Vision Achieved - A year of brainstorming can be worthwhile

The best photoshoot of my life took place on October 6th, 2015 and my creativity still seems to be in some sort of a recovery mode. Not to say that nothing has been going on in the creativity brain since then, it’s just that no new *portraits* or themes have been dreamt up on such a scale. The end results from that day are the quintessential culmination of brainstorming, pre-visualization, more brainstorming, a bit of planning (and eventually, improvising), experimentation and most importantly, collaboration.

Just Ask!

Great opportunities start with very simple conversations.

"Hey man, is that a film camera you're using? I used to print in the darkroom all the time!" was the observational introduction volleyed by Robert Romano as I motored past him while out shooting with my rangefinder a bunch of month's ago. After some follow up in the form of meetings, chats, and collaborations we finally teamed up to do some fun headshots for a company earlier this week. And that's how opportunities come to fruition.

Multiple Exposure Portrait of Rob, taken by me

Multiple Exposure Portrait of me, taken by Rob

Advantages of the Digital Workflow

Sometimes I am really blown away by the speed and capabilities of the digital workflow. Last week, I took a new idea from concept, testing, execution and distribution in less than 8 hours of actual work, and that blows me away and so counter to my philosophy to shooting film.

Film taught me how to trust my gut and instincts in any given exposure situation. The patience to hold off on seeing the results until long after you have taken the exposure and, unless you're being financed by an outside source, the patience and discipline in your shot choice so that you don't become swamped with mediocre rolls of film. When I review my film work, I usually have a bit of flexibility in my predetermined expectations and the actual results; maybe that backlight was a little stronger than I thought or the shadows in a certain shot a bit deeper than my initial estimate.

This mentality is all well and good for 99% of my personal work and is actually a great exercise in training both your eye and brain, but what about when a new idea or concept calls upon the complete opposite set of objectives or working process? What if I have an idea but need to quickly and "cheaply" (as in, already spent money) test the results?

Due to the restraints and responsibilities of my current daytime job, I have about 2 hours per day available to photographic pursuits. And that time is split amongst taking, planning, developing, scanning, editing, researching, learning, networking, marketing & sharing my work. So that's not just two hours a day of shooting, that's two hours a day for everything. Hell, I wrote the initial copy of this blogpost at 4am because I had the words in mind and knew I wouldn't have another chance to put pen to paper until at least the weekend.

So when I am completely wrapped up in the possibilities and variables of a new technique and I'm presented with a quickly approaching opportunity to try it out, I unpack the D700.

At some point last week I found myself skimming through one of those "top 5 ways to incorporate lighting in your photos" lists when I started riffing on an idea. The section involved painting stationary objects with a flashlight during a long exposure and I thought "hmm..I wonder what it would look like to paint a portrait subject with a flashlight.." I'm sure it has been done in some capacity before, but I hadn't seen it or done it, and I wanted to learn, so off we go. This brainstorm inevitably lead to the realization of a perfect application of this yet untested technique; a four day DIY scene music/art/creative festival in DC that was to be headquartered at a local church.

The characters and the church setting could (and did) provide a perfect backdrop for the painterly ghosting effects I was envisioning. The only problem was my only opportunity to do so was two days away, which left for no time to test in film, develop and scan said rolls and come up with a committed solution. After a few rounds of tests (and a bunch of beer/wine) I had a system in place to deliver the effects I was going for. I could remotely fire my camera for a two second exposure while simultaneously rear curtain triggering a gridded off camera flash. The flashlight would flood various areas of the scene while I bark out weird instructions to willing subjects, sometimes even freezing parts of the subject halfway through their movements for a multiple exposure effect.

The participatory nature of the setup was a perfect complement to the, in my opinion, participatory mantra of punk; the subject and practitioner were equally involved with creating something different.

DC to Philly, aka #DCpassyunk is in the Books

The first road trip of the summer, aka #DCpassyunk, my is in the books and on my scorecard it was a resounding success. A group of us rented a house in the Passyunk neighborhood of South Philly (near Gino's Steaks, kind of) and set out on our photographic and food related explorations throughout the city. Let me say right here that Philadelphia's food and people are both absolutely amazing. And we barely scratched the surface. Chris Chen acted as our resident food connoisseur and guided us to some epic meals.

Photographically speaking, we could all work as a group or explore a theme or area on our own. The early reports come Sunday afternoon indicated that everyone managed to work on something for themselves while still enjoying the camaraderie of the greater group. 

Planning the day's itinerary

A group mentality can backfire though, like when three of us telepathically understood that "this old woman in Chinatown with a gigantic umbrella is definitely going to lead to a photo" and we all descended upon her at once. It wasn't planned, but we all saw it and went for it. Thank God umbrellas can also double as a shield. 

I didn't arrive with any specific areas of focus in mind so I decided to check out Philadelphia for what it was and photograph whatever presented itself. Love Park was sought out though and I managed to hang with a few guys filming a skate scene. In total, I went through about 9 rolls of Tri-X and I'm in the process of developing and scanning those negatives, but I did shoot some random b-roll stuff throughout the weekend on my Olympus EP1. These are just interesting buildings, bits of nice light and compositions that I noticed along the way but didn't want to spend a frame of film on. The additives, if you will. 

I should have a couple more follow up posts with the film stuff in the coming weeks. 

Next up; Atlantic City! 

DC Street Photography Roudtrip Part Uno: Philly!

This weekend is a big one. Philly; the first stop in my set of summer road trips around/up/down/near the East Coast of the United States for DC Street Photographers.

The concept materialized a number of months ago when I was recollecting the old days of skate team tours, where a team of skateboarders would load themselves into a van and conduct a number of demos, skate sessions, meet with fans and generally cause a high quantity of impromptu mayhem along the way.

I thought that this could be an interesting activity for street photographers and immediately started looking into the details associated with loading a bunch of street shooters into a minivan and tear-assing through a few cities sometime this summer; shooting street, eating foods and checking out live music/art happenings along the way. The idea is to show the strength of the DC area Street Photography community by bringing them to other cities. That way, people from outside of the Beltway get a chance to check out what we capture throughout a number of cities and eventually dig into our work from the Nation's Capital.

A quick survey of known conspirators led to some very positive reactions to such plans, but I soon realized the logistics of lining up a van, the schedules of 4-5 people, and  adequate places to stay throughout multiple cities into the same week would be almost impossible. Especially with the amount of time I could allocate to formulating said plans (almost none) and available budgets (next to nothing). So, the concept morphed into a new plan:

Three cities on three separate weekends throughout three (or four) months of the summer. This way, different photographers can pick and choose what weekend works for them. First up is Philadelphia with Matt Dunn (@MattDunnDC), Chris Chen (@furcafe) and Mahan Talebian. My main objective of this particular weekend is to finally check out the venerable LOVE park, home to one of the most influential skate scenes in the US. I know it's but a shadow of its former self, but still...

Love Park via Blabac Photo (check that dude out; he's on point)

Anyway, Part 2 will be Atlantic City Boardwalk in late July and hopefully NOrleans in mid-September (30% chance of me surviving that trip).

Get at me in the comments section or on twitter @DGDCphotos or via email andy@dgdcphotography.com if you are interested in any of the trips or want to provide some tips about each location.