Untitled Document

Online Journal

June

May 27, 2005

Some pics from the last two weeks.

a bit of commentary on the new Long Beach developments....

a gay country dance group called the Kickers at Pride....

a soft but nice photo of Dr. Helen Caldicott...

City Council hearing was filled up with firemen after LB announced pulling
out a firetruck from the very dense and busy downtown area...

May 23, 2005

This weekend has been quite the blender of politcal thought. I had the great pleasure and honor to listen to Captain Paul Watson, a founding director of Greenpeace, and Dr. Helen Caldicott, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who is actively working against nuclear proliferation. The event was called Power Play and was meant to specifically address the plans to build an LNG plant in the port of Long Beach. LNG (liquified natural gas) is a rather testy and volatile form of natural gas. If say, the proposed LNG plant were built and exploded, it would have the effect of 50 Hiroshima bombs and would incinerate everything for miles around. Bad stuff. The issue goes to City Council once again on Tuesday and will hopefully be struck down.

I'm beginning to get the sense what kind of photography I want to do. I would like to serve some social purpose. I really find no thrill in commercial or fashion photography. It all seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors that really do no good. Spot news, the daily stuff of newspapers, is exciting but seems so quickly forgotten in the flood of daily images. What I would want to do if I could somehow engineer it, would be to do long essays on certain groups or people that are working for the betterment of mankind. The idea being that we only hear about Nobel Peace Prize winners when they win the prize, but the daily, monthly, yearly work of working towards peace is largely unrecognized.

If I could perhaps make it somehow visible it would show people how to get involved, what to do, how to take action. That is one of the first questions that was asked during the Q&A session. How do I get involved? The speakers, I think, were a bit put off because for them the answer was simple, "Just do it." However, regular people need to be shown how it's done. They need the steps, the illustrations, the IKEA like instructions to activism. Perhaps by showing the nuts and bolts and demystifying the lives of activists it would make plain the path to a better world?

I don't know. Maybe it's just idealism. Besides, haven't Salgado, Nachetwey, Eugene Smith and Richards shown the suffering of humanity in all its graphic and poetic detail and still there is not enough indignation?

May 22, 2005

Some photos from Pride on Saturday....

May 16, 2005

Some shots this weekend...most of it shot with the IIIa. I've switched up developers and am using Rodinal instead of D76. It makes a pretty big difference. The grain is very defined and noticeable in Rodinal. I can't decide if I quite like the look yet. It definitely gives images a nice bite to them though...

May 12, 2005

I shot some headshots today for the first time with the D100. For headshots, digital is rather handy because you can fine tune lighting and posing. I used just available light that was coming in from The Village Grind coffee shop in downtown LB. The owners were kind enough to let us use their space. They have nicely painted walls, one blue and the other red, which makes for a good cool/warm color change. The color out of the camera is pretty good, once you get the right white balance. I tend to select a white balance that is a little warm when shooting people. Some selects....

May 11, 2005

I paid for the Leica iiia today. It will be the last camera acquired for a while :) It has its quirks. Namely, loading it is a PITA. You have to remove the base, thread film through a spool, reinsert the spool and film simultaneously, wiggle them around so that notches catch the film and wind on. To focus, you have to use one window and compose with the other, which happens to not correct for parallax. So if you're focusing under five feet, you have to remember to slightly move the camera up (landscape) or to the right (portrait) while you're shooting.

With all that said, it's a fine shooter. The particular Summar on this camera performs rather well and isn't super prone to flare, even though it's uncoacted.

May 11, 2005

I have to admit, I have been an equipment junkie of late. Within the last month I've bought and sold quite a few bits of camera gear. I sold my Mamyia C330 kit (body, 3 lenses, paramender, prism, hoods) and Canon Powershot G3 via EBay. The money was used to fund a very nice 35mm Summicron. I also won a collapsible Summitar (50's optical design) for a bargain price as well as a collapsible 90mm Elmar for $185. They just seemed to be good to pass up. My M4-P and the Summitar are away for CLA, leaving me with only one 35mm camera. I'm pondering buying this Leica iiia and Summar combination to fill the void until my camera comes back (about 3 weeks!).

