There are days...

I have a flickr account in which I used to ramble on incessantly and very often to a point of exposition fueled by carelessness and with a sense of outer pressure that makes me cave. There are days when things, feelings, cancel each other out and the resulting feeling is one of apathy and sleepiness.

Yesterday and today were such days.

A painter in San Francisco on flickr, noted once how these were so periodic for me. I told him I had noticed. There's just always a week or a few days of withdrawal from things. I want things to stop. I want to exist somewhere outside. If I were a song, I'd be a song about wanting to be an animal.

Luckily, there's art. Not my own. But art - in poetry, in a painting, in a photograph, in song or film. Beauty, when things get so gray, can be so refreshing and releasing.

And I'm reminded to stop all the worrying and the petty anger and to breathe.

I guess it's only said so much because more complex words just won't do: sometimes you just have to let go.

Three ladies, three muses

Alexandra S.

Chloe C.

Lydia B.

I think photographers are a bit predatory. We're territorial as it is, whether we want to be or not. The mere fact of photographing something, especially today when an image can travel across the world faster than your paycheck can arrive in the mail, changes that location.

So it is in a predatory (in a non-sexual predatory) way that I found and picked these three ladies.

I love being inspired by a face alone, and a body and body language. I find myself scrutinizing everything about everyone I encounter, and that I got to photograph them is accomplishment enough since half of the time I want to photograph someone, I'm rather reserved and quiet about it.

But getting around these faces is fun, for lack of words. They seem so infinite in their capacity for beauty and for grace and I fantasize the feeling of photographing them in different ways before I can even see a clear image of them in my head.

The thing about muses for me, though, is the fact that I like to be beauty through them, and with them simultaneously. When someone agrees to your portrait, they agree to your art, and your expression and they give you ownership of that moment and their behavior (some more willingly than others) and for that moment of collaboration and inspiration, you do a dance with each other's minds And you're with them and understanding them, and you, and images come out and so do memories.

Sure, I can't help it but romanticize the dynamic sometimes. But, truthfully, these photographs of them bring to me a moment of engagement that I find beautiful, all on its own. My own little inside joke.

Shooting Shows

I don't mean this to sound like I'm being a "show off" I just want to share the experience.

I was recollecting some old images for a website I'm setting up (and you could go and set one up yourself ) to put my work out there, beyond a blog. I remembered I had a lot of photographs from concerts, so I started arranging photographs for a gallery precisely for concert photographs.

Flipping through the hundreds of lackluster images, and finding the few good ones in between, I remembered the stress of shooting concerts.

They're fun. They're exciting. They're nauseating. Here's a few tips and truths.

You get on average 3 songs to photograph, the first three of the set, which amounts to roughly 10 minutes. And get good ones. You don't get to chimp around and see if what you got was good, so it's really of the moment, you have to arrange your frame well, be focused on the viewfinder and while you're not looking keep your eyes open on the stage for any photo-worthy moments about to happen. It's good to research the band to know if they do anything special. For example, had I known the bassist from Underoath rocketed snot in between songs, I might have been more ready for when it almost hit me. Kyo, singer of Japanese Metal band Dir en Grey, loves punching himself and scratching himself up mid-concert; hardly a pretty scene, but definitely a photogenic one.

Then there's the other guys. If it's a small show you'll get a few 5 photographers. In a big amphitheater you'll get a good 15 -- without counting the videographers with their mastodon cameras. And the audience 3 feet behind you. The security guards watching you. The space, or "pit," is super narrow so you'll get elbowed and you'll trip and you'll get sweat on you and your lens.

The tip is to be polite to everyone, and to try to be as inexistent as possible. Then you could really focus on what you're photographing and get as many moments as possible. You have to be alert. It's no war, but it gets pretty rowdy in a metal show (or even pop-rock shows, like when I photographed Cute is What We Aim For).

The other issue is the light. My first concert was photographing Slipknot as my main stage to cover. It was a show of smoke and flashing lights and fire. You had to be ready when the light went from dark to about 4 stops higher. And then all the fuzzy photographs in between. And the noisy photographs. And the blurry photographs. And the 10 minutes.

I heard from an old photographer, Saul Weinstein, that you don't make the frame follow the action, you wait till the action comes into the frame. I learned much later you just aim the frame around the people and just make small arrangements. Otherwise you'll get blur or awkward compositions.

It's good to have fast cards, too. You don't want to have a slow card with your Nikon D80 so that every 3 photographs it has to load and lag a bit (i missed a very personal photograph with the singer from Papa Roach because of this).

And also, keep professional. One thing that was constantly driven into my head by my editor is to never seem like your enjoying the show. You're a photojournalist, and you're supposed to be unbiased (I had to remind myself when Underoath played one of their very good songs and I found myself singing along!).

