Another of Angie and Maya from our downtown adventure. For this one we used the trolley lines down the road as some foreground. Unfortunately that put me with my back to on-coming traffic while hunched down on my knees concentrating on my camera and the image in front of me. Luckily their dad, Rod, does an excellent job of getting traffic to stop. So if you were one of those drivers that evening, waiting on the odd scene taking place in the road in front of you, well..... I would say I am sorry (but not too sorry, it was too much fun).
Tags: Hasselblad square rail Portland out of focus shallow DoF film Kodak Tri-x in the road low PDX analog figures blurred Blue Moon Camera
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I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a husband and wife who wanted me to make portraits of their daughters. They had seen this image of mine and asked me to photograph their children in a similar fashion. At first I wondered if perhaps their children were unsightly, or horribly disfigured (they weren't at all) but of course I agreed. I mean, why not? Here was a couple that wanted something different and were asking me to do something I had never done. I mean, I have done plenty of these types of portraits, but mostly with myself and mostly fairly well scripted. So it was a unique challenge to take out two strangers for this. But then it turned out that the oldest daughter, Angie, wasn't a stranger at all, as I had met her through my adventures in Blue Moon Camera. So it is a small city sometimes.
Anyway, I have more to say, but am too tired to conjure up the words. I finally saw prints from these rolls though and the initial results have been too exciting to not get something posted. Will have a busy week scanning and editing, but I don't mind being driven by a project when the emotion steering it is excitement. It is a gift to so enjoy what you spend most of your free time doing.
And hey, if there is anyone else out there that wants blurry, out-of-focus images of themselves, now you know where to look.
Title inspired by this song by Sennen. If you are one of my post-rock loving friends, give them a listen.
Tags: Angie Maya square Hasselblad downtown sun flare film figure Portland PDX blurry shallow DoF Blue Moon Camera
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I'll post this one for Angie and her sister, Maya (if I have spelled that wrong, forgive me). I spent an hour downtown tonight with them, watching their blurred forms dance and cavort across the focus screen of my Hasselblad. It was easily the best hour of my day. And while the four rolls of film that came of that hour will have to wait until next week, this image appropriately summed up the fun of the evening. Thanks, you two.
Tags: dance form blurred square Hasselblad film Kodak Tri-X downtown Portland PDX figure line city motion Blue Moon Camera
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An excerpt from a book of forgotten fairytales.
So the three siblings, with their gathered belongings and assembled plans, struck out from the village, intent upon reaching the vast Ocean that marked their first destination. The route wove through hill and valley and green forests, such that they were never at a loss for beautiful scenery. But as they drew closer to the ocean that marked the edge of most of their maps, and the edge of the known lands, the forests thinned, and the greenery with it. To the three young ones, who had lived their entire lives under shade of leaf, the vast open stretches of largely treeless plain, and the rockier conditions they found were both exciting and unsettling.
Not too many evenings after having made their departure, the three camped on a small hillock of earth, with the view of a lake in a valley. The setting sun twinkled and sparkled on the waters of the lake far below as they set up camp and prepared for the night. That evening, sitting around the fire, the youngest sibling turned to his older brother and sister and asked what the difference between wishing and hoping to be. His elder brother, nearly asleep on his bedroll, responded, "Hurt. Hope hurts, in that fashion it is a brother to love, they are both born of the same place. Such that only stronger people dare choose to hope." But this answer only sent the youngest into deeper thought. Seeing this, his sister sat down next to him.
Once, long ago, she said, there was a great and wise king who ruled over the land. Despite his efforts, his kingdom never managed to know peace for long, as it was constantly undone by villainous men bent on greed and power. So the king hired the realm's most powerful wizard and together they caught the essence of hope and locked it into special, white stones. And the king bore the stones across the Ocean to a world far removed, where he kept all hope safe. For he realized that hope bore not just good motives but ill ones as well. The king reasoned that without hope, no good nor evil would be done. And he was right. The world ceased to move forward. People went about life on a daily basis, and gave no thought to how their lives could improve on the morrow. But this was not the king's goal, to send the world into stagnation. So he parceled hope back out into the lands in the form of these white stones, which he gave only to the select few bravest and most honorable souls that struggled to find him. Many traveled to see the king, wanting hope for their own, and most were turned away, some never survived to return at all. But slowly hope was disseminated back into the world via the careful hands of those pure of heart and intention.
Until one day, after several centuries, when an especially promising young man found himself before the King. The King knowing his time was likely to come to an end before he saw another soul so bright, entrusted the boy with knowledge he had never given any other, and also gave the young man all the remaining white stones holding hope and bid him to fare well and care for his precious cargo. Unknown to the young man though, he had been followed by evil men, who knew they could not force the stones from the strong and wily King and were instead content to steal from whoever the King gifted them too. So when he left the King's audience and started back across the Ocean he was immediately set upon by these villains. The boy quickly realized he could not escape and did something that none of the villains imagined; he took the sack of stones and threw them high into the air where they scattered and fell into the ocean. For the boy had been armed with wisdom from the King, which had coupled with his own bravery. The King had told the boy that the stones were for wishers, not hopers. Hope required a strength of faith and a braveness of the heart. For those who were both, hope could never be taken from them, for they always had it. Wishing, on the other hand, was for those who did not possess these traits, wishers needed to have something other than themselves to believe in. In essence, the young man realized the stones were a potent symbol but did not contain any real power at all. The villainous men though dived into the ocean after the stones, driven by their various greeds and lusts, and were swallowed up by the water, never to be seen again.
Over time, the Ocean rolled and rocked the stones the young man had thrown into it around the world and they washed up on beaches as the story of their origins was beginning to fade. Such that they still possessed some power but it was a faded one that was largely lost to the memory of man. Nonetheless, people still collected them, and held them close, wishing for a trace of the power they had once held. But others knew better, they knew that they carried their hope within themselves always, and stepped over the stones, leaving them on the beaches where they surfaced for they had no need of symbols to believe in, already believing in themselves.
And that, the sister finished, was the difference between a wish and a hope. And with that she pecked her brother good night on his forehead and turned over in her blankets too, her back to the dying embers of their fire, leaving the youngest to sit and stare into the night. But he did not sit for long. The fire burned lower, the chill of the night crept in beyond the dimly lit edges of their campsite, and he too eventually laid down to sleep, knowing that the great Ocean awaited them on the morrow or the day after. Wondering if he would see any of the lost white stones washed up on the beach and remembering the story about wishing and hoping.
Tags: hasselblad 500C film grain grainy fairy tale fable silhouette beach Second Beach coast Washington landscape self portrait square toned contemplative Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
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He has been busy. But then again, so have I.
This photo was supposed to be of me, a self-portrait. But Erik made such a convincing model it became about him instead. I cannot say that I am complaining at all.
Tags: Hasselblad 500C downtown night urban city blur figure portrait thespeak film Kodak Tri-X shallow Portland PDX Oregon Zeb Andrews photography building Blue Moon Camera
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