Anyway, I have one more transaction in the works and after that's over I'm doing a self-imposed mortatorium on equipment acquisitions (fingers crossed).

May 10, 2005

My body feels like a wreck. I photographed the CSULB fashion show for the Gazette last night. I decided to get there early and get some behind the scenes stuff, as that is usually more interesting than just the runway. I had the d100, my M2 and Leica iiia (1930's screw mount camera) on me the whole night. I haven't developed the BW yet, but here are some color shots.

May 8, 2005

I won a Summitar a few days ago. It's the successor of the Summar I've been borrowing. I've probably shot about 4 rolls with it and so far I'm pretty happy with the results. Performance-wise it sits between the uber-pictoral summar and the clinical summicron. It doesn't flare as easily as the Summar, but at the same time, it lacks the same amount of "glow" caused by the flare. The OOF (out of focus area) or bokeh, as it is referred to in Leica circles, is a sort of swirly looking impressionistic rendition. The plane of focus doesn't appear to be flat, but rather concave. It's a neat effect that I'm going to try playing with more. Some shots with the summitar.

May 7, 2005

Some pics of the Long Beach Museum of Art's grand reopening of their cafe.

May 5, 2005

I bought my first Leica lens today!!! Not cheap. It was to the tune of $900. I sold my complete Mamiya C330 kit and Canon G3 on ebay to make the dough. I figured it was an OK purchase since what I was really doing was moving capital around and not spending new money. The beauty of rationalization.

I bought a 35mm Summicron, the sought after 4th version. It's a great lens and from the film I've developed already, it's pretty sharp. This is in contrast to my second Leica lens, that coincidentally arrived on my doorstep today. I had won a collapsible Summitar from EBay. I've only taken five frames with it and it appears sharper than the Summar I've been borrowing. Anyway, enough talk. More pics.

on the way to 2nd Street in the car...grab shot out the window...

Khalid getting ready to open up Blue Nile for it's Grand Opening

Acres of Books in Long Beach

May 5, 2005

Went to San Pedro tonight to check out their art walk. Here are some shots at Annie's loft and around town.

May 4, 2005

2 more from NY....Mary, the fearless wonder dog....waiting for our plane at JFK I noticed this family just as lost as we were...

May 3, 2005

A few more with the borrowed Summar. In general it makes an interesting portrait lens with a soft/sharpness. It flares like a peacock however if you are shooting wide open and there's any point light source in/near the frame. The flare veils the whole frame and lowers the contrast...good for some things, frustrating for many things...The lens does give a different look/optical signature or however you want to call it. A slight glow that isn't in modern lenses that are designed for high contrast, high resolution output.

May 1 , 2005

Another month already. Where is the time going?

I borrowed a Leica Summar from Terry's to play around with. It's a collapsible 50mm lens that I believe was produced somewhere between the 30s and 40s. It's an old optical design and is therefore a bit low contrast compared to modern optical designs that are made to create high contrast images with high resolution. The end result is that images have a bit of a soft focus look, images aren't bittingly sharp and out of focus areas are buttery smooth.

If you want to shoot a tree and capture all the details of all the bark, this isn't your lens. It is great for moody night photos, scenes with dappled light and portraits.

At the Festival of Books, I picked up 4 photo books, one of which was on the California pictoral movement. This sort of sparked my interest in vintage optics and in soft focus images.

Speaking of sharpness..here's a few quotes from some photographers on the topic.

"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." - Henri Cartier-Bresson

"What use is great depth of field without a great depth of feeling." - Eugene Smith

"There is nothing worse than a sharp photo of a fuzzy idea." - Ansel Adams

And a pic from the poetry reading at OPEN this weekend:

August 2004

July 2004