Archive for September, 2002

9/30/02

Published on September 30, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

Today Lucky had her tumor removed. Luckily for her, it was not attached to her kidney as the doctor had thought was possible. Apparently she had cancer there before, the doctor said that she’d had the same surgery done in the same place maybe a few years back. That may be why she was abandoned. Surgery can get well into the thousands, and to have to do it again, well, home people may not love their pets that much. The doctor said either she is just a dog who grows cancerous tumors, or the doctor who operated on her last time did not remove all of the tumor. This guy is supposed to be the best animal surgeon in LA, so hopefully he is right, and he did everything well this time around. This may explain why Lucky gets so scared when she is in the vet’s office. She may have spent some bad times there before. I don’t know if I mentioned before but every time she gets into the vet’s office she starts shaking wildly. She was shaking so much last time her teeth were chattering… poor little Lucky.

Hopefully she will be healed and ready in just a couple weeks or so, because I need to get a job and start getting out there with my camera, but not in that order. I want to take my camera out as soon as I have the freedom to do so, and once I am able to actually attend an interview, I will find a job of some sort. No more than 30 hours a week though, unless it pays amazingly well.

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I have decided that for sure I am going to sell the film scanner. I am going to probably buy the Epson 1640 flatbed scanner to replace it. There is no reason to have a scanner that scans at 4000dpi and only use it at 2000, then resize everything down by 75%. The Epson will do web posting just fine, and will allow me to scan Holga negs and my darkroom prints too. So I will be getting money back and I will have something that’s even more useful to me. The Epson will also allow me to scan in all my old snapshots for the family webpage, and there are a lot of those.

9/26/02

Published on September 26, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

A few days back I mentioned that I wanted to start a family section on my site that was seperated from the rest of my site by password, kinda like Grant Heffernan has on his (although I don’t know what his is like, I’ve just seen the “Family Portal” link on his home page, which asks you for a password when clicked, the rest I am just guessing). Well, I searched around and found a good password log-in script and I set up the basic site, and today I decided to sort through all my family and friends snapshots so I can start scanning the ones I want on the website.

I thought I had lots and lots of snapshots, because they filled up a box, but it turns out to be only around 800 or so (after I threw away all the crap ‘ie. pics of trees and mountains’), and that’s for my whole life. That really isn’t all that many, especially considering that about 550 or so are from my 3 trips to NY. I also realized that there is a big chunk of my life missing from pictures, but maybe my dad has some (I hope), from when I was about 5 until I was around 13 or so. Actually, I have the negs from a roll of pics when I was 8 or 9, and I have 2 rolls of pics that I shot of my friends and teachers from 4th and 6th grade (I think). Save from that, though, there’s really nothing. That’s too bad. I have a really bad memory, I have trouble remembering some things I did a week ago, let alone 15 to 20 years. Thanks to this lack of photo documentation of my life I have decided that I need to take more snapshots starting now. Unfortunately, they aren’t going to be as important as my school days. I only have a handful of pics from my senior year of high school and only around 5 or 6 of my freshman year (Soph and Junior years were spent in Vietnam, and I have a roll of film from those 2 years). Oh well, can’t change the past, just gotta try to do better in the future.

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I was thinking about snapshots after my day of sorting and filing into albums, and I realize how important they are. I know that Robin Williams had some cool things to say about them in One Hour Photo, but I don’t remember what (bad memory). Photos are basically hard copies of memories, they are a backup for our brains, of sorts. They are more true than our recollections because they cannot be suppressed or denied or altered (well they can, but not the way our brain can), but they still go hand in hand with our memories, otherwise they’d be meaningless. If we didn’t remember anything about the photographs we look at, they’d be just as boring as looking at someone else’s snaps. I think back to the parts of my life that I have no photo or video documentation of and I am truly saddened by the loss of memories that although I cannot recall, I know would have been good most of the time.

