Making the mundane magical

I haven't posted in a little while, but that's going to change.

I love how ordinary things around us can become special with the right light.  On this early morning photo, if you weren't in the exact right place at the right time, the early morning sun would not have caught the dew on this tiny cobweb in such a beautiful way.  Ten minutes later and the magic was gone.

Holga Tintype

In working on my Holga tintype series, I had a couple extra tins left over from my first batch, and I wanted to try some double exposures.   What is printed on the tintype is not the same thing I see in the viewfinder.  The distances are different between the two as the viewfinder on these camera are off to a side and you're not seeing what's being shot.  So as I take more images, I will be better able to estimate where I want to place different items and get exactly what I want in the shot.

I'm also experimenting with shooting urbanscapes and different themes.  It's an interesting process to me to see what works and what doesn't.

Now and Then.

My partner, Joe, and I recently celebrated 37 years of being together, and I wanted to put together something that reflected the passage of time from when I was 21 to the present.

I have always liked to go through my family's photo albums and look at pictures taken of my parents, grandparents and others when they were children or young adults.  It's always given me a different impression of who they are.  I think many of us have the same curiosity about other people.

One of the projects I have been working on is a series about the LBGT community over 50 years old.  I know anyone in that age category probably has similar feelings.  However, in this youth-and-beauty-oriented gay community, there is an ever-increasing aging population that has now become invisible to the community at large.  With the series, I'm trying to find a way of presenting older LBGT to the younger generations in a way that we are not seen as a forgotten segment, but are just as vital as we once were.

So with this in mind, I've just started to work on presenting portraits of my subjects along with some image from their past which is important to them.

Philip

Jennifer and Bobby

I know this young couple who had their first baby this year.  I've watched the baby grow, and he's been such a charmer.  The husband works in Alaska and is away from the family for long periods at a time.  I wanted to do a shoot with his wife and baby, Bobby, so he wouldn't feel like he was missing out on everything.  I really enjoyed working with mother and son despite all the horror stories about trying to shoot infants and toddlers.  Bobby was a great subject, and I think he'll be a natural in front of the camera.  Watch out, world.  Here comes America's Next Top Model.

Working in the digital age, it's fairly easy to turn a color image into black and white.  I really love the timelessness and classic beauty that black/white gives to the same photograph.

 Holga tintype.

So my Southern California weather is not cooperating with my project!  The last several months the weather here has been great:  sunny skies with little cloud interference.  Now that I'm starting to work on this series, our "June gloom" is setting in.  In June we end up with a marine layer setting in most of the day, which leaves our days mostly overcast.  This does not work well with my tintype project.

I find with the emulsion I'm using to coat my tins, the emulsion has been estimated at approximately ISO 50, which means it has a very low sensitivity to light and needs more light in order to expose an image correctly.  I have to set my Holga to "B," which stands for "bulb," meaning that the shutter will stay open as long as I have the shutter release button depressed.  Any faster shutter speed doesn't allow enough light into the camera to expose the tin.  So my images also have to be taken while the camera is secured on a tripod to minimize movement.

So when I go to shoot any image -- landscape/portrait/whatever -- I have to estimate the amount of time I hold the shutter release button down.  Too little time and the image turns out way underexposed; too much time and the image ends up way too light.  This actually is the reverse from regular photography because of the nature of the emulsion.

But this is all new territory for me, and I'm enjoying the trial-and-error process that is necessary in order to make this work.

Holga tintype series.

One of the interesting things I find about this tintype business is that all your images are reversed so that if you have some writing in the photo, it will appear backwards.  This is true of all the images; so when I look at a street scene I shot, everything is in reverse.

I'm trying this project out on people as well.  Because of the low ISO of the emulsion (how sensitive it is to light), I have to keep the shutter open longer than is normally possible for a crisp, focused image.  It's hard not to shake a bit, or the subject will move just a little.  But with this first portrait attempt, I'm realizing what I need to do to make it a stronger image:  first is to put the camera back on the tripod, and second I need to expose the image just a little longer.  When this tintype process, the longer the plate is exposed to light, the lighter the image becomes, which is completely reversed from normal darkroom work.

But I'm liking the ethereal quality of the image as a first try.  I will be working with more people, I can tell.

