Sean has a passion for recording things. He records things about as frequently as I take photos of things. He will record everything from the toilet flushing, to the back gate creaking, to the door beeping when a customers walks in, to the store dog, Daisy, scratching herself. He is quite fond though of recording things people say. Usually he'll just hear something and ask them to repeat it once he has turned his recorder on, but he has been known to leave it on and stuck in his shirt pocket too.
Then he takes all these recordings and blends them together to make montages several minutes in length.
Anyway, I took the same morning during coffee and cigarettes as the previous shot, though this was taken the frame before. Neither were staged nor posed, this is just how Saturday mornings often look. I nabbed this shot of Sean while trying to finish a roll, turned around and saw the shot of Jake and grabbed that one about sixty seconds later.
Quite a pair, these two.
Tags: Sean McFadden square portrait co-worker Blue Moon Camera Hasselblad 500C Kodak tri-x Saturday morning film Zeb Andrews photography Portland b&w
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My thought process was pretty simple tonight regarding what I was going to post. It wasn't going to be black and white, it wasn't going to be black and white, it wasn't going to be black and white.
I repeated that over and over scrolling through my folders of photos. I really wanted to post something with color.
This is the result. Despite my best intentions, sometimes I am just in the mood for specific photos. This one did it for me tonight.
We had a good game of whiskey basketball this evening. There were only three of us: me, Sean and Faulkner so the game was pretty fast paced and spirited. We couldn't decide whether we wanted to play for Savvy J's or Tri-Mex (broken up into syllables not letters in this case). Both have mildly interesting stories that I am not going to bother with typing out tonight.
Faulkner won the shoot around, and we had enough daylight left we played our version of Around the World, which is not actually around anything, but rather straight down a wall. There is a wall in our back lot upon which we have chalked in each active staff member's name, in order from date of hire. It so happens that the newest member is closest to the hoop, about 15 feet away and the longest tenured, our boss Jake of course, is the furthest at about 35 feet or so. So we take turns, one shot a piece trying to make a shot from each staff member's name. I won that one. Then we still had daylight left so we played a little Harlem Globetrotters meets hot potato. That got the heart pumping, but it was a blast. Faulkner managed to hit is XA with a rebound, but the camera was fine.
Good times. Good times.
Tags: whiskey basketball work co-workers people portrait square film Hasselblad 500C Kodak Tri-X Portland PDX St. Johns sports basketball Blue Moon Camera after hours Sean Daniel
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I know, this is twisted, disturbing and slightly cliche. But nonetheless, a good willing model can be a hard thing to find sometimes, and having someone stand still long enough for a pinhole portrait or three is not something to be taken for granted. I am still getting used to this omniscope thing. I think it has definite potential, but like a fisheye lens, perhaps in a very specialized sense.
The trickiest thing about is, depending on how the camera is oriented, you can get vastly different looks. For example, neither Sean nor my tripod moved for any of these photos. The upper left photo was taken with the camera in its "normal" position, which requires it be tilted forward, causing diverging verticals. The lower left image is the camera upside down, meaning it has to be tilted back, causing converging verticals. The shot on the right is the camera on its side shoot vertically. I should have flipped the camera once more and shot one more vertical, as with the horizontals, depending on which side of the camera is up, you can control which way the distortion bends.
Anyway, thought these were interesting and mildly amusing.
Thank you Sean. My personal favorite is still the Oompa-Loompa shot of you in the upper left.
Tags: Omniscope pinhole anamorphic Nautilus Omniscope Built by Don Pyle portrait distorted film don't try this at home or for senior portraits Blue Moon Camera and Machine Sean McFadden Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
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I know my Pentax 6x7 is a beefy camera and all, and if it came to fisticuffs, I am pretty sure it would beat the tar out of most other cameras these days. But on this day I think it met its match. This is Sean, yes I actually work with him, and yes he is wearing a gas mask (he carries one with him most places). He is wielding a Fairchild 4x5 aerial camera. It is meant to be operated from airplanes and from the feel of it, could survive being dropped out of one too (the camera that is, not Sean). It shoots what I am guessing was a 4x5 roll film. That's right, as if a single sheet wasn't enough they actually and apparently made this stuff in a roll-film format. Unfortunately you cannot seem to get it anymore, so I am planning on loading this camera with a roll of 5 inch paper instead. Now I just need to find an airplane...
Easily the coolest part of this camera is the cocking/winding mechanism. Think of a lever-action shotgun and you are getting close...
Tags: Portland portraits people Fallout gas mask aerial cameras PDX Pentax 6x7 co-workers bombs away Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
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Ok, no more landscapes til after this weekend. I need a break! ;-)
So I went out to the St. Johns Bridge tonight with another Flickr photographer, Larissa84*, and had a fun time. How is it not possible at that bridge. The best part - well ok not the best part, but a good part - was not getting shot by the police officer with the rifle, but you will have to pop over to my facebook stream to hear more about that.
Getting back to the bridge though, it was a lovely evening to walk across and around underneath it. I was going to post an older image I have of the bridge, because I have more than a few, but then figured I would give Larissa first dibs on bridge posting. There you go Larissa, the pressure is on to post that star trail shot now. ;-)
Anyhoo, I settled on this shot, because the evening at the bridge and this portrait of Sean both have something in common believe it or not. Sometimes it is too easy to take photography too seriously. One of the best things I think every photographer can do now and then is to be flippant, irreverent, silly or whatever else lies at the opposite of serious. In other words, go have fun with the camera. You take better photos when you do, I think. Or at least funnier ones.
This was one shot in a series of three. Sean had an idea, the idea then had an idea, and things ran amok before we knew it. Thankfully I had a camera and a roll of tri-X.
Tags: co-worker Sean portrait hair Blue Moon Camera at work tri-x film grainy 35mm Nikon FM2 silly candid Portland PDX Zeb Andrews photography
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