First Shots

Anticipation can be a funny thing. It can make hours seem like days and make days seem like lifetimes. When we wait for something that we want so bad, we can drive ourselves up the wall, daydream like crazy thinking about it and do other stupid things like look up stuff about it just so we can fool ourselves into thinking we are inching closer to the thing we want.

Honestly, it's a very cruel and unusual torture, but one that makes the end result that much sweeter.

Some can relate how it felt those Christmas Eves when we know payday is coming the next few hours. Some of us remember how those last hours feel before the work week ends. And we can all tell stories of how good it feels when we finally find a bathroom after that DEFCON 1 alarm goes off telling us the floodgates have been compromised.

For me, that moment of release came yesterday after I finished scanning the negatives that, ironically enough, had me going crazy with wait last weekend.

These pictures were the first out of my "new" Yashica Mat-124G Twin-Lens Reflex Medium Format Camera. Being in this digital age, the age of high definition and high-speed Internet, my fully manual, antique of a camera has helped me find something that was often overlooked with my photography: patience. The kind of patience that only comes after you have performed each step from winding the film, to checking your light meter and adjusting your aperture and shutter speed to compensate, to flipping open a magnifying glass just so you can focus properly, to unlocking the shutter and finally taking the picture. Somewhere in all those steps, the scene can be contemplated and the composition really thought out. It can really test not just your technical skills, but also your creativity, even if your subject is not willing to wait that long. But when you finally take that picture, and send it off to be processed, and come back the next day to pick it up, and wait a few more days to get it scanned instead of shoveling out a few more bills to get the pictures printed and look at the picture you took...

Man, is it sweet.










Yashica Mat-124G
Lomography B&W ISO 100, 120 film

Test Shots

Last weekend, Ria commissioned me to take her son Devon's 8-month pictures. If you recall, I was asked to take Devon's five-month pictures, the entry of which can be seen here. Back then, I thought that that would be the end of it, but I guess my work was so good that she brought me back three months later for round 2.

...Or maybe I was the only one that was willing to do it for a Sonic burger...

Either way, I had a job to do. So, I showed up at their house with my gear and my lovely assistant Meng. This time around, she had some idea of what she wanted out of this shoot, so I went ahead and created a set. When things were in place, I decided to take some test shots to make sure my lighting was decent. I asked my assistant to take a seat and this is what came out of my camera:





Really wish I didn't chop off her fingers here...




Inspiration can come when you would least expect it and Sunday was no exception. Is it too selfish to say that these shots were my favorite out of the whole shoot?