Shima on Elite Chrome 100
29 July 2011, early evening
Shima on Kodachrome
2 December 2010, early evening
My friend Jonah was giving away rolls of Kodachrome. His only condition to claim a roll was was that you had to actually use the stuff before Dwayne’s — the last place in the world that still develops the stuff — stopped processing the film. I wanted to shoot with the film at least once in my life and so I told him to save a roll for me. The film I was given was Kodachrome 64, from 1992. That makes it 18 years old. I shot all 36 frames on my birthday, mostly taking portraits of my friends hanging out in my parents backyard. Some photos are better than others. This photo I quite like.
Bangalore (and Mysore) — Jan 29th - Jan 31st
13 April 2010, early morning
The rest of our time in Bangalore was spent loitering around Gandhi Bazaar, for the most part. It was pretty relaxing. We got quite comfortable with the area. My pictures of Bangalore on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) We also travelled to Mysore for a quick day trip. In hindsight we probably should have spent a bit more time in Mysore. There was so much to see in that area. My pictures of Mysore on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) I took these notes to myself on my iPhone, hence the strange change in tense, poor grammar, and what have you.
Puttaparthi — Jan 28th
27 March 2010, terribly early in the morning
We travelled off to Puttaparthi from Bangalore for the day. Puttaparthi would have been just another small rural town in India if not for the fact it was home to the religious leader Sai Baba and his ashram. My pictures of Puttaparthi on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) I took these notes to myself on my iPhone, hence the strange change in tense, poor grammar, and what have you.
Bangalore — Jan 25th - 27th
14 March 2010, evening time
We left Cochin early in the morning on the 25th. I was still incredibly sick at this point. I didn’t think i’d make it to the airport. Bangalore more or less cured me. The first three days there were spent loitering around and attending a wedding. My pictures of Bangalore on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ)
Read the rest of this post. (641 words)
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Kerela — January 21st - 24th
2 March 2010, early morning
After Chennai we travelled by plane to Cochin, in Kerela. I was very excited about coming to Kerela: it’s the communist state in India. Sadly, after a day and a half there I ended getting incredibly sick. I don’t think i’ve been more ill in my entire life. So, I spent most of my time in Kerela in bed. My pictures of Cochin on Flickr. (And IMG VQVZ)
Chennai — January 18th - 20th
22 February 2010, terribly early in the morning
I took short little notes on my iPhone while traveling around in India. Here are the first set of notes from my first three days in Chennai, and our flight to get there. There are more images from this part of the trip on Flickr. (Or on IMG VQVZ)
Read the rest of this post. (1202 words)
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The Hindustan Ambassador
20 February 2010, early evening
The Hindustan Ambassador is an awesome car. I was expecting to see more of them on the streets of India, but they weren’t as ubiquitous as they may have been a few years back. Our driver in Chennai was saying that they have fallen out of favour, and most people know bought the car he drove. (His car was made by Tata, and I can’t recall what it was called. It didn’t look nearly as cool as an Ambassador.) I think of all the cities we visited, Cochin in Kerela had the largest number of Ambassadors on the road. I’m not entirely sure why.
The Hindustan Ambassador on IMG VQVZ.
Auto-Rickshaws
16 February 2010, mid-morning
Auto-rickshaws are little three-wheeler taxis ubiquitous throughout most of Asia. They are all over the place in South India. They are one of the easiest ways to get around a city. The only problem with them is that the drivers can be a bit sketchy, and are likely to rip you off. Your best bet is to negotiate the price of your trip before going for a ride. (I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting ripped off a little bit in India. What is a few cents to you is a big deal to them.) Autos are fun to ride in. They are open air, they feel quick, and you get a real feel for the city as you zip through it in one.
Stray Dogs
12 February 2010, evening time
One constant throughout most of our trip in India were stray dogs. We would find them in every city we stayed in. More often than not we’d pass a dog passed out on the ground, probably because it was so damn hot out. Indians don’t seem to have any real soft spot for the animals. Honestly, there are far more pressing things to deal with in the country than dogs without owners, regardless of how lamentable they may look.
