Scenes from a Wedding

I worked recently as the second cameraman for a wedding video.  (Yes, I will do most anything for money.)   However, I couldn't resist shooting some stills of passing scenes.

I often say that I'm not a wedding photographer.  I've only shot two over the years, one as a favor for a friend.  I found the disc of pictures for her the other day, while looking for something else, and while I thought some of the images were a bit overprocessed, I was pretty happy with the product.  Perhaps I should post a few as an example, as I shot it with Leicas and black-and-white film in a photojournalistic style.

This time, again, I used the camera I had rather than the one I would choose.  Though I carried my Leica M3 with me to the job, keeping it slung around the neck while working a video camera can be tricky at best, so I left it with the other equipment where we staged and used the iPhone.  Then I processed the pictures via PS Express on the phone, generally removing the color, working a little with brightness and contrast, and adding a border.

There is usually some serious dead times around weddings (although if you're the bride or groom, you'll probably not notice), so I had the chance to snap these without hindering my real duties.

However, that means there aren't really any pictures of central events.  Also, it occurred to me that -- especially for the purposes of this blog -- the subjects might not enjoy finding themselves suddenly cast out on the internet, so I've chosen the images of the quiet moments away from the people.

Flatline ...

The patient's condition hasn't changed: He's still dead.

Well, he's still making pictures, at least, but like Vivian Maier I seem to be actively seeking obscurity.

In the meantime, here's a bone ... although one, once again, from the digital Nikon...

Perhaps the title should be: "After The Food Segment?"

This Is Not a Leica.

It is said that "The best camera is the one you have with you."  A quick (and relatively lazy) internet search doesn't provide an easy answer as to who actually said it, although I did find one who credited Chase Jarvis.  At any rate, in this post I want to address the thought, because besides my Leica, I do carry a lot of other cameras.

However, here's the thing: I always have my Leica with me, ever since I missed that picture one Christmas of the decorations being set up in Lexington's little version of Central Park, Hopkins Green.  Even today when I ran an errand, interrupting my writing here, I came across an image of people on a local sidewalk casually playing old time fiddle music.  Only in Lexington.  I had the chance to shoot just one frame with my M3, but that was more than if I hadn't brought it.  And I would have been really frustrated about that.

Sadly, nowadays my finances intrude on this photography.  Film lies undeveloped ... for two years.  I just can't afford to get it processed.  So I often double shoot with the camera I have with me: my iPhone. 

These are all pictures I made while my daughters rehearsed for their dance recital this past weekend.  As any dance parent knows, weeks and months of careful practice go into these events, and those weeks and months require patient attendance.  Needless to say, when I saw an image in those empty moments, I wanted to capture it.  The phone was the easiest way.

I used the standard photo function that comes with the Apple iPhone, then ran it through the free version of PS Express, changing it to Black and White, perhaps tweaking the brightness and contrast, and adding the border.  That's it.

By the time we moved into the theatre, I started shooting color.  I'm not sure why.  However, this only changed my process in that, rather than using the Black and White conversion function in PS, I shifted in the other direction, juicing up the saturation.

The exercise is interesting, in its way, much like my exercise of using only one Leica with whatever lens I've chosen to put on it for the day (or, for that matter, usually for an entire roll of film).  I'm pleased that, when I've posted these on Facebook, they've gotten positive responses, including "Likes" from my photographer friends and even on (for the picture immediately above) from the Tamarkin Camera Facebook page.

In my fantasies, they are impressed enough by my work here to lend me one of the new digital M (240)s.  The stuff I could do with that video function!

 

Perhaps I should keep my dreams realistic: like getting enough money to get that film processed ...

So What Have You Done for Me Lately?

It's been a rough year financially, but I do what I can.  Unfortunately, what I can't do is get film processed ... or for that matter, buy more film.  Slowly, I've been working my way through the refrigerator (Why do I think there should be a D in that word?), using up old film I had stocked up on for various unfinished, undone or (rarely) overstocked projects.  I'm hoping that 20-year-old color neg stuff I was issued when a wire photog still processes.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, I still carry a Leica with me every day as I do TV work in Roanoke, Virginia, and I still shoot pictures when I see them.  However, until I find the cash to get the film processed, you won't see them.

So what the heck are these, you might be asking?  Look at them as promises of things to come.  On my other blog, the writing one, Cat Typing, I talked about getting an email from a photo agency asking, "What are you working on?"  You can pop over there via the link to find out my full answer, but the short version is: Not nearly enough.