Oh and yes. Try to make friends with the other photographers. I got a few good tips once while shooting with a Nikon D40 with a broken lens, and tape from a nice (and rather handsome) photographer from Spinner (at least I think it was spinner). The show went a lot smoother after that and he gave me a few tips which I'm sharing with you now.

So yeah. Just a little something to keep in mind.

Guyland

A bit delayed, yes, but I went to see Michael Kimmel talking about "Sex in Guyland: Bingeing, Porn & Hooking up." Guyland, as he calls it, is the extended adolescent phase that all of society falls under. He creates a norm, the social environment created by the middle-class white male from 16 to late 20's, through which he compares and creates marginal social environments in which everyone else exists.

He had a strong feminist aspect, but it was more of an idea of "inequality" in Guyland and the homosocial bond among men that excludes, and as a result, objectifies women as a form of revenge for the seeking of equality the feminist movement actively sought. He noted that men felt invaded because of this, and that this invasion created a stronger brethren among men, characterized by self-policing among men for the fight of who's the manliest, to put it simply. While that characteristic has been around since perhaps the Persians, it's more aggressive and more avaricious now, because of the idea of betrayal.

Interesting. Not as inspirational as I thought it would be, but his notes on porn and our consumerism of porn (which outgrosses that of McDonald's) were definitely eye opening. I'm always open for a new social issue to explore.

Came across something funny...

From Dogging.

From The Park.

While browsing blogs the other day I came across a post about Steven Meisel's Dogging photo shoot he did originally for Vogue Italia's January 09 issue, but was rejected because it was too much (which is saying something since Meisel has been shooting every cover for the magazine since 1988, and still is shooting as his newest published book "Steven Meisel's '317 & Counting" suggests). The same shoot ended up in the hands of V magazine's Winter 2008 Issue.

But as I came across them I remembered Kohei Yoshiyuki's The Park which Stefan showed us in class while learning flash photography. Meisel's photographs are obviously a reference to Yoshiyuki's work. The soft light in the photographs the crowded frames, the odd sense of voyeurism. Call me crazy if you don't think so.

I thought it was excellent. And also, who knew how long V magazine has been available online...and why didn't you tell me?!

-Sam

Buried

Alex (my muse) always tells me that she likes to go places where other people have never been. I agree. But I also always want to know what it is that draws people in to the frequently visited places (the ones that catch my attention anyway).

Today I went to one of them.

During the earlier 20th Century Rochester had a subway system that ran along the Eerie canal (there were pictures of it posted on the 2nd floor of Gannet earlier on this academic year) alleviate traffic in the city above. It got big during world war II but then died down right after due to the heavy commercialization of cars. (just giving a little history but you can read more about it here)

It's torn down and abandoned - a little bit of a thrill for some, but to me was just another one of those things about Rochester. It's such a victim of technology. It brought about great things but, once science started modernizing things more and more, Rochester was left behind. I think it's a very interesting place, and I think there's a lot of potential in this city. Of course the real trick is how to get it back. There's all these illustrations pasted on the windows of the city saying things like "the way it was" in terms of fashion, city life and executive life. I think it has such a great culture of its own, and it's very hidden and frankly, fading a bit.

In any case, we (me and some friends) walked through the whole route. Very interesting. Very dusty. I might die soon (kidding...).

Here are some pictures from the day (and yes I should totally be working on my book, but god knows when we'll have another sunny Saturday in Rochester?)

Thank You Zoe Whittal

I bought a friend of mine an anthology of Queer Girl writings called "Baby, remember my name." We stopped talking, and the book ended up in my house. I read a short essay which I have turned around (and reread) probably about once a month.

"Homo Marriage Redux" is a short piece by Zoe Whittal. Not very clear what it's on, but it's a stream of consciousness with her heroine as the tour guide. She talks about the muse. The inspiration. The editor. Almost like an internal dialog between her, her adventurous self reflected as the girl that's "three hopscotch steps ahead."

In any case there's a line in the piece in which she says that "reporters have you down on Rolodex as Lesbian comma Artist" always asking her what she thinks should be done about gay marriage. She later states in passing, that among other things to do about it, Religion and Politics should go sit in the coatroom and think about the mistakes they've made (the piece climaxes around a marriage-like setting).

This became so visual for the first time within my head; a short film played behind my eyelids, reminiscent of Steven Klein and Vinoodh & Inez's work during the 90's for the Balenciaga ad campaigns with the graphic writings. The headless bodies of Religion and Politics sitting sullen and embarrassed, bold text over their heads in fluoro colored arguments and apologies.]

I tried to materialize it (even though I should have been studying!). Give the idea some form. This came out of it.

Hardly flawless. But I remembered a time where things i would do, once ago, were so distant from what i wanted to see in a photograph I made or had thought up. Perhaps my ideas are becoming more and more concrete. Here's to hoping.