Don't Be Afraid To Kill Your Children

Mothers. They're fierce when it comes to protecting their offspring. I have seen videos of women free their pinned down kid by lifting a small car off the ground and the last thing you want to cross on any hike is a mountain lion, especially if she's being trailed by her litter. Artists are also quite protective of their work. Maybe far too protective.

I have lost count as to the many unintended arguments I've had online when a photographer post their work and ask for some critique. I get it. I too can get defensive when I feel someone unfairly criticizes my work, but through the years, I've learned to grow a thicker skin. We are creators and our works are our children, so we will always be ready to defend should the need arise, but sometimes we may put a little too much pride into something that wasn't all that great to begin with.

Case in point:

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I took this photo at the Venice Beach Skate Park in March of 2015, but I'm just got around to develop this roll last week and am finally seeing the photos for the first time today. For the most part I really like this image. It's an action shot. The boy fills the frame and I really dig the angle and stance of his body. That being said, there's a head growing out of the boy's left shoulder.

Most of the time, things like that are real sticklers for me, including this instance. Whenever I see photos that would be considered good to most people, I end up seeing something awkward in the photo (and sometimes pointing it out which I may need to stop doing). "Oh, that's a nice engagement photo, but there's a palm tree growing out of the groom's head."

Last year, I saw a documentary series of photographers called Contacts which detailed some of the artistic approaches photographers used with respect to their work via contact sheets. In the episode I saw, Helmut Newton said something profound that has stuck with me since. 

"Personally I always say you have to sacrifice your own children. An ugly photo shouldn't be protected."

That really speaks volumes. Newton would go on to say that he felt that "young people often protect their children far too much," and Newton has a very good point. Artists have great pride in their work, but sometimes that pride can cloud their vision and stop them from seeing their work objectively, me included.

Since hearing Newton say that, I've been ready to kill (read: not publish in my website) a photo if I see something in that photo bothers me and photographers should take that same approach. Now, obviously I noticed the head growing from the kid's shoulder, but is it that big of a deal to kill the photo?

With the example of a palm tree growing out of the groom's head in a photo, that can be easily fixed during the actual shoot by either the photographer move a couple steps to the left or right and reframe the photo, or have the subjects move and then frame the photo. This photo is different. It's a street photograph. I didn't have any control with the subject and the moment is gone the moment I depressed the shutter button on my camera. There is no way I will experience this moment ever again. I take challenge as a virtue to keep this photo, amongst the other good qualities of the photo. Still, he's got a head growing out of his shoulder.

I could do a bit of photoshopping and totally remove the head (and subsequent legs of the person behind the main subject), but I'm no Steve McCurry.

Other than this entry, I probably won't publish this photograph in my website, but if we're going to put our works out there for the world to see, we really should put our best work out there. And we should be ready for any sort of criticism of our work from people.

Analog Love Letter: American Horror Story

A year back, I was a part of a Getty exhibition with other creative and talented photographers I have the pleasure of knowing and meeting.  The theme of our work was "Play" with the medium being alternative photo processes.

We each had our choice of what alternative photo process we wanted to work on. The last time I did an alternative process work was many years back in high school. It was a cyanotype of a flower and cyanotypes are pretty easy to produce but I had grander plans for my work. With the research I did on alternative processes, I really wanted to do a daguerreotype, but having no experience with the medium and the technical difficulties of producing daguerreotypes put me off. That and the thought of working with mercury fumes scared the shit out of me. So I opted to do something a bit easier and feasible to produce, given the materials I was willing to work with, which ended up being gum bichromate prints. A fairly easy process but it isn't a cake walk either.

Tackling a photo to represent the theme was a bit of a challenge. Images of kids playing, or just the act of play itself (sports, games etc.), were easy to come by because, they're easy to shoot. I didn't want to do easy. At least not until I was desperate enough to use those ideas. It wasn't until halfway till deadline did it come to me. I figured, if the theme was play, I could just have fun with it and do a photo I would never think of doing. 

One day I was walking in the hills not too far from where I lived. I was with a couple of friends and as we're trekking, I zoned out, thinking about nothing but the project which would be due very soon. I saw this field of yellow grass that shined like gold as the light hit it during golden hour. Far in the background was a lone tree that was dark which gave good contrast to the scene I loved immediately. The more I observed the scene, the more my imagination ran. "Wouldn't it be crazy if some man beast were running through this scene?" I want to shoot a nude satyr running through this field. I loved it. It was settled. Who would model for such a photo that I knew? At face value, none, so I just threw it out there and asked one of my friends if he was willing to do this. It took some coaxing, a bit of pressure and I may have begged at one point. Who could blame anyone for being cautious when their friend essentially requests that "I need you to go at least half naked and do this thing for a photo project I was working on." Eventually my friend did agree to it. I think it was the begging.