However, I have messed about with a concept on the way in to the day (sort of) job in the early morning hours, using digital Nikon equipment.  So technically, for these pics, I'm not the Guy with the Leica, but just another guy with a Nikon.

Let's hope that I'll be able -- to use a term that amused a coworker no end once -- to make a photo dump from the Leicas here soon ...

More to Come ...

It's been a while, and it may be a while longer.

I've been shooting, I'm still seen with a Leica as I work ... and as I don't work.  I try not to go out without one, even though I find myself using an iPhone for snapshots more and more. 

The thing is, the expense of buying and processing film has become too great in a life where I borrow money for gas in the final days before I receive my paycheck.  But I still shoot, slowly working through the stockpile of film that had accumulated through the years.  I try not to look at the dates on the boxes and canisters.

Someday, I hope to get the growing pile of film processed.  Boy, then you'll see something. 

I hope.

My New Gig

This is not the first time I've lamented not blogging enough, either here or at Cat Typing, but this time I have an explanation. I spent February focused on changing jobs and helping to put together a brand new TV show in Roanoke, the Fox 21/27 Morning News.



There were two weeks of planning, interrupted by Washington and Lee's Mock Convention (more on that to come), a week of pulling together practice sessions, then a week of full runthroughs.

We went on the air March 12, and I've been making pictures throughout, but more often with digital Nikon gear because we want to upload pictures to Facebook as quickly as possible. But as this plog (phlog?) is a memorial to my fascination with Leica and film, here are a couple done the good, proper, old way.

Catching Up ... from January

The thing with shooting film is that it takes a while to get it processed, edited, run through Photoshop and then uploaded. As I finish this, which has awaited my uploading it as I took a new day job, five more rolls of film await the Photoshop treatment.

Why Photoshop? The simple answer is that it's quicker and requires less space than chemically printing and then scanning the prints. The more complicated answer is that almost no picture is ready for viewing straight out of the camera. Ansel Adams, it is said, thought of the negative as sheet music, and printing as the performance. I run all my pictures through a process, ensuring the color is correct, the contrast is what I want. There's the electronic equivalent of burning and dodging, and removing dust spots.

I won't do anything -- at least I don't like to do anything -- that I couldn't have done in a darkroom, and wouldn't have done as a matter of course as a photojournalist. Ironically, some of those techniques -- techniques I consider photojournalistic -- have come under controversy lately, like in this piece about contest winners: http://blog.photoshelter.com/2012/03/should-photo-contests-require-original-image-files/. Personally, my apporoach is like Potter Stewart's to pornography: I'll know I've passed the limit when I see it.

At any rate, the picture above needed very little processing. We were in Lexington Antiques, selling some things to the store's owner, when I noticed the sunlight spilling in through the front window. What photographer could resist that light and texture?

God, with his infinitely ironic sense of humor, gave us the birthdays of Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr., all within days of each other in mid-January. In Lexington, where both Jackson and Lee are buried, the Confederate generals' birthdays have been celebrated in past years with greater and larger amounts of pomp and ceremony, depending on the amount of government involvment and history enthusiasts ... uh, enthusiasm.

This past year, however, there was more attention as the local Sons of Confederate Veterans engaged in their second year of lobbying to hang Confederate flags from lightposts throughout the weekend ... including the Monday holiday for King. The city responded with an ordinance limiting flags on city property to the US and Virginia state flags. The SCV promptly sued.

When no progress had been made by the day in question, SCV members responded by calling on supporters to stand by the lightposts, holding their flags.

Each lightpost was conveniently labeled with a tag, so the various SCV chapters could find their place.

Bob and I did a live shot at the Roanoke Civic Center for the annual Guns & Hoses Hockey Game, a fundraiser for the Muscual Ystrophy Association. Here, a policeman texts the Roanoke Police Chief to find out when he'll arrive to be interviewed.

The sign amused me.

Downtown Lynchburg in the predawn darkness. We were at Amazement Center, which is just out of frame to the right.

I convinced Bob, towards the end of January and about a week before we both left channel 7, that we had to do something on Djangoary and Gypsy swing music. A local band was performing that weekend; I had grand visions of an artful piece. It all ended with a simple taped interview, some B-Roll of the band practicing ... and us locked out of the venue in the foggy predawn darkness.

It's ironic, I think, that I shot these pictures in that predawn, reminiscent, if I dare make the comparison, of the work of early street photographers in Paris in the time when Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli were creating that very form of jazz.