I've been able to slowly start working on my Holga tintype series.  Right now it's an arduous process.  The unexposed tins have to be loaded into the camera in a light-sealed condition.  Since I don't have a changing bag in order to change tins inside my camera on location,  I have to load the camera at home in my darkroom, go to the location, shoot, come back home and develop the exposed tin.  Then I can load up the camera again and repeat the process.

In addition, I recently took a nasty bump to my head and received a mild concussion -- just enough for my doctor to order me not to drive until the next appointment when I will be hopefully cleared.  So this makes me subject to the kindness of strangers for transportation to sites.

Now that I am seeing how this process works, and the results I am able to achieve, I will be working more on the artistic, poetic quality of the images.

More to come.

I've been searching for a photographic project to do just for the sheer enjoyment of doing it.  I've always been interested in experimental photography, and one process I've really gotten a lot of pleasure pursuing is tintype, which is the method of photography done back in the 1800's where photographs were exposed and printed on sheets of metal.  I do use an alternative emulsion as the original chemicals are extremely toxic and almost impossible to transport from place to place.  Using my method, I can coat any number of tins that I want, let them dry, put them in a box away from the light and go on my travels.  I change my plates in a changing bag, which allows me to change these plates without any damage from light.  When I get home, then I can develop all the tins that I have shot.

The part of this that is intriguing to me is that the camera I am using to shoot my images is a Holga plastic camera.  Holgas are extremely cheap and have become very popular in an alternative, pop-culture kind of way.  This means that the images I take are processed on a piece of tin that is 2 inches by 2 inches.  These images attached to this post are originally 2x2, so they appear much larger on screen than the size of the original tin.  At first I thought the images were ok; however, closer examination with a magnifying glass revealed a clarity of these images that I did not think was possible for an image so small.  The scanned images so far don't do justice to the original plates; maybe as I go along I'll be able to produce better scans in order to post how much detail is actually in these photos.

I've come up with the term "micro-photography" or "miniature photography."  There's a whole microcosm hiding on each plate.

I was inspired to start this project after viewing YouTube videos about this young photographer who has been doing some extremely interesting (at least to me) tintype photography.  His work has included sizes from 2"x2" up to 4'x5', and his camera is the back of a large truck.  His name is Ian Ruhter, a name I urge anyone who is interested in photography to look up.

Now that I know this process actually does work, I'm ready to take it out into the world and explore different ways that I can make this work.  More will be coming.

Today I buried my best friend and old boy, Buddy.  He was 11 and a half, and battled a very aggressive cancer for the last couple months of his life.  This journey that he and I went on together this year made me think about all the things that I've learned from him, and all the animals that have passed through my life.  I put together a blog that I call "10 Lessons from Buddy," a tribute to him and all my teachers.  Yesterday he let me know it was time, and I loved him too much to make him suffer any more even though I wasn't ready to let him go.  I can only hope I can be half the man he thought I was.

Today he's at peace and I'm on my journey of healing.

                 www.lessonsfrombuddy.blogspot.com

Please take a minute and check out his site.  Thank you.

Carlos.

Carlos is another young guy I was able to shoot for the outreach project I'm working with.  This project is aimed at young Latino and black gay/bi men who might be engaging in risky behavior and offers them an alternative social setting.

This last image I know goes against a number of different photographic rules, one of which is not to blow out the image.  However, in view of one of the aims of this outreach program being to draw young men away from a possible life of drugs, I really like this image as it gives me the feeling of being strung out after a drug run and how raw and stark everything appears.

Sergio.

On the project that I am working on in conjunction with a local outreach project seeking to help young Latino and black gay/bi men find healthier ways of living than the hard party life, I just shot Sergio.

Conrad, 25.

I'm starting a new project for a local organization reaching out to young men of the LGBT community.  Conrad is the first of my subjects that I've worked with.

On a lighter note.

I recently added a puppy to my family, and my house has taken on the cluttered look of a nursery with new toys strewn about every room.  I was playing with Max the other day, and I took a look at some of these toys and suddenly saw them in a new light.  All of a sudden I saw foreign objects and landscapes in an alien world.  Always seeing the world in images, I wanted to try to capture these toys in this new light.