I think a lot of “art” photographers may not like to do snapshots. They may feel above just pics of friends and family just doing things that friends and family do. I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t think I am. I think that I might try to limit the “snapshot look” of my snapshots, though. I hate flash, and pics with harsh flash AND red-eye look just horrendous. Luckily most of my snapshots taken for the past 2 years or so were taken with an EOS 1v with a flash mounted nice and high, and always only used as fill. I did take a few of my brother with the Minilux set to slow flash sync that came out really cool on XP2 though. Now that I don’t use flash at all, though, I will like my snaps even more. I will need more TMax 3200 though.

9/24/02

Published on September 24, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

They’re shooting a movie outside my apartment, I went out on the fire escape and watched for a little while. They’re doing a scene where a car gets bumped from behind. I’ve seen them do 10 takes or so already of the same little sequence, maybe 5 seconds long… making movies looks pretty boring… so much repetition. I took a few shots and realized that I was just wasting film, there was nothing interesting about the scene at all except for the fact that I had never really seen a location movie set before. So… I have a few snapshots on Tri-X that will never see paper. The most common advice given to a beginning photographer is “shoot lots of film”. I think that should be revised. I think too many people hear that then just go out and shoot anything and everything, and if you aren’t selective of what you shoot, then how will you ever get better. It’s like randomly stabbing at keys on the piano for an hour, then playing back the recording and realizing that some small sections actually sounded good… but since you did it all randomly, you don’t even remember how you did it. Not what notes you played… of course you can figure that out… but what was going on inside you when you did it. I think I need to be a little more selective and methodical in my approach to photography, because I don’t want every good shot that I ever take to just be a “happy accident”. Luck is important, and is a part of every good street photograph out there… but it shouldn’t be too big a part.

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So, to update on Lucky the dog’s status… I took her to the vet yesterday (Anthony found a foundation that is willing to pay for all the medical bills) and they did x-rays and blood work on her. It’s looking good, the doctor is willing to proceed with the operation, which he said is going to be tough, because the cancer is attached to the muscle wall. Her surgery is scheduled for Monday, and I’m really hoping it goes well. Poor Lucky, when we got inside the vet’s office, she started shaking so badly her teeth were chattering. You could see her legs shaking from across the room. At least it’s all for the best, and she should be ready to go to her new home in a month! Anthony also found a home for her, and that is great news. I love Lucky, she is a wonderful dog, but I have to admit that I will be a little relieved when I am finally able to leave the house without taking her with me. I am just trying not to think of the fact that I still have a month or maybe even more to go…

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Leica, Leica, Leica… I am at the point now where I have no clue what I want to do. I will lose money if I sell what I have to go Leica… but maybe that’s for the best. I figured that I also don’t need my film scanner, I have a Canon FS4000US and I only use it to scan for the web. I think that’s a bit overkill. Of course, I had originally intended to use it for all my printing, but I have decided the darkroom is the way to go, at least for now. So… I can sell the scanner and buy a decent flatbed with transparency adapter, and get $400 out of the switch. So, if I sell everything I can actually afford to get an M6 with Noctilux and 21mm Elmarit, then Voigtlander 35 and 90. This is if I buy the Leica stuff used off eBay and the Voigtlander stuff from Cameraquest. Should I do this? I don’t know. The other option is to just sell the Aria and lenses, the Minilux and the G 28mm and G flash (neither of which have I ever used), then I could buy just the M6 with a 50 summicron. This will at least allow me time with the M6 before I get rid of the G2. This may be the best solution.

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Just got off the phone with Nikki and Kenny back east… I had hoped to speak with my aunt Muriel too, but she wasn’t home yet. A couple days ago I talked to my mother and her husband Charlie, and now I just really miss New York. I haven’t been there in 3 years… so much has changed in the lives of my family members, and I have not been back to see any of it. I want to go visit but I need to go visit the family in Vietnam first. I haven’t been back there in 8 years, so I really need to go. Maybe I’ll go to Vietnam in the spring then New York in the summer, and I can make it to Nikki’s graduation. I’ll do some senior portraits for her, although she already had them done, I’m wondering what they are like. I got tired of glamour portraits becuase of my time at Glamour Shots… but other types of portraiture still interest me. I just haven’t had any subjects besides my dogs for the past few months.

