Blog About Photography

Make yours. 

It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t thrilled to meet so many of the peo­ple I admire in New York over the week­end. I would recount the whole thing blow by blow but my good friend Shane Lavalette has already beaten me to the punch. He has been far more thor­ough is his recount­ing of Fri­day night than I ever could be. I will say though that among the folks I got a chance to hang out with were Jen Bek­man, Eric William Car­rol,  Joerg Col­berg, Amy Elkins, Shane Lavalette, Chris­t­ian Pat­ter­son, Richard Renaldi (guy’s got seri­ous mus­cles, by the way), Amy Stein, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, Zoe Strauss and Shen Wei. All the pho­tog­ra­phers and blog­gers from all over the coun­try in New York for the same bunch of events made this one of the most excit­ing week­ends I’ve had in a long time.

It’s hard to have any regrets about a week­end like this one, but I do wish I had been able to talk more with Chris­t­ian Pat­ter­son, Richard Renaldi and Joerg Col­berg. I also didn’t even get a chance to say hello to Edward Win­kle­man, Les­ley Mar­tin, Paddy John­son and Mar­tin Parr. Even so though, I can’t say that I have any real com­plaints. I was amazed that every­one I met was so incred­i­bly nice — it was prac­ti­cally like being with fam­ily. I also want to say that Amy Stein is just about the sweet­est per­son on earth.

I also got to spend a good chunk of my week­end apart­ment hunt­ing in var­i­ous Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hoods. It’s still just a lit­tle too early to really get seri­ous since I’m not mov­ing until mid-​​August, but it was really help­ful to get a feel for how much you get for your money in the var­i­ous places. And since I have no money (check­ing account: $133.60, sav­ings account: $43.60) it looks like Bush­wick is my best bet. Luck­ily, it seems like it’s a ter­rific neigh­bor­hood. It’s a quick shot to Williams­burg and into Man­hat­tan an I par­tic­u­larly like the Puerto Rican flags that fly over many of the blocks I wan­dered down — it will be like liv­ing inside a Wino­grand pho­to­graph. My friend Emily and her boyfriend Ian were kind enough to let me crash with them for a night at their place in Bush­wick and I had a great time.

Now I’m back in D.C., and it’s time to run to the gro­cery store to get stuff for din­ner. Then, I’m going to hit the books. Tomor­row is my last day of Biology.

This week­end turned out to be well worth the trip to New York.  A New Amer­i­can Por­trait at Jen Bek­man is an absolute must-​​see — a ter­rific set of images from some of the most influ­en­tial folks in con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy. Before see­ing the show, I was most inter­ested in see­ing Alec Soth and Brian Ulrich’s images — I admire both of those pho­tog­ra­phers a great deal, obvi­ously, and both are pretty much house­hold names. Their work, of course, was ter­rific to see. I’ve never viewed any­thing by either of those guys in per­son before and that was great. I have to say though that I think Chris­tine Collins and Amy Elkins kind of stole the show. I wasn’t that famil­iar with the work of either of those gals before this week­end and they rock. I know that’s not the most high-​​minded dis­cus­sion of their work but hey, it’s the truth. If I had a few thou­sand extra dol­lars to put towards buy­ing art, I would buy one of Christine’s images from the show — I’ll cer­tainly be jeal­ous of the peo­ple who end up with any of those images on their walls. So, con­grats Jen and Joer for putting up such an incred­i­ble show.

For the past three weeks or so I’ve been shoot­ing with the Ricoh point and shoot I bought at a thrift store in New Jer­sey. I picked it up because I liked the look of it and it had a sticker on the side that said “Lori,” which is almost iden­ti­cal to some stick­ers I had when I was a lit­tle kid that said “Greg,” for me to stick on toys and stuff. Lori was great while she lasted. I’ve only devel­oped a cou­ple of the rolls but she cranked out some images that have become fast favorites of mine. There images have a qual­ity to them that the same kind of snap­shots I shoot with my Nikon F100 lack. The shitty optics and the com­plete lack of expo­sure con­trol infuse the images with an enhanced sense of spon­tane­ity. There are plenty more of these to come I would guess — I have about 25 rolls I shot thru Lori in a shoe box under my desk wait­ing for pay day. But this is not a happy story. This is a story loss, a story of heartbreak.

Like all of the deep­est and most pas­sion­ate loves, my wild affair with Lori has come to a cat­a­clysmic end. On Sat­ur­day, a group of my friends and I went swim­ming in a river out in Vir­ginia some­where. It was an amaz­ing time, the kind of time leg­ends are made of, and Lori was on hand to cap­ture it for me. I took her in the water with me quite a bit, tak­ing extra care to keep her from get­ting too wet but I’m sure you can see where this is going. For hours we were in and out of the water and Lori was doing just fine, dry, happy, fir­ing away. Then, lit­er­ally when I was get­ting out to get ready to leave, I set Lori down into a crevice in a rock. I needed both hands to pull myself out and I wanted to put her some­where sturdy. That crevice, of course, com­pletely full of water, she got pretty much sub­merged. I took her bat­ter­ies out. I opened her up with a screw­driver, method­i­cally dry­ing out her innards with my room­mates hair dryer. But it was all no use. Lori is gone.

Pho­tog­ra­phy is an expen­sive under­tak­ing for every­one, but I think it’s par­tic­u­larly expen­sive for me just because of how I do things. I think I have to get used to the idea that I will be pay­ing for cam­era repair fre­quently, end­lessly. Lori cost me $25, and now I’m going to spend $75 fix­ing her for the sec­ond time because she had a light leak when I first brought her home. This is pat­tern that I’m sure will con­tinue indef­i­nitely into the future and no mat­ter how much money I may make from what­ever, I have to resign myself to a life of poverty because I have to fix or replace every­thing all the time.

Really think­ing about this though, I sup­pose it’s alright. If I can feed myself AND buy film AND repair all the shit I break all the time, I sup­pose that’s some kind of quan­tifi­able suc­cess. And what good is a cam­era if you can’t take it the water anyway?

Update: Nev­er­mind. Lori works just fine.

I’m on a JPG Mag tear right now and I just sub­mit­ted my prized inter­view with Joerg. They gave me this bit of code:

So, you know, check it out and vote and stuff.