Photography is all about self discoveries I believe. It can be a magical mirror reflecting back upon the photographers stage in life at the time. Much as life is, photography is fluid and ever changing. In the past, I approached photography in two different ways. I had serious work, and I had snapshots documenting family events. My “serious work” was purely about making and image that stood on its own, as an abstract in a sense. While family times were relegated to a point and shoot or phone camera.  After finding myself in a stagnant phase, I came across the work of Josh White, a photographer living in South Korea, whose work greatly moved me and got me thinking about my own approach to photography. For Josh White, photography is an extremely personal endeavor.

For me, the Oaxaca trip came at the perfect time. It came at a pause in my photographic work, it was a return trip after 30 years to a beautiful city we loved, and I was ready for a change.

This image was taken of my daughter under the veranda of the small villa we were staying at in Northern Oaxaca during an afternoon thunderstorm. We were all catching up with various parts of our lives. This was a rather strong storm coming through and lasted all afternoon and into the night. Me being restless and camera in hand, I noticed her reflection and took this image. I’m glad I did. It’s a bit different for me, a bit surreal, a bit soft, but it captures the moment that I might have missed.

As mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I made a return trip to Oaxaca, Mexico to explore some of the places we had visited before. It was interesting being a photographer visiting the same place 30 years apart and witnessing what has changed and what remained relatively unchanged.

I think kids are a constant, I think their behavior hasn’t really changed over the years or is that much different from one culture to another. I just think what is expected of them is different. I was reminded in Oaxaca of how much children are coddled in other cultures. It was fun seeing the kids helping family out at the markets, or being enterprising selling their artwork along the street side. Don’t get me wrong, kids are adored in Mexico, but they are expected to contribute to the family in the ways they can.

And even though the kids are expected to help the family out, they are also allowed to simply be kids. I love the since of community Oaxaca has. You can tell the community adores their children and they are being looked after by the extended family that is the community.

 

 

As mentioned in a previous blog post, my wife and I went to Oaxaca, Mexico nearly 30 years ago and really enjoyed it. It was a beautiful city, with great architecture, friendly people, while feeling like you were stepping back in time. So we planned to go back for a vacation this year to celebrate our 30th anniversary.  Before our return trip, I wondered what would change, would it have the same appeal that it had for me 30 years ago. It would be silly to assume things would go unchanged, but how would time affect this beautiful city I fell in love with so long ago.

Well it has changed, Oaxaca has gotten a lot bigger, and tourism has become a driving force in their economy. The people are just as warm and gracious as before. Technology is present, but not like you see everywhere else. I don’t recall seeing anyone younger than 20 with a cell phone. I was encouraged to see that the markets are still a family affair with kids of any age still expected to help out in anyway they can. At the various markets, vehicles have replaced donkeys, traditional clothing have been replaced with      t-shirts and jeans some of the goods have been replaced with trinkets. But at the core of it all, I still saw the people, the people that make a community, the people that make a family, the people just trying to get by with what they have.

But as much as this trip was about photographing a culture, it came at a time when I am reexamining my own work as a photographer and what photography means to me. Instead of dumping all the work of this trip into one blog, I think I will spread it out a bit and discuss certain elements that affect me and possibly point in a direction I am moving with my photographic work.

Back in 1989 after graduating from undergraduate school and before starting graduate school, my wife and I planned a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico to document the various markets in and around the city. My mentor and close friend gave me a challenge of taking only one camera and one lens and the camera had to be 35mm since I was devoted to the large format camera at the time.  My choice was to take my Nikon F2 mated to a 28mm. I remember having a great time, but unfortunately I never really did anything with the work, because I immediately started graduate school, where I was teaching and developing a large format class curriculum.

Now nearly 30 years later, My wife and I are planning a trip back to Oaxaca and I was curious about the work I had captured way back when. So, I dug up the negatives, had them scanned and downloaded them into LightRoom. I immediately regretted not doing more with the work earlier, but enjoyed reliving the time we had. Being older, and having a bit more discretionary income I had 30 years ago, I have several cameras and several lens at my disposal to take with me on this new wonderful journey. So what do I take? Will, it has to be “One Camera, One Lens”! The camera is a no brainer, I’m taking my Fujifilm X Pro2. The lens is a toss up between the Fuji 18mm f2 and the fuji 23mm f2. The 18mm gives a 28mm equivalent FOV for full frame 35mm camera like the Nikon f2 while the 23mm gives a 35mm FOV. But here is my issue, neither lens offers depth of field markings on the lens, and both offer a rather disappointing experience when used as a manual focus lens.