9/22/02

Published on September 22, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

So after another day of contemplating all that is Leica, I have calculated that if I sell all of my G2 equipment and all of my Contax SLR equipment and my Minilux and Lomo LC-A, I will have around $3300 or so. That will afford me an M6 classic, 21mm Elmarit, 35mm Voigtlander Ultron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Voigtlander Lanthar and a Stylus Epic. Although I sacrifice aperture-priority AE with the Epic compared to the Minilux… the truth is the Minilux is too big and expensive for me to take certain places, compared to the Epic. I also will lose aperture-priority AE going from the G2 to the M6, but that isn’t too bad, I just need to get used to manual. Unfortunately I didn’t start photography the same way I did driving… my father told me from the beginning that if you learn to drive a stick-shift first, the automatic will be a no-brainer, and the entire process will be easy; if you learn automatic first, it is much harder to learn stick. He was right.

So… will I go through with this whole system switch? I don’t know. What I do know is that I really want to stop thinking about it, and anyone reading this would probably want me to stop writing about it too.

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The other day while I was sitting in traffic I looked in the rearview mirror and though the scene behind me looked very interesting… just the way the cars were lined up and curved around. Not wanting to take just a normal pic of this, I decided to take out the Bessa-L w/ 15mm Heliar, set the timer, put it on the dash, then let it shoot. Now I’ve decided to make that into a little project. I need to park my car (I suppose sometimes I could be driving, if I make some kind of mount for the camera) with interesting compositions in the background, then shoot them with myself sitting right there in the driver’s seat. It’s probably been done, but maybe not done well, so hopefully I’m on to something. I’m pretty sure that the lens is picking me up, but I’m not sure how well yet, and how distorted I will be. I need to finish that roll. Too bad it’s XP2 though, because I’ll need to go drop it off. We’ll see in a week or so.

9/21/03

Published on September 21, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

The weekend didn’t turn out to be nearly as productive as I would have liked. I got a haircut, won $87 at Rock-and-Bowl, and hurt my knee some more. Not exactly the type of weekend I was hoping for. Oh well, can’t be productive all the time… but since I’m not usually all that productive on the weekends, I thought it would be nice to try it once. Eh… maybe next time.

I’m trying not to drone on and on about gear like I used to… it started with photo gear, then biking, and now it’s hiking/backpacking gear. Next it’ll be snowboarding. Luckily I’m broke thanks to the Trooper, so I can’t buy anything… so I’ll keep mostly quiet for now. I do, however, want to stress how much I miss my GL1… I really shouldn’t have sold it.

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I saw One Hour Photo again yesterday, what a great movie. It reaffirms my respect for Robin Williams as an actor. It also fired me up about photography a little bit again, but more about the recent type of photos I’ve shot rather than what I used to shoot. Lately I have been shooting the trips I take and stuff at home, friends, family, etc… just snapshots, really, and the movie really emphasises their importance. There is a line in the film about how if someone were to go through our photo album, it would seem as though we had such a happy life, because people only take pictures of the good times, of happy events… certainly not things they’d rather forget. It’s kinda sad, really, because some of the most important parts of our lives happen in unhappy times. I’m guessing, though, that people wouldn’t want me to take their pic when they are upset or crying or doing something they’d be ashamed of, so I guess there won’t be anything I’ll be doing about it.

I was going through old photos and I came across the first roll I ever shot with the Bessa L and the 15mm Heliar. There were some really cool shots. I haven’t shot any film for a while, but I popped a roll of Superia Xtra 400 in it and I’m going to shoot it over the next week or two. Hopefully I’ll come up with something cool that will really respark my old love for that lens. I also came across some shots I did with the Minilux, and now I can really see what people were talking about when they say the images had a “look”, a certain “pop” to them. There is an actual noticeable difference, and I miss that too. Some day I’ll have to make a lot of money a buy all the gear I’ve ever sold… because it seems as though I miss it all.

9/21/02

Published on September 21, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

The call of the Leica is hurting my head. I’ve spent all day reading and pricing and calculating and wishing… and it really bothers me. I need to just be content with what I have right now, especially since for me, right now, there are truly only 2 things that bother me about the G2, and they are not that big of a deal at this point in my photography. First it’s the fact that the Titanium G2 makes me feel rather conspicuous, and I don’t know that it should. It’s not a very big or intrusive camera, but it is really pretty and slick. The second problem I have with it is the noise. I have tried out the M6 and it was friggin’ quiet. When I first used the G2 I thought it was pretty quiet, too, because before that I was using the Canon EOS 1v, and compared to that, the G2 whispers.

