safeway and ate it. It was delicious.

You Look Nice Today was AWESOME. Jordan Jesse Go was funny, too.

My sister got a free YLNT t-shirt. This is both more and less awesome than it sounds. (She always gets stuff at events. Sexism, I say.)

She got Scott, Merlin, and Adam to sign said shirt. Awesome.

During the Q&A session, I asked if there was going to be a CD at some point with “Baby on a Dog” and the theme to “Barber and the Balls.” They all slowly backed away from the mics and milled around. Then Jesse got on a table, and it broke.

Despite SF Sketchfest’s Orwellian proclamations about photography, I got some shots with my Olypmus XA and my new (ancient) Koni-Omega. Hopefully awesome — we’ll see once I get it developed. ::crosses fingers::

Took a picture of Adam through the box office window, stalker-style. He played it cool, but then I waved excitedly at him. Because I’m a fourteen-year-old girl. But not really, or else I probably would have gotten a fucking shirt, too.

Then he came out and asked me about the camera (second person today to ask me about it, because it’s awesome), and we talked about surreptitious photography, and it was awesome. Then Merlin told us to make sure to “watch our backs” while taking BART home. Because no, it’s not too soon. Awesome. Scott mentioned his work on a Wii game (“Heavy Metal Food”). Awesome. Also, Merlin said something about a YLNT “Behind the Music.” AWESOME.

There was some kind of alcoholic after-thing, which none of us went to, because some of us have jobs, some of us don’t drink, and some of us had to find a place to stay. Less awesome, but I’m okay with that.

Then, while walking back to BART, Andrew mentioned that something during the evening had reminded him of a Borges story he’d been reading on the train up, but he couldn’t remember which one. I asked to see the book, explaining that sometimes I can figure these things out. He was, to say the least, doubtful regarding my ability to divine what he had been reading that YLNT had reminded him of. Need I say that I got it on the first try?

Fuck yeah.

Good times had by all.