So what I’m looking for is to have a similar shooting experience I had 30 years ago but with a modern digital camera. So what I came up with is mating the Fuji X Pro2 with a M mount Voigtlander 21mm f4 Color Skopar. This arrangement gives me a tiny lens with a 30mm FOV 35mm equivalent, depth of field markings on the lens, and a focus rotation from 1.5 feet to infinity that is significantly less than half a rotation of the lens barrel. So let me clarify, this is a manual focus lens only and I love it! I have had a chance to work with it a bit shooting a local festival and was not disappointed! So I have included some work from our trip to Oaxaca in 1989 above and our local UFO festival photographed in 2018 below.

2017 was a very productive year for me as a photographer. After coming off a long sabbatical from photographing, I was rejuvenated and inspired, eager to photograph as often as I could.  Impatient and not wanting to wait for a particular project to develop, I thought about one of my earliest influences in photography, Aaron Siskind. Aaron Siskind was a photographer who was closely involved with the abstract expressionist movement while running in the same circles as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and De Kooning.

I can still remember the first time I saw one of Aaron Siskind’s prints. Here I was looking at a photograph for the first time as not being representational of the subject matter but rather as an abstract itself. I learned a great deal about composition from his work and how to address every part of the print, about visual weight and tension, how one element relates to another. My mind was blown and the course of my life was set from that moment forward. I wound up getting a degree in Photography with a Minor in Art History while going on to get my Masters in Fine Arts in Photography from Indiana University.

So now days when I’m between projects and needing to photograph, I remember one of my first photographic influences, and look for the abstract. I think I am the most comfortable shooting this way. Its a Zen thing I guess, just me and my camera. For me, success is when the image can stand on its own and perhaps invoke more questions than it answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Could Fujifilms X100T be a gateway drug to photography? For me it was! Here is my story.

First let me state that I was a reluctant convert to digital photography. I loved everything about film and nothing about the digital medium. After giving up film in 2006, I desperately tried to make the switch to digital. But for me, there was too much of a disconnect between me and the process of digital photographing. I accepted the fact that I was an analog guy living in a digital world and walked away from photography.

Then, over the holidays in 2016, my wife encouraged me to get back into photography. She had seen that I was missing using a camera and we missed our photographic outings. So the search was on to find that something special that I was missing.

Long story short, I found the Fujifilm X100T, a retro styled camera with a dial based interface, and a hybrid viewfinder reminiscent of Leica rangefinder cameras. When you pick up the Fuji X100T, it feels solid with its all metal construction.  And I love the fact that it has a marked aperture ring and shutter speed dial. Somehow Fujifilm gets it! Some photographers need cameras to operate the way cameras use to.

The Fuji X100T is a small robust camera full of features. It is just at home shooting fully manual or as a point and shoot. The viewfinder can be used as an optical viewfinder that has an incredibly accurate parallax correction! I absolutely love using this feature and I will go into this in more detail in a later post. But if an optical viewfinder is not your thing, just flip a switch and you have a wonderful bright electronic viewfinder. The aperture ring, shutter speed and exposure correction dials each provide a nice positive click with just the right amount of tension when adjusting the exposure. In many ways, the Fuji X100T reminded me of my favorite 35 mm film camera, the Nikon F2, but the X100T is smaller, lighter, and digital. But I use them the same way.

So, is the Fujifilm X100T a gateway drug. If photography can be considered a drug, then it most definitely is! It sucked me in, all I wanted to do is find something to photograph and think, what if, what if. The Fuji X100T led to the purchase of a Fuji X Pro1, then the Fuji XT1, then the Fuji X Pro2, with a smattering of lenses sprinkled in there. Somewhere in there I started an Instagram account. Me, an analog guy starting an Instagram account!  The Fujifilm X100T got me hooked, it got me addicted once again to photography!

 

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