So… I have my wishlist down to a more realistic (with the sale of the G2 system) set. If I had lots of $$ I would get an M7 and a 50mm Noctilux, 50mm summilux, a 21mm Elmarit, 35mm Summilux and 90mm Summicron. Something like that. Since I will only get a max of $2300 for my G2, flash and lenses, I have lowered the bar a bit. I have decided that although I have never really used manual mode very often (except on the Bessa-L, no choice) and I prefer aperture-priority AE, I don’t think that at this time it’s worth an extra grand. So… the M6 classic will work just fine. Since I don’t like flash photography I don’t see a reason to go with the M6 TTL. The Noctilux is just a dream. I hope to someday be able to open up to f/1.0, but that day will not be soon, at least not for $2500. That leaves the 50mm Summilux, which should do just fine (and it’s smaller and lighter to boot!). The 21mm is unfortunately a necessity and an expensive one at that. I am beginning to love that focal length on the G2, I don’t even carry the 28mm with me anymore. Then, seeing as how I almost never use the 90 on the G2, I am pretty sure that I can do without one for the Leica, at least to start. As for the 35mm, I think that a Voigtlander 35mm 1.7 Ultron will do just fine. I have read a lot about it and it seems to be highly recommended. Also recommended is the price vs the 35mm Summicron.

So, to summarize, my revised short term Leica wishlist : Leica M6 classic w/ 21mm Elmarit, 35mm 1.7 Ultron and 50mm Summilux. This still comes to around $4000 used. Without the 21mm, we’re looking at a more attainable $2500. The Voigtlander 21mm is an f/4 lens though, and I would often want to use it in low light situations, so I’m not sure it would suffice. Either way, I need to just stop wishing and start shooting… I’m not better than my G2 and probably won’t be for a while, if ever… so I’m not missing out on much. But after holding and trying the M6, it’s hard not to think about it.

9/19/02

Published on September 19, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

Well, I haven’t done any shooting still. A couple shots here and there of the dogs doing something funny or of the light and shadows on the window blinds, but not even a whole roll. I gotta say that this sucks.

I’m not sure if I had mentioned before that I thought that my Jeep’s head gasket was blown. Actually, that was just wishful thinking, because I was sure that with my luck, it was a cracked head or block… but lucky enough, it turns out it is probably just rust in the radiator. It looked milky to me when I went to fill the radiator, but yesterday I looked and it was back to green, which means that whatever was in it had settled to the bottom, and oil doesn’t settle at the bottom of water, so… woohoo! I still have a running car! I’m going to the dog park in an hour or so, and I’m going to stay for a while, so I can start working on the Hollywood Dog Parks webpage and photo essay. Now that I have the Jeep again I can start going daily again, and get this project going. I would like to work on the subway project too, especially since I bought that one week pass and it’s going to waste… but one step at a time, I guess.

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I saw the movie The Anniversary Party the other day. It was just an OK movie, but the actress Jennifer Beals (remember Flashdance?) was in it and she was using a Leica M6. Apparently she really is a photographer, and she did all the photos that were displayed in the house in the movie, and all with her own M6. Seeing the movie made me want an M even more… just because of the scenes where she would just take pictures of people during the party without them even being aware, even though it was in a reasonably quiet environment. That is my only real complaint about the G2… it’s not that quiet. When I was in the LA subway the other day I took a couple of shots of a girl playing with her cell phone… and realized how loud the camera was. Granted, the LA subway is only 3 years old and is quite quiet… but still, I know that I wouldn’t have that problem with an M. Oh well. I will have one eventually, and who knows whether I will like the rest of the camera after using it for a while.