We Must Abuse the Broadband: Pre TXP.
12 January 2010, evening time
I took my original photoblog down sometime in November 2006. When I moved all my sites over to Dreamhost Movable Type, which was what I was using to run the site, stopped working. I can’t recall why. At the time, I wasn’t particularly enamored with Movable Type anyway; I figured I’d eventually move things to Textpattern. I did do this, but it took me a good while. The thing is, the site never really worked as well under TextPattern. While the site was on hiatus I put all the photos I had posted over the years on Flickr. There were 718 photos in total. Without titles and descriptions though, it was really just a big mess of images. My plan was to one day figure out how the Flickr API worked, figure out how to parse my Movable Type export file, and then fill in all this information. It took me 2 years or so, but i’m finally done.
I did this all using Ruby. I used FlickRaw to talk to Flickr and ruby-mtexport to parse my MT export file. Thankfully all the images on my site were named after the date they were posted, which made it easy to match up data in the export file to a photo on Flickr. I can’t recall the last time i’ve been so productive when programming. Ruby really is a great little language.
For the time being Flickr continues to be the place to go to see my photographs. I still want to turn IMG VQVZ into a proper photoblog or portfolio site. I just need to sort out how that would work.
Developing Film at Home: A Year in Review
7 January 2010, early morning
It’s been a little over a year since I started developing and scanning my own B&W film. In that time i’ve developed 49 rolls of film. Well, those are rolls that actually turned out. I’ve also destroyed 4 rolls of film due to using bad chemicals or other stupidness on my part. Developing film is a pretty satisfying process. For the most part, I think I’ve more or less sorted out how to do it properly. I’m probably not as careful as I should/could be, but my negatives seem to turn out fine nevertheless.
I’ve been using FilmDev.org to track how I develop my film. The site works well, and can be instructive in showing you how different films and developers work together. Because HP5+ is readily available on the cheap here in Toronto, that’s the B&W film I’ve used the most. I started off using Ilfosol-3 as my primary developer, but I think I prefer T-Max Developer from Kodak more. It seems more versatile, and the results seem a bit more punchy. I suppose it’s all a matter of taste.
Developing B&W film at ImageWorks costs $7 a roll, which works out to $343 to process everything I’ve done. (Holy shit, right?) Since I started developing at home I’ve used up one bottle of Ilfosol-3, one bottle of T-Max Developer, one bottle of Ilford Fix. That’s around $30 of chemicals that are now all gone. I’ve still got bottles of: T-Max Developer, Diafine, Ilford Fix, Ilford Stop and some Kodak Photoflo. That’s probably $50-$60 worth of chemicals that should last a good while. I could probably do another 50 or so rolls with what I have left. I had to pay about $40 to get all the other materials I need to develop film, but that’a fixed cost. So, the conclusion here is that it’s a lot cheaper doing this all yourself. I think the results are better as well.
The big problem with shooting film is getting the results onto your computer. I have an Epson V500 scanner, which has an attachment for scanning negatives. Having ImageWorks scan film for me would cost $6 a roll, which would have cost me $294. My scanner cost me $200. Again, this is a fixed cost. So, for the most part scanning at home is another win. Well, almost: scanning film is horrible. It’s a slow, boring, and more often than not frustrating process. I still can’t figure out — at all — how to scan my slide film correctly. Colour film is just as problematic. I manage well enough with B&W film, but it’s not without its own issues. No matter how hard I try I always end up with dust marks on my scans. All the scans I post online need to be spotted to get rid of all these marks. The whole process, scanning and touching up, is so damn slow. I’m not sure if there is really anything I can do to improve this situation.
You can see all the photographs I’ve developed myself in my Flickr set, BYOB&W. (If you have a fast connection, IMG VQVZ will probably present them in a nicer fashion, all the images on a single page.) I’m quite happy with all my recent shots. This roll in particular has some really nice pictures.