So a week passes after the agreement was made, and we're back at the same location, at the same time. I wanted the same exact moment to now be filled by a half naked man running through the grass. The idea was to imply nudity (because if it was actual nudity, "no" would be a definite reaction from whoever I asked) so I bought nude colored tights, which he begrudgingly put on. Obviously he was regretting the decision he made but no take backsies is illegal. It's in one of the verses I read somewhere.

As I'm shooting my friend doing whatever it was I told him to do so that I could get enough images to work with, two women were hiking on the trail and as they came closer to us, they saw me with the camera, and then they saw my half naked friend wearing a goat mask, hiding within the grass. One of them shrieked and said something along the lines of "oh my god! It looks like a scene out of American Horror Story!" and proceeded to pull out her cell phone to take a photo of this scene here that I shot.

This photo didn't make the cut. This was taken with black and white film, and one can do a two color gum print (this one would've been a black and white print) but I used a digital camera for the project. It was efficient for the time I had left and the complexity of gum prints. Not sure why I shot this on black & white film exactly. At the time, there may have been an idea to shoot black and white but in hindsight, I probably did it for shits and giggles. Or blackmail.

"Satyr in the grass" / 35mm Ilford Delta 3200 / March 2015

Analog Love Letter: Ms. Bell

I took this photo of my friend Melissa during my birthday revelry in 2011. Another photo in my Turn on the Bright Lights series that's inspired by Interpol's first full length album of the same name.

Taken on a Holga, the red color in this photo came by way of a gel filter that's built into the camera's flash unit. It also has other colors like yellow and blue.

This particular photo has more of a heavy red compared to other photos in the series because of the slide film I used. Slide film, or positive film, is more or less a transparent image. In film's heyday, photographic slides were placed in specially made projectors (which were called slide projectors amazingly enough) where a light bulb would shine it's light on any given slide and thusly would be projected onto a screen. The photos were "as is," compared to color negative film which produced film negatives. In terms of film, you've probably seen film negatives more so than you did slides. They were cheaper to buy and develop. I digress, but if you use a flash, slide film will take in and saturate/fill a photograph with highlights more so than color negative film. So if you use an artificial color source over the flash, such as the color red, the resulting photograph will just be full on red, like holding a red, plastic looking...film.

I have so many small projects and series on my plate it's not even funny. I have yet to set a deadline for completion on this project. When I feel I have nothing left to add to it is when it'll be done.

"Bright Lights on Melissa" / 6x6 medium format Fuji Astia 100F / December 2011

Analog Love Letter: A Magenta Fair

A fair taking place on the Martian surface? Hardly. Just another example of a cross processed photograph. I talked about cross processing film in a previous post and you can get some wild and varying results depending on what type of film you develop in the wrong chemicals (cross process).

This photo yielded a rich magenta shift in the color spectrum due to the film being a Fuji brand slide film. Kodak slide film generally tends to shift towards the blue and green spectrum while Fuji shifts magenta and yellow, again, depending on the film stock.

The photo was taken at the Los Angeles County fair in November of 2008 which was the time when I started experimenting on cross processing my slide film to get interesting and weird results.

"LA county fair in magenta" / 6x6 medium format Fuji T64 / November 2008

Analog Love Letter: Crate Digger

I'm a lover of analog. All analog. Not just film. As this photo is the collection of vinyl currently sitting in my room. Yes, it's a lot but not as much as others may have in their collection.

Comprising mostly of hip hop 12" singles as I dabbled little in the art of the hip hop DJ. I sucked but my brother was much better than I but our interest faded eventually - mine quicker than his.

I have a good number of full length LPs that range the gamut of jazz, hip hop, soul, rhythm & blues and rock. Nothing really beats that analog sound. Much like film, it's something tangible as well as warm with regards to how it sounds. The clicks and pops of the stylus along the groove of the record is...awesome.

"Stax o' wax" / 35mm Fuji Neopan SS 100 / October 2010

Analog Love Letter: Lovers On A Rock

I'm not quite sure what prompts lovers to scale objects just to sit on them. This isn't the first time I've seen this phenomenon or documented.

