At the end of the day

I love the sunsets here in Santa Monica and I don’t get out as often as I wish to shoot in that glorious light.  During the summer it’s a bit easier since sunset comes just late enough that I can make it out in time after work, but this time of year I’m lucky if I catch it during the week at all.  Tonight would have been one of the most dramatic sunsets to shoot for a long, long time.  It’s been cloudy here and our typical blue skies have been cloaked in enormous, cotton-ball, storm clouds; dark and grey and foreboding.  I wish I could have taken a couple cameras down to the boardwalk and shot for an hour.  Right at the horizon there was a strip of blue that turned purple then pink then red and yellow and orange all at the same time.   The rest of the sky was a thick fluffy blanket, slowly rippling through the dusk like someone was making your bed with you still in it.  It was glorious and I hope that tomorrow will be just as cloudy and that maybe, oh maybe I can sneak out of work a bit early and shoot. 


I might even shoot some color.  It’s interesting but lately I feel myself being drawn to color… I fault Gruyaert and Webb and their beautiful books for distracting me from my beloved monochrome images.  In fact I just got a new two volume monograph from Gruyaert (signed !!!) called “West, East.” Or is it “East, West?” Regardless it’s gorgeous.  It’s not the “Suffering of Light” but it’s incredible.  Speaking of “Suffering of Light,” I was pouring over it for a couple hours one night last week and I think it warped my brain.  I went out the next day and bought a shit-ton of Portra 400/800 like a man possessed.  


That’s how much it effects me.  Plan is to head down to K-Town, park and walk towards DTLA on Wilshire or maybe Beverly while shooting the shit out of everything.  There are all of these incredible swaths of color down that way.  I always these gorgeous red walls with blue trim at carwashes or green markets with yellow doors and patrons coming and going and always while just driving around.  In the end I just want to hop out of my car and shoot.  In fact I did that more than once this weekend.  Stopped at a red light, I see something that will make a beautiful color image, jump out, shoot, almost get run over… 


All that color nonsense aside, I’ve decided to post a small series of monochrome images that I made at sunset on the beach.  These were from sunnier days where the shadows ran long and low for days.  They work better as a series than singles and it’s just as well–I fear they might have hit the cutting room floor had they not.  All of the images were made in Santa Monica or Venice except for “Curious boys” which I made in Laguna.


All were made using my Leica M7/35mm Summicron on Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 800 at the Icon.  


Twinning

Here’s another attempt at seeing what’s happening around me instead of looking for the image I’m expecting to make.  I walked into the LACMA book store right after the guy in the picture.  Anna Maria and the kids were already wondering around inside looking at books and posters and little ceramic mugs with Pantone swatches printed on them.   There are so many compact references to art surrounding you in those museum bookshops–it’s like a cliff-notes version of the real experience, completely bite-size and ready for immediate and mass consumption.  And like the cliff-notes you might have the broad strokes of it all but all the minutia has been sanded away with 30-grit paper in the shape of Blue Nude II.  


It’s neither here nor there I guess, and it’s “the way it’s always been” but it stings a bit to think of all the money that’s been made from the pure and unadulterated creations of some deceased artist’s penniless, shit-ball existence.  There’s always someone there to make a catalog, or a coffee mug or a limited-edition-collector’s-print-specially-numbered-by-the-art-preservation-society-of-wherever-for-only-100-dollars.  But that’s how it works.  Things don’t happen in the art world unless they make financial sense ultimately as it appears that capitalism has indeed become the world’s most prevalent religion.  Incidentally, I saw a documentary the other night about a woman who’s father brought one of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes for $1000 bucks.  The doco goes on to tell the story of how that same Brillo Box changed hands a few more times and eventually sold at auction forty years later for 3 million US.    But I digress.  


So I’m wandering in and out of isles scanning for anything photography related because I guess I’m just as much a consumer as everyone else (and perhaps even more so when it comes to photography books), but it’s always the same books: 


100 Ideas that changed Photography

Friedkin’s Gay Essay 

…and like 50 books by Maplethorpe and I can only look at so much cock. 


So I drift back to the original task at hand.  I’m emptying my mind and trying to see.  I wander here and I wander there, only seeing things 1.5 meters or closer.  While weaving in and out of the isles I almost weave straight into the patron I walked in with.   I take a step back, hoping he didn’t notice me nearly mowing him over.  The whole situation was a bit confusing for a second and then I understood that I was seeing his reflection in the mirror.  I frame up and make the image above as he turns to ask me what I am doing.  


“Twinning” I reply with a little smirk.  He smiles back, a book of Frida Carlo’s work still open in his hands.     


Shot on my Leica M7 with an amber filter on the trusty 35mm Cron, using Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 800 at the Icon.  


Moregon

For the eclipse my father rented a cabin in a little town called Medford.  Medford’s a couple hours from Crater Lake and a couple more to Albany where we would be in the path of totality.   Not to sounds like every other person who saw the eclipse, but for me and my family, the experience was nothing short of magical.    I’ve never seen the sky do what it did.  I’ve never seen light behave the way it behaved.  I got goose-bumps when the temperature dropped the way that it did.  It truly was a once in a lifetime experience and I’m ever so grateful that I had the opportunity to be there.  


On the days leading up to the even we traveled around Medford to various volcanic formations and natural formations.  I took couple different cameras with me, but the Mamiya ended-up being the goto.  Film-wise I took old faithful, Tri-X, all of which you’re seeing above.  I also took a couple rolls of Velvia 50, which I’m a little meh about.  I’ve tried a few different methodologies of scanning color in general, not just slides,  and I haven’t really been satisfied.  That lack of a color workflow keeps me from shooting color, but I may have it figured out now.  I hate using plugins as a rule but I’ve started scanning C-41 and slides to raw and then converting them using Color Perfect in Photoshop and I’m finally getting decent results now.  Maybe I’ll rescan those rolls using that method.  Maybe not.  We’ll see.


There were raging forest fires at the time so our trips to Crater Lake and elsewhere were set against the backdrop of an ashen white sky, from dawn to dusk.  On the southside of Crater Lake, you couldn’t see the Lake.  Your vision just dissipated into a fuzzy grey blur.  I made images anyway and they’re interesting if not what I had hoped they would be.  I had no idea how incredibly beautiful Oregon was going to be.  It was stunning.  The waterfalls.  The scenic vistas.  The hiking trails on volcanic formations.  I even loved the drives from place to place.  I want to go back.  I want to go back tomorrow.    


The barber shop image was made in a small town called Jacksonville–a sleepy little pac-northwest mining town that time literally forgot.  We wandered around Main St. there for an hour or so, looked through the local photo gallery and toy shop, then headed back to Medford for dinner and sunset.


All images shot on the Mamiya6MF on Kodak Tri-X film pushed to 800 at the Icon.   

Using Format