I’ve been developing film at home for a year now and save for some strange stains on my bathroom vanity I think the process has been a positive one.
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Blansdowne
21 December 2009, early evening
I took the code I wrote for IMG VQVZ to finish off my Blansdowne photo site. You can now browse my most recent photos of the area, and look at the sets of images I’ve made using those photos. The only thing left to do is take photographs that are interesting. This might be the hardest part of the project.
Ricoh GR1s
16 December 2009, early morning
Ever since getting my Ricoh GRD II I have been looking for a Ricoh GR1 for some time now. The GR1 series of cameras are what the Ricoh GR Digital line is based on. They share a very similar form factor, a fixed 28mm lens, and similar shooting modes. GR1 cameras are reasonably rare nowadays, and they don’t seem to show up for sale all to often (or end up costing far too much). So it was strange to find one selling in Toronto on the cheap.
I ended up getting a GR1s. It’s in reasonably good shape, save for the fact the LCD no longer works properly. It only displays when the camera is in snap mode or not. Thankfully, you can figure out what other modes you are in by keeping track of how many times you’ve hit the mode button. The in-focus indicator box thing in the viewfinder is also really dim. I’m not sure if these are common GR1 problems or not. I’ll need to look into that.
I’ve ran one roll through the camera thus far, and am happy with the results. I think I need to sell some cameras to balance things out.
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Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 6
10 December 2009, terribly early in the morning
Tonight is my last Figurative Photography class. Since talking about the class previously, I’ve had two more sessions photographing nude models. It’s strange how normal the whole exercise becomes. The second and third classes were more about setting up lights and figuring out what to shoot, rather than dealing with the fact there is a totally naked person in front of you. That’s not to say I got better pictures during the subsequent session.
During the first session I took pretty vanilla photos of nude people. Some of the photos turned out nicely, but a lot of them were pretty plain. So, I thought for the subsequent classes I’d just muck around with things and try to take different sorts of pictures. During the second class, in between taking regular portraits and what not, I had the models stand up and down while I took longer exposed shots. I wanted to end up with safe-for-work nudes, shots that hinted at the nudity and the human form.
During the third class, I brought my flash, and tried using that while photographing. I took some long exposure shots where I’d fire the flash and move, so you end up with an echoed image after the first. A series of shots using my flash and a flash light to illuminate the scene turned out nteresting. (And at times a bit messy.) Someone wanted to photograph the body with images projected onto it, and that actually turned out pretty interesting. The model looked like he had a full body tattoo. We ended that class doing multiple exposures using my flash and long shutter speeds in a black room. These photos have a sort of ethereal look to them.
You can see everything I’ve posted from my class on Flickr, though the set is probably NSFW. Tonights class is probably going to be spent looking at photos.
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Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 5
20 November 2009, terribly early in the morning
Since my last class taking nude photographs, I attended two photography classes where we spent time looking at photographs and reviewing each others work. One class focused on street and vernacular photography, the another on nudes and fashion photography.
The street photography section was interesting, but since this is a topic i’m interested in I was fairly familiar with a lot of the work. There were still some new names to learn and photos to see. Sally Mann, Tina Barney, and Larry Sultan all take family photographs, but with a fine-art twist. Tina Barney is interesting in that she uses a large format camera to take what look like snapshots — except there is no way they could be snapshots because of the nature of the camera. I had no idea Larry Clark, the director of Kids, was an accomplished photographer before he became a director. His photos are in the same vein as Nan Goldin. The class covered a whole slew of photographers, ending with a look at Trent Parke’s work.
The following class started with another look at the body. Of particular note was the work by Francesca Woodman. She committed suicide at a young age and came to prominence after her death. Her portraits and self portraits are pretty haunting: long exposures, strange settings, etc. On the fashion side of things, the work by Deborah Tuberville is really interesting; she barely showcases the clothing. It’s interesting watching the evolution of fashion photography: early photographs look and feel like photographs of real live people, while what we have today is so over processed and shiny everything looks so fake.