During a location scouting session, I happened to come across this couple sitting atop this rock. I'm quite sure they were looking out at the ocean and it boggles me a bit. It's not like sitting on top will change the entire view. It's just the same as if you were sitting down on the beach this rock was located. Sure, it's just you two so I suppose the experience can be argued as different.

I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to capture this either. Maybe I'm just starting on another project of couples just sitting on rocks and I just don't know it yet.

"Lovers rock #2" / 6x6 medium format Kodak Ektar 100 / December 2014

Analog Love Letter: Sunbathers

An interesting trend in the new hotels that are propping up these days is having rooftop pools surrounded by cabanas and sun chairs (I think that's what they're called?).

Many of the newer hotels in Los Angeles have them and I'm not really one to frequent such places so this was the first time I've ever been to one, and to this date, my only experience of the rooftop pool.

I was invited to my friend Melissa's birthday party to what was then the SLS Hotel. She's seen here (pictured middle) surrounded by her friends Jessica and Lee Ann. I took a great deal of photos on this day and even went in the water with my camera in hand to take a couple of shots as seen here. The water was ankle deep in this pool but I have other photos where I'm pretty much submerged and tried my best not to drop my camera under water. Anything to get the shot.

"Jessica, Melissa and Lee Ann" / 6x6 medium format Kodak 125PX / April 2011

Analog Love Letter: Instant Self Portrait

Self portraits can be taken many ways. Some methods are easier than others. Normally I would place myself in front of a mirror (as seen in other images), focus the lens and snap the photo. Other times, if I'm up for it, would be to set the camera on a tripod and compose my photo and set the camera on a timer if the camera has such a setting but most of my film cameras are manual so they don't have such an option. The other way, which is the more popular way these days for many people, is the "selfie" method in which you basically just turn the camera around and snap the photo. For film shooters, if your camera doesn't have an autofocus, this would be problematic and the other factor being that after you take the photo, you're not able to immediately see your result so you're hoping you got the shot.

I took this photo with a Fuji Instax 210 camera with the selfie method and one of the cool things about this camera, other than the fact that it shoots out instant film similar to Polaroids, is that it has a mirror adapter that you stick on the lens which faces you, allowing you to take a selfie. How cool is that? It's probably one of the reasons why the Instax format is so popular with young people who like the old instant film look and don't have the photoshop skills to reproduce it on a computer.

Which you shouldn't. Because that would just be ethically wrong.

"Selfie" / Fuji Instax 210 Wide instant film / Circa 2014

Analog Love Letter: Architectural Sails

Here's another one of my Lomography/Xpro phase photographs during the mid to late 2000s. Xpro, or cross processing, is developing your film in the wrong chemicals in order to yield odd color shifts you wouldn't get if you processed your roll of film in its normal chemicals. For me, xpro'ing film allows the viewer to see the world with a different set of eyes. Some film that's xpro'd will shift into the red as if you've got a pair of infrared eyes, and some will shift in the blue's and greens.

This particular film shifted towards the green and yellow with a bit of blue. The Walt Disney Concert Hall is an amazing piece of architecture. When it was first built, light that fell on the reflective surface was so bright that people who lived in the adjacent apartments and condominiums complained and a fix was made to the building to dampen the effect. 

Frank Gehry, its architect, is one of my favorites. He also designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

"Walt Disney Concert Hall curves" / 35mm cross processed Kodak E100VS / February 2010

Analog Love Letter: Good Vibe

The mid-2000s was the toy camera phase of my photographic career. The world of Lomography and toy cameras was new and exciting to me so for about a year, I was primarily shooting on a Holga or some other type of toy camera with a plastic lens.

What I love about toy cameras with plastic lenses is the soft and lo-fi look it provided. This photograph of my friend Alex is probably one of my favorite toy camera photos I've taken. It was shot inside the cafe area of the Arclight Cinema theater on Sunset Blvd. and what I love about this lomo photograph is that his posture, along with the Holga's plastic lens, gave this image an almost ethereal look and feel.

I was inspired by the lomo heavy scene of Flickr's early days and an exhibit inside the lab I was using at the time which was A&I in Hollywood. A&I is no longer in Hollywood and I'm not sure if they're still around. Last I heard they had a spot in Santa Monica and then Burbank. It's been a long time since I've heard news of them sadly. They developed the roll this photograph came from. I hope they're still around. Film processing labs are becoming scarce these days.

"Alex's aura" / 6x4.5 medium format cross processed Kodak Ektachrome 64T / January 2007