A couple of days ago I went to Selma, Alabama to photograph some controversial goings-ons for the Times.
It's a hard story to sum up, but the highlight points are as follows:
- Monument to the first Grand Wizard of the KKK
- Opposition protesters actively blocking construction—with their bodies
- Monument bust theft
- Multiple police visits
Read the story for that to make some sense.
Also, out take photos to come, including two Legotron portraits.
© Henri Cartier-Bresson
A warm birthday wish to the late Henri Cartier-Bresson, a man who has impacted my photography in countless ways. I know he's widely known and respected for myriad reasons, but the thing I take from him more than anything is that the moment trumps all. His (presumably) most famous shot is a near perfect moment in time that happens to have a pretty terrible negative...but it doesn't matter. It's too good. I'm not saying there's no point in trying for technical mastery, but he gave me the permission to stop worrying so damn much about the photo being "right". He gave me ability to allow myself to engage what's happening and be ready to act rather than missing something that moved me because I was futzing with the camera to get a perfect exposure.
Anyway, I'm proud to share this day with him once a year and happy to revisit his work often.
I've been waiting for Rob to post his shot of Winslow so I could post mine. I was bumming around while Rob was shooting some of his first 4x5 frames so I documented it and grabbed a couple of shots of 'Slo for the hell of it.
Here's Rob shooting something else later in the day.
I finally took a few minutes to tweak the Legotron to make it focus to infinity. This may not sound like much but it really opens up what I can shoot with this camera.
Turns out I was really close to it being to infinity already, but I had to rebuild the back side of the inner chamber in order to get that much closer to the film plane. I'm shooting a 127mm lens which translates to exactly 5 inches which translates to exactly 16 LEGO units (dots). I rebuilt the inner box to be shorter and let it line up flush with the outer box...which is 16 dots deep (to the ground glass). I added little wings on each side to help bring the focus out from infinity and also notice this shot has the camera on the LEGO-based Tripod mount (which is just a bunch of flat pieces crammed together with a paddle drill bit hole in the bottom, then with one of those brass thread adapters screwed into the plastic as hard as I could get it).
Winnsboro, LA. June 2012.
Use Jazz Feeds. Somewhere in either Alabama or Florida.
Barton's Fish Market, Winnsboro, Louisiana. June 2012
Faith, Catherine, and Tobias at the Lwala DIG site.
I recently photographed Caren Seligman for The Huffington Post's iPad edition for a story about her work here in Birmingham. Caren works for the Birmingham Jewish Federation, for which she runs a program called You Belong In Birmingham, which connects the local Jewish community with Jews who have just moved to the area. It's much more than that, and I encourage you to check out the article if you have an iPad hanging around. (I mean, technically, the article is available online too.)
I photo of Matthew Mayfield I took a good while back ended up running in the April 2012 Popular Photography Lighting how-to column. How the hell I'm just blogging about this, I don't know.
My favorite part is that I was in their lighting column about how to shoot available light. And I mean that sincerely. I see a ton of how-to stuff all over the place and so often it's all about adding lighting, how to strobe this, using X many lights to achieve this effect, etc, but less about using what exists. As much as I use strobes these days, I still shoot a ton of available light photographs because it's where my heart lives, I think. Maybe that's overkill. But really, so much of what I shoot for me, exclusively because it moves me, is almost always as it exists. Portrait. Landscape. Moment. Whatever. I often go with my gut, and my gut thinks in available light.
This just got weird, I think.
At any rate, I was honored to be featured. Extra honored because it was a shot about, in a sense, winging it and using what's around.
I posted some tearsheets from this month's Super Students story. Blogging them here for posterity...I may add some shots later that aren't actual tears..there were quite a few I liked.
I keep on meaning to blog this portrait I made for Consumer Reports. This is another shot I'm really happy with not only because of the portrait that came out of it, but for the circumstances around the shoot. I really enjoy going into sessions blind, which is to say, without much / any knowledge of the subject or environment. I knew the bare bones of Dr. Flowers' story but had no idea what she looked like nor where we'd be shooting (which turned out to be her sister's house during a rain storm). I don't know why I enjoy doing that so much, but I do know that it makes a successful portrait that much more satisfying.
Madelyn Gathings in studio as part of Birmingham Magazine's Super Students annual feature.
I'm a long time appreciator of Damien Jurado and his music, and I can now add to that his perspective on community and his own music now that he's talked about it in more detail in a mini documentary put out by BYUtv.org. It's a little under half an hour and I enjoyed it (totally biased...not even pretending), even if some of the visual effects were a bit overbearing at times. At its core, though, the doc is Damien singing and talking about his craft and his city, Seattle*. Check it out.
Oh, and, as a bonus, keep an eye out for Jon Canlas in the crowd during his venue performance.
*The family Jurado's commitment to Seattle seems to run deeper than most, as evidenced the name he and his wife Sarah have chosen for their soon-to-be-born baby boy, Coltrane Elttaes Jurado (Seattle).
Another story I shot for the New York Times slipped out while I wasn't watching. Thanks to Rob for the heads up.
It's a story about a couple of local ladies who coach girls going into Sorority Rush. Girls' rush is such a different animal when compared to my experience. It seems so much more stressful. Anyway...see the above link to read the article.
It's Rob. It's me. It's Rob's phone. It's so messed up poptpop voodoo nonsense.
Still really proud of Stephanie's dad, William. Finally got the 4x5 sheets developed.