Last night’s class was once again spent taking photographs of nude models.
Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 4
3 November 2009, early evening
The 4th class in my Figurative Photography Class was the first class where we photographed the nude body. I found the experience quite surreal. Normally the people you interact with are clothed. Having a conversation with a naked person is odd. Asking them to pose this way or that way is all the more strange.
The models were regulars at the AGO. It seemed like most of my class members had taken other gallery courses at the AGO, so they had already worked with nude models before. (A few even knew the models in question.) We were supposed to have a male and female model to work with, but the sculpture class lost their model so our female mode left to help them out. The male model called up his friend, another AGO regular, and so a half hour or so into the class we had two male models to work with, Ab and Flip. Being regulars, they were quite comfortable getting naked and contorting their body. They were probably far more comfortable with the situation than the people in my class.
I found that I would get wrapped up in the way the models were posed and forget where the shadows are falling on their bodies. Another issue is that the schlong is a very awkward appendage: it’s hard to place in a photograph. More so, I think it’s hard to photograph a dude’s junk and not have it be vulgar. I’m not sure what I can say about nude photography. I found it hard to take a meaningful photo. There are a few shots I thought were standout, but for the most part I felt like I was just taking pictures of naked people. Hopefully the next time we take pictures i’ll have a better idea of what I want to photograph.
A few NSFW images from the night are up on Flickr.
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4 Billion Photos
29 October 2009, early morning
Flickr is often looked on disparagingly by the more established photographic community. This is understandable. There are 4 billion photographs on Flickr, and for the most part they are pretty shitty. If you browse the Explore feature of Flickr, you’ll see photo after photo of HDR scenes, flowers, stupid shots with lots of “bokeh”, and other stupidness. I wasn’t sure what you would call this aesthetic till I read the following: the main thing that makes Flickr unattractive is that it is dominated by ad-educated aesthetic, by which I mean, sleek, surface-based, and impressionable with little beyond that point. In case you get the wrong idea, hyperallergic labs is a fan of Flickr. He goes on to say, “I am an art critic in NY and I use Flickr ALL THE TIME, if I find something interesting, I write about it.”
I’ve seen Flickr come up in two discussions on other photography sites recently. Burn Magazine published a photo essay edited by Rafal Pruszynski featuring photographs came from the Flickr group La Familia Abrazada. The group consists of family and vernacular photography. The photographs are usually pretty damn good. Some of the contributors to Burn Magazine and the regulars who comment at the site were offended a set of images from Flickr were featured on Burn. Flickr is for your mom and douche-bags with 5Ds, while Burn is for serious-ass photographers pursuing their art! Things were fairly obnoxious and heated in one of Burn’s forum threads. The discussion is a bit disappointing because it seems to focus on where the photographs came from rather than the photographs themselves.
A few days later Jorg Colberg wrote a follow up to a piece by Jin from Shooting Wife Open. Colberg’s article, particularly its conclusion, offended Bryan Formhals of La Pura Vida, who responded himself. This sparks some discussion on Flickr itself at HCSP. Colberg posts yet again, complaining that people on the Internet don’t know how to debate, and are jerk-asses. Perhaps. I think the thing that riles people up with Colberg’s initial post is that it’s incredibly dismissive. He seems to argue that Flickr is useful for finding photos you can use to make real art out of. And that’s it. He completely glosses over the fact there is real talent on Flickr itself. I would argue that not appreciating the Behemoth that is Flickr suggests you’re a bit out of touch.
So as I said at the start of this post, there are 4 billion fucking photos on Flickr. It is the height of arrogance to suggest in that mess of images there aren’t a substantial number of incredible photos. It’s probably not unreasonable at all to argue there are more absolutely incredible photos on Flickr than there are anywhere else on the Internet. I’m not going to argue that though, I wouldn’t know where to start.