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Grant Heffernan has something on his site called Family Portal, and when you click on it it asks for a password… I’m guessing it’s a sub-site for his family photos and personal stuff. I think that’s a great idea. I think I may start something like that from my page, especially since I have family on both coasts and both sides of the globe. It can be a friends and family photo album and message board. I’ll start by scanning all the best or most important snapshots I have, then asking everyone else to do the same, or to send me pics to scan then return to them. I’ll also start a message board, so we can keep in touch with what’s going on with everyone when we don’t have time (or somtimes the strength) to call each other. Once I figure out how to get the password auth thing going, I’m gonna do it.

9/15/02

Published on September 15, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

I have decided that for once in my life I am going to try to keep something organized. I’ve read through other photographers’ journals and day books and everyone seems to share a lack of organization when it comes to their negs and prints. I’ve never been much one for organization. I’m very good at organizing, mind you, it’s just that I never keep with it, and laziness allows me to let everything fall apart. So… with my photography I am going to give an extra effort to keeping things organized.

I’d already started the film developing log, and this morning I created the image log. Unlike the film dev log, this one is not for display. I am going to keep track of all the images I print and name, and how many of each I sell or give away. This will help me to keep track of a lot of things. For one, I am going to start numbering my film rolls after I develop them, so that later (and this is assuming that some day I am good enough that someone will actually want a print of mine) if I need to print something from a year back, and all I know is its name, I will be able to look it up in the spreadsheet, and will instantly know what roll it is on, what frame #, what camera shot it, what lens (well, maybe) and how many of these are out there already. I think that is all useful information to know about any given print. I will also be able to cross reference the film dev log in case I want to see how I actually came about a certain image, ie. how it was developed and in what, etc… It will also have a record of the date, or at least the month the image was shot, and maybe the location and some other stuff… I still need to work out the details.

I think it’s a good idea, and hopefully I keep up with it, to avoid confusion later on. I really wouldn’t want to have to search for one neg in a sea of tens of thousands in a few years so I can make a print.

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I’ve been thinking about my new little organizational spreadsheet and wondering if maybe I’m jumping the gun a little. I guess it’s never too early to start keeping track of stuff though, so it can’t really hurt. I can see myself in a year or two running some reports to find out which lenses I never get good shots with or what cameras I don’t really use, but oh well… maybe it will at least help me keep my equipment collection lean.

9/13/02

Published on September 13, 2002 in Text. 0 Comments .

Hmmm… Friday the 13th. Ooooooh… scary… I never knew what to make of superstition. I mean, yeah, I’ve been afraid after watching a scary movie or when walking through the forest in the middle of the night without even moonlight to see by, but I don’t think I’ve even thought of 13 as an unlucky number or that breaking a mirror was bad luck. When I was a kid I went around saying that 13 was my lucky number, but I don’t think I really believed it, it was just one of those kid things to do to stand out… like putting ketchup and mustard on cooking in the cafeteria and eating them, pretending you liked them. I don’t think I really believe in luck then, which means I don’t believe in bad luck either… but ghosts, on the other hand, they’re scary!!!

I scanned a few of the shots I took and developed yesterday, and it looks to me that I didn’t screw up the negs after all. Then again I have not quite developed an eye for spotting small variations in negative density, but they look fine otherwise. Unfortunately, there was nothing good on the roll, but I thought I’d put up a couple scans anyway. One of the main points of this journal is to track my progress… so how am I gonna know I’m getting better if I can’t look back and see how much I sucked?

Unique Luxury Apartments
Boss
Thai Town Hot Dog

9/12/02

Published on September 12, 2002 in Photo. 0 Comments .

I wrote a few paragraphs yesterday about 9/11, but couldn’t really finish them, then I cut it down to just one paragraph, then to one sentence. I finally ended up with nothing. I guess I’m not good at writing about some kinds of feelings.

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I am happy because I just got back from some street shooting, and that feels good. I also took my first subway ride ever. I bought a 1-week pass and hopped on the LA Metro at Hollywood and Vine, took it to Hollywood and Western, then back(yes, it was almost a mile). I shot a few people on the subway, and took a few shots of a Thai food restaurant that I found particularly amusing. The restaurant occupies a building that apparently was at one time a hot dog stand… and they haven’t yet taken down the big statue of a hot dog on top of the building. Either that or they serve Thai hot dogs, which I’ve never heard of, but probably wouldn’t want to try… mmmm, this is the best hot dog I’ve ever had! Is that Poodle or Terrier?

