Oh the joys of maintaining a website.

After wrestling with getting all the kinks worked out, I was able to get my gallery updated. This will be a continuing process, as I’m trying to get my fine art and personal work more established.

Don’t take that as my moving away from portraits. I’m still available for portraits! Portraits!

Like a lot of photographers, I admire the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Extending from that, I love the work of many photojournalists both past and present.

However, the modern “street photography as fine art” movement never really captured my attention. I think because I see so much of the same thing in street photography. It became so saturated with “ironic juxtapositions” and “hey, check out what this guy is doing” that, for me, it no longer qualified as interesting art. It became voyeuristic. It became an excuse to catch people for the sake of catching them. It became long lenses and “will people notice me with this camera?”

I fell in love with street photography again when I stopped looking for pictures and just started looking.

The first few times I started walking around with my camera not hidden in my bag, I didn’t take many pictures. One, I was too timid. Two, I needed to see without the lens before I could shoot through it. I needed to see the world, not pictures.

Soon, I began to see. Sometimes the image is obvious…right in front of my face. Other times, I have to be patient and wait for it to come to me.

With my art, I want to record the world the way I see it. In order to do that…I have to look at it through my own eyes.

I’ve been looking for a film camera for a while now. Two things that were keeping me from jumping into film again were solved with the purchase of this camera.

The first problem was, even though film cameras are cheap now days, I was still having issues with spending money on a camera if I wasn’t sure how often I would really use it. I like film, but I’m a child of the digital age. Until I really figure out what I want to use film for, it’s still just fun for me.

Second, I needed something that if the worst possible thing could happen happened, I would only be out a secondary film camera that was more easily replaced than my digital one.

$35 bucks. A guy on Craigslist wasn’t using it anymore. By “it” I mean this camera, three lenses, two flashes and a “speedwinder” (basically a motor drive to automatically wind the film). At that price, I figured I would at least have three decent lenses. And, since they are K-Mount lenses, I have a lot of options.

Say this camera dies, I have three good lenses that I can mount on a Pentax film body should I ever buy one (even a digital one). Or, say I find an old Pentax lens for a good price. It will work on this camera. Finally, a simple adapter can mount any of these lenses to my Canon. Finally part 2, another simple adapter can mount the Pentax lens I already have to this camera.

One of the flashes (which I used to take these photos) solves the problem of my needing a second flash, but not wanting to spend a lot. This will tide me over until I can save up for a new one.

$35 for a complete camera system…I’d be crazy not to buy it.

I attended, along with Tyson and Sara Habein of SPOKE(a)N(e) Magazine. Tyson, Sara and I then took a walk around downtown to check out the various other art showings going on.

I’m always excited to see art up close and personal. Tonight I was especially excited because of some of the exquisite work I saw. I’m not very good with names, which doesn’t help because I’ve already forgotten most of the artists names I saw. Bummer.

Anyway. It was a lot of fun. I hope to see some more RiverSpeak events come up so I can meet some other local artists.

Here are some shots I took tonight as well.

Big thanks to The Decal Factory for getting these done.

It means Out of Focus, and it’s generally meant to be a bad thing. This came about from me trying to take a picture of some flowers in a vase and just not getting anywhere. I was getting really frustrated with it, so I just pointed my camera at it and clicked the shutter.

I was pleased with the results, OOF and all, so I decided to try and do it deliberately with some long exposure panning and camera jiggling. The rest of the photos didn’t come out the same, though I thought this had a nice look to it…

It’s funny how your eyes sometimes get in the way of what you can really see.

I would love a macro lens. However, until I get one, I have to improvise.

There is a technique called “reverse lens”. You hold a lens, backwards, in front of the lens on your camera. When it works, it works well.