Blog About Photography

My next project should be fin­ished around mid-​​August and it’s com­prised of snap­shots I’ve made in the past cou­ple of months. My idea is to make it a highly per­sonal doc­u­ment of this period of my life that’s com­ing to a close. As bor­ing as that might sound, I have the first half of it laid out in InDe­sign and I’m very excited about it. I hope to make enough copies to send one to who­ever is inter­ested in see­ing it rather than look­ing at it on the internet.

I was in New Jer­sey with Britt in May and I bought a Lori, a cheap Ricoh point and shoot cam­era from the early 80’s (the name comes from the sticker stuck to the cam­era by who­ever owned it before I did), and I’ve car­ried this lit­tle cam­era with me lit­er­ally every­where since then. I’ve been resis­tant to work­ing this way for the past cou­ple of years because it’s so sim­i­lar to the way I thought about pho­tog­ra­phy when I first began doing it, before I know any­thing about any­thing. But for the kind of doc­u­ment I want to make, there’s really no bet­ter way to go about it. I’m really pleased with the images that are com­ing out of Lori. It’s been lib­er­at­ing to shoot with­out think­ing, run­ning to CVS to buy more Kodak Gold when I run out.

The only thing though is that the pic­tures aren’t nearly as crisp as they are com­ing out of my Nikon or Has­sel­blad, obvi­ously. I’ve tried to let go of this go just like I let go of aper­ture and shut­ter speed and man­ual flash con­trol but it hasn’t been working.

Because the nature of this project is so per­sonal the pho­tographs have a more direct con­nec­tion to my life than the stuff I’ve done pre­vi­ously. Ridicu­lously, I’ve devel­oped this kind of con­nec­tion with the cam­era as well — i named it even — and this isn’t the first post I’ve made about the lit­tle cam­era. Soo, I’m feel­ing a lit­tle guilty, but today I replaced Lori with a Con­tax T2, an early 90s point and shoot with a Zeiss T* lens. It’s quite an amaz­ing cam­era, we’ll call her Coni, and I’m pretty excited.

Lori’s not per­ma­nently on the bench, though. She’ll still see action when there’s lots of water around — I know she can take it.

Posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

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5 Responses to “My new girlfriend”

1. Liz Says:
   July 26th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

   Sign me up for a copy of your project when you have copies avail­able, Greg. I’d love to see your work!

2. Greg Says:
   July 27th, 2007 at 1:06 am

   You got it. Here’s the list so far:

   1. Liz Kuball

3. ben Says:
   July 27th, 2007 at 5:29 pm

   hey greg. sign me up as well.

4. alana Says:
   July 28th, 2007 at 9:28 am

   Cute name for your new cam­era. I just bought a 350D body from one of my stu­dents, and she said I must con­tinue to call her Eloise.

   Also, I’d like a copy. :]

5. elizabeth Says:
   July 30th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

   so, basi­cally, you’re engag­ing in a polyamorous rela­tion­ship with Lori and Coni. Interesting…

   p.s. i’m very excited to get a copy of that book, as well.

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