Unfortunately I couldn’t really go out for too long, hence the one stop subway trip, as Lucky still howls when I leave. I hope she didn’t make too much noise during the hour and a half I was gone. If she did, I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon. I’m hoping to have her “trained” by this weekend, so I can just shoot all next week. I’ve been really in the mood for photography, and now is the worst time, but I have my Metro pass and I’m gonna hit the streets next week. I am going to start with Union Station, but I’m also thinking of checking out the Getty and LACMA and some other museums and galleries. I’ve been in Hollywood for 2 months now and I have hardly been anywhere, and that just isn’t healthy.

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I put up a small gallery of old stuff last night, I wonder what people will think (you can see it here). I have already received feedback that I shouldn’t have it on the site, since I am going to be focusing on street photography and it’s good to show focus blah blah blah. I understand that, but to misquote someone, you can’t understand where you’re going until you know where you been. I was never a great portrait photographer, but I had fun doing it most of the time and I made a few people happy with their pictures. If you do look at the gallery, though, you will see that I am not good at scanning yet, especially slides, which is what the Liz shots were done on. At the time I shot that for some reason I thought that slides would be the best way, even though the final output was to be prints. I ended up shooting all of Liz’s stuff on Velvia, so her makeup is really saturated. I think maybe I’m just not good with color, period, and that makes it even more difficult to get good scans. Luckily, I’ve never been too interested in color photography, so it works out ok.

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There’s a building across the street that I really want to shoot in the right light, but I don’t think the sun hits it at the angle I want. Maybe I have to wait for another time of year. It is a brick building, but some of the bricks jut out of the wall, and I’m thinking that they would cast great shadows in the right light. Yeah, I know, not the most original idea, done by a thousand people already, but not by me, and that’s what matters. There’s another building across the other street (my building is on at an intersection) that I took a few shots of, from behind. We’ll see if there’s anything decent once I finish the roll. I have been searching my building for something interesting to shoot, but have found myself uninspired. I think it’s that fact that it’s a 5 story brick building with fire escapes and large windows (sounds great so far, huh?) but the entire building has been painted grey. They painted right over the brick, every surface of the whole damn building. It’s the lowest contrast building on the whole block. Oh well.

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I have been reading the book I got 2 days ago that Dave Beckerman recommended to me. It’s great so far. I have maybe five or six other photography books, but they all said the same things, and somehow they just didn’t cover what I wanted. I’m about 1/3 through this one, The Ansel Adams Guide : Basic Techniques of Photography, and so far it’s been great. Just got through the section on visualization… hopefully some day I’ll get to the point where I can look at a scene and actually visualize the final print. I’m a long way off though…

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Here’s an image from the Rennaisance Faire from about 2 months ago:

Girl at the Faire

This is when I first started shooting again after my year off. The Faire itself wasn’t too interesting. People really wanted to have their picture taken. This little girl was staring at a guy in this freaky looking devil bat costume of some sort, and she just caught my eye. A cute pic, though nothing spectacular.

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I am a moron. I was excitied about developing the roll I shot today… not because I thought I had anything great on it, but because I’ve been cooped up in the house all week and it was nice to get out and walk around a little, and certainly nice to shoot a roll of film, so I just wanted to see what I had done. Well, I had everything ready, all the chemicals measured out and cooled to 68°, the film was spooled and in the tank, and I had my watch with the second hand next to the sink. — The second hand moves toward the 12… and… pour! Ok, finished pouring in the developer… put down the grad cylinder… and begin inversions… splash! Ooops! Forgot to put the big red lid on the developing tank, and there goes 1/3 of the developer! Quick, dump out the remaining developer and rinse the film in water… mix new developer, cool and start over…

Well, I guess I’m glad it happened on a roll that I don’t think is too important. This way a lesson is learned nice and early on and although I don’t think any harm was done, the sheer feeling of stupidity that washed over me will help me to remember to put the damn red lid on every single time I pour in some chemicals.

It’s really easy to be stupid sometimes…

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