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Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 3
25 October 2009, early evening
he third figurative photography class I attended was split, more or less, into three sections. We started the class with an overview of nude photography. As with the class on portraiture, we more or less covered the history of nude photography from the advent of photography to the 70s or so. (I believe we are covering more contemporary nude photography in an another class.) As with the previous class, there were a few names I recognized, and plenty I did not.
I haven’t really sat down and looked at a lot of nude photography, so it’s interesting to see how different people approach the subject, and how it has changed over time. The very early nudes seem to have a lot in common with classic sculptures of the body, or paintings. This is to be expected to some extent. This is also probably due to the nature of cameras at the time. They were large and cumbersome, and the exposures were quite long. Most of the photographs we saw from the early part of the century were of full body nudes. As cameras get smaller, and film more straightforward to process and develop, you start to see more interesting takes on the subject. Surrealists like Man Ray were doing pretty interesting things with the nude body. Other photographers whose work I thought was quite good include Peter Hujar,
Lee Friedlander, and Bill Brandt.
The second part of the class was reviewing each others work. Everyone presented 3 photos from the previous week’s class (Stacey, Dave), 2 portraits they took outside of class (Shima), and one self portrait. It was interesting seeing what everyone decided to photograph, and how they lit their subjects.
Finally we went up to the fifth floor of the AGO to check out the Beautiful Fictions exhibit currently taking place. I ended up going to the AGO again today to check it out once more. It’s a really cool collection of contemporary photography. There is a lot to see, and a good variety of images, so it’s well worth the trip to the gallery.
Next week we are working with nude models. That should be an experience.
Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 2
16 October 2009, early morning
I attended my second Figurative Photography class yesterday. This class was focused on portraiture. The first hour or so was spent on a brief overview of portraiture from the last 100 years or so, looking at some important or interesting figures. Some names I recognized, like Yousuf Karsh or Richard Avedon. Others were new to me, like Mike Disfarmer. We looked at all sorts of photographs, from Karen Finley covered in chocolate to Anne Noggle’s self portraits. My favourite shot of the night was a photograph of Arthur Miller by Bresson.
The rest of the class was spent taking portraits. The class was split in two, with each group working independently. We each took turns modelling for the other members in our group. One person was supposed to be in charge lighting and direction, with this role alternating as we cycled through models. In practice I felt we were all cool with deciding what to do together. This was the first time I had taken photos so formally, using tungsten lights and other junk to light a subject. I regret not trying this stuff out sooner. You have so much control over the image when you can control all the lighting. I was shooting with my Rebel, and with my Leica. You can see some photos from the night on Flickr.
In the next class we are supposed to review each others work, and then begin a look at nude photography. The following week we photograph nudes.
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Advanced Figurative Photography: Part 1
8 October 2009, evening time
Today was my first class of Advanced Figurative Photography. The AGO offers studio courses, and this one sounded interesting. I like photographing people.
Today’s class was a light introduction to things. We looked at work from past students. We looked at some of the teachers own work. We looked at a slide show on how the human body has been portrayed in the past: how we might classify different sorts of images. Finally we ended the class with a brief discussion on lighting.
The take away from all this, which I didn’t really pick up on when I read the course description, is that a big part of Figurative Photography is taking pictures of naked people. The course description made it sound like this was one aspect of the course, but it’s clear from the first class that this is probably the primary focus of the course, and this topic in general. I suppose I should have known that. We looked at a lot of really great nudes during the class. (And the work our teacher showed were his own nude self portraits.)
I think this course will be an interesting experience. I quite enjoyed the first class.
Comment [3] Photography | Advanced Figurative Photography Class
A Conscientious Photography Contest
26 August 2009, early evening
Jörg Colberg runs the website Conscientious, a fine-art photography blog. His site is regularly referenced online when people discuss photography. How he managed to position himself as a goto authority on fine-art photