Tag: fuji superia 400

memorytapes:eight

i hope you all are continuing to stay safe. a lot of people are going full tilt back to their version of normalcy. i’ve continued to keep my social interaction very small, and i hope you all are as well. without a doubt, this has made me realize that i am extremely blessed to be able to work at home – as much as it sometimes can get to my mental health – my income hasn’t stopped, and i can work in a safe environment. for that, i am extremely thankful – almost thankful to the point of feeling guilty. i’ve been finding joy in those moments that i give myself to go out, be in my own head, and create images. if i have a day off, or work gets done early – i’ve been just picking a spot on google maps, and driving there with a camera. this playlist is something i put together that sort of captures what i’ve been listening to in those moments.

thursday

i walked in my door at 9:45pm. thursday’s are the long days, and the bittersweet ones. spending time with avery is always one of the highlights of my week, but dropping her back off with mom is always hard on me. when i got home tonight, i took 3 aleve’s with a beer and i started thinking about how funny life is. there’s a sun kil moon line from sunshine in chicago that goes, “my back, it fucking hurts, but otherwise i’m fine”, and lately that’s how i’ve been feeling. life has been good to me, i’d even go as far as saying it’s been great. i’m progressing in my career and becoming more and more of a nerd as the days go by. focusing on being a better dad and appreciating my time with avery to the fullest, while also not beating up myself for the things i can’t change. and emotionally, without throwing shade, i realized that i’m happier this way. without the strain of an unhealthy (sorry) relationship that i’m not committed to because thing’s just weren’t right. i don’t want to have to force myself to just believe that things are right. anyways, these four images were taken on one of those thursdays. capture with a fuji klasse w with fuji superia 400. i printed these on 8.5×11 archival paper and framed them on glass-covered clipboards as a donation for cherry bomb media’s stimulating the senses art show. which was a fundraiser for impact academy, a great school in tampa that provides amazing services for children and teenagers who are on the spectrum.

there’s helicopters over my head, every night when i go to bed.

and i always tell myself that i should go to sleep (but i never do). it feels like this is the only time i have to sit here, listen to music, and start typing out some words about how i’m feeling. last week i was sitting in a camper van in fucking iceland, and while gabe drove us down the north coast he put this record on. i kept singing this line back to myself in my head, “do you feel ashamed when you hear my name?”

i’m back home now, and i won’t lie. it is just now starting to feel like my home. there was shit packed into drawers and closets that i couldn’t find the courage to deal with until now. it reminded me not of a failed relationship, but of something that felt more like resentment. the carelessness and disregard for all of the lives that had came and went before. going through everything with my mom (thank you for your help, i love you), i couldn’t bring myself to throw away the memories of a family i’m no longer even a part of. the memories that sat in a musty laundry room and outside in a shed, for the last four years. maybe left for me to find and then feel bad for throwing away. but me being me, a me that i’m happy to be. i’ll pack it neatly, and return it. maybe it’ll mean more this time around.

photographs were taken on a fuji klasse w on a mix of kodak portra 160 and fuji superia 400.

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i felt more purpose in spending my mental capacity on the thoughts of being a better father, a better friend, even a better reader. rather than focusing on social media and partaking in the endless scrolling. i would be lying if i said i didn’t get derailed by the attention my photography received, by the people i met all around the world through our similar interests. i started to learn how to be relevant on the internet. it made me feel good, temporarily. making sure i posted every other day to stay in the algorithm, using the right hash tags, posting at the peak hours, all that shit. for what? to have my photographs be seen for a fraction of a second by people that i would never meet or even have any real interaction with? all the gratification i received at the end of the day, through instagram, meant nothing to me. it was sort of a false inspiration to keep doing what i was doing but not without also making me feel distracted and starting to take photographs of what i knew other people would want to see. i realized that sharing my photos in person, even though i left no trace of how to contact me, or who i was, felt better. knowing that the people who took the time to look, knew the street names, the architecture, the laundromats and their neon lights, the feel of our city. a place that we all dwell together. thats the gratification i want. that is what i want to take photographs of. i want to make connections and have conversations with the people that connect with me on a deeper level. it’s so easy and cheap to create things for the sake of attracting a “following”. i cannot imagine being one of those people who saw that as a viable source of income, or could feel comfortable selling out for ad revenue or click through revenue. now there’s ads for these fucking people to teach you how to make money off making dumbass youtube videos. i cannot believe this is even real.

we are not here for long, if the whatever medium you use, whatever you’re trying to create is for anything other than representing of the ups and downs of your life to the people in your real life, you’re selling yourself short.

photographs were taken with a bessa r3m + zeiss 35/2 on fuji superia 400/cinestill 50d

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i know i’m just a memory

all of these were shot on a contax g1 / carl zeiss 45mm planar over the course of (i hate to say it) about five months. processed at home. negatives scanned with a nikon coolscan v ed. for whatever reason, the g1 kit didn’t feel right for me when i first started using it, so i put it away for awhile. these photos are so sharp for 35mm – and i see the hype around the lens now: it’s so sharp and versatile. typically a 45mm lens would be too ‘close’ for me, but it’s helped me work on composing shots a little differently. you’ve got to work a little harder to fit what you want in the frame, but i think i’m okay with that.

i’m still trying to find the direction i want to take this. it’s turning out harder than i expected to do anything but just post photos. i’m so jaded by seeing people try so hard, to ‘create content’. even in the film community, they obsess over instagram. i never wanted to put all this time and effort into photos that would be looked at for a quarter of a second, double tapped, and then never looked at again. fuck that, that isn’t me. i want to live my life and take photos of the people/places/things that make it worth remembering. i want to take better photos. i want to try new development methods, learn how to shoot long exposures without blowing the lights out so fucking bright, publish my photography in print on the walls of my favorite places, make a photo-book. i just want to keep learning. so for now, all that makes sense is to keep taking pictures.

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