ARCHIVE REFLECTION
Context: I just added an archive section to my website containing my favorite work from each year, starting from late summer of 2019 which was when I began taking photography a lot more seriously. It was cool organizing my work and seeing the progression.
In 2019, I picked up a fully mechanical Olympus OM-1 film camera as my first very own "serious camera" (was previously shooting with my phone). I also switched from editing on VSCO to Lightroom (used VSCO since 2014). I already knew my preferred color palette/look at that time so that year was mostly figuring out how to get the colors and tones I wanted out of Lightroom from scratch. My photos from 2019 were less of a conscious effort than they are now -- I'd say I was fairly lucky with the photos I took that year. As I've also noticed in music, it's a lot easier to come up with ideas in the beginning before the list gets exhausted. It was easier to commit to ideas and not worry about the result as it felt like there wasn't anything to lose.
2020 was a strange year photographically. Dropped film and went all digital that year as I was running into some issues with my OM-1. It was a wild year of experimentation with lots of changes, from composition to subject matter. I shot mostly garbage photos and produced many questionable edits but there were a decent number of keepers. I had to gain experience outside of consuming photography related content so I had no other option but to just put in the hours to shoot & edit. It was a year where I paid more attention to characteristics like light & shadow than color. I was also trying to create movement via working the diagonals of the frame, paying attention to lines, and utilizing wider focal lengths such as the 28mm and 35mm. I shot a lot of stuff I couldn't really vibe with. However things started to change after a short trip to Santa Cruz at the end of the year with my film point & shoot and a roll of Ilford HP5 — for the first time I was pretty happy with more than half of the roll. I suspect it had to do with focusing more on the scene with my own eyes rather than through an LCD screen. Thank you film for forcing me to slow down.
Fast forward a couple months — I've been shooting almost entirely film this year and I'm happy with a lot of the photos from it. Been finding my groove, building consistency and am able to see frames on a much more frequent basis. Also have a clearer idea of the kind of stuff I wanna shoot and the stuff I'd prefer to avoid. Most of the focus these days is on composition, subject matter, & layers. I finally feel like I have some sort of momentum & I hope it is something I can maintain and even maximize. Hoping to create some larger bodies of work as well. Guess we'll just have to see where this goes.
"making photos"
Rather than taking photos.
Heard this phrase recently and I've been trying to map some meaning to it -- here's my take.
Own your perspective. It reinforces the idea that photography as an art form is not about following trends or about the gear you have, but rather it's about how you see. We can never truly see things as they are -- we see things as we are.
People can look at the same thing but derive different meanings.
This is why photography is a medium for self-expression. The eye is the most important and it seems this idea is not emphasized enough. However, “the eye” isn’t just going to exist out of nowhere - it stems from a desire to notice.
It's helpful to collect information and consume the work of others but it's the responsibility of the individual to get their hands dirty and also fail their fair share.
NIGHT RUNNER
Released an instrumental mini EP ‘NIGHT RUNNER’ on the n seas. project recently. Some lessons I took from creating it -
The idea of not trying to force a result. For me in reality, this was depicted by creating a collective of tracks instead of focusing on creating a standalone. Each track served its own purpose as a portion of the whole.
I realized that it's fine to just take an idea and explore it more in depth, do that a few more times, and then thread those different ideas together if possible.
I haven't quite done this in photography yet. I think the next step would be creating something along the lines of a zine — & really just shooting to shoot instead of trying to make my best photo.
Been feeling drained creatively for a good chunk of this year but maybe this notion of letting seemingly minuscule ideas flesh out can help prevent that in the future.