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!