Meet a Subject: The man we call Shrake

Today's installment of my Meet a Subject series looks at longtime friend Scott Shrake, who's patronage of my photography services can be traced back to the start of my professional career. Founder and creative director/visionary of DC's Story League live story telling group, Shrake has provided many performers with a platform for expression, identity, self-discovery, fame and humor. He also provided me with my first paid photo gig. Professional story telling is to me, after years of watching and photographing, an intimate performance style that is on par with the level of difficulty of good stand up comedy. 

Note: this is from my first Story League Show. Notice my clumsy inclusion of an extra microphone stand in the composition...

Performers have the stage, a microphone and a few short minutes to capture (and keep) the attention of a live audience of strangers while telling a story about their life.

Meet a Subject: Jo Ann Block

Next up in my Meet a Subject series is another visual artist by the name of Jo Ann Block. A DC transplant via California & Vermont, Jo Ann's work investigates the complexities and ambiguities of queer identity throughout historical and contemporary culture. I was first introduced to Jo Ann at her studio space in the DC Arts Studios on one of my afternoons devoted to the ArtistSpaces project and we immediately began her work and career, as well as creative culture in general. 

Most of my sessions for the ArtistSpaces project involve a long chat about an artists work and interests as opposed to me just jumping in and snapping away, and neither of us appeared to be in a particular rush when we started chatting. I did notice however, once she sat down, that elements of her latest work "TransSurfing" were creating an absolutely dynamic frame around her likeness. This incredible composition was staring at me for an hour as I held onto our conversation, completely blown away by the story of her latest project while being constantly taunted by the possibilities of the frame. 

Meet a Subject: Eric B Ricks

Hey there - I would like to introduce fellow readers to a number of my favorite and notable portrait subjects from over the past year. Everyone featured in this series has been either chosen because of their interesting story or background, impact on me or my photographic endeavors, or any imaginable combination of the above. This will basically be a collective shout out to a number of people that bestow upon me the honor of taking their picture, and most of them have done so on a number of occasions.

Eric B Ricks, Collaborator in Creative Mayhem

First up is DC artist Eric B Ricks; muralist, painter, mixed media sculptor and general collaborator in creative mayhem. I first met Eric under some chance circumstances back in August of 2014. Eric had been working as an apprentice under local photography legend George de Vincent, who had recently passed away after a life of seemingly endless adventure, and Eric was in the process of moving out of de Vincent's house and studio located a couple blocks away from my apartment.

On Film, Part 3: The Frames that made my bones

Can anyone out there in the film photography world recall the specific frames that made them fall in love with a particular film stock or film in general? Up until June 2013, I mostly stuck to B&W and only dabbled in color film. If I shot color, it was most likely FujiChrome but E6 was becoming harder and more expensive to have processed in my city, so I just kind of abandoned color all together.

Then a friend sent me a text from the DC Pride Parade telling me to get down there to grab some frames. I thought "Pride" "Parade" "Reveling" - COLOR. So I dug through the freezer and found two rolls of extremely expired Kodak Gold 200 and hit the streets. I arrived right at the onset of golden hour and ripped through the two 24 frame rolls in no time, completely oblivious to the rules and strategies of overexposing expired color negative film. But I didn't care, this was just a fun trip through the final few blocks of the parade:

The results from the lab were hit or miss, with the hits being a huge whiff (WAY underexposed) but the hits, well..these two frames featured above rang my head like a gong and woke me up to the incredible qualities of color negative. Especially expired cheapo films. My digital color work has never been the same and I'm almost always striving for that hyper contrasty, saturated look of well exposed KodakGold.

Does anyone else have frames of theirs in mind that simply made them reconsider everything that came before then? It's amazing how these things stick around in our minds. Below are a few more favorites from the two rolls I shot that afternoon, forever changing my approach to color. 

On Film, Part 2: Metering and Shooting Film

Picking up from where I left off last week's overview of the most abundant films currently in production is this sprawling ramble about metering techniques for film. Analog film and digital sensors capture various aspects of the color and light spectrum in very different ways, so it's good to know the different between the two and how to exploit their respective strengths.

Modern digital sensors can capture and retain an ungodly amount of useable information in the shadow areas of a scene and, generally speaking, color negative and true black and white film can do all sorts of wonderful things with highlights that are well beyond the reach of digital sensors. Keeping this in mind, I have two general approaches to metering any given scene, depending on which hammer (I mean camera) that is in my hands as well as the overall look and feel that I am trying to achieve. Film? I meter in the shadow areas to make sure all details in the darker realm of the light spectrum are captured before pressing the shutter. Exposing for the shadows usually pushes the highlights to near "unusable" realms, but color negative film has much more gradual transitions between highlights to blowouts that you can kind of let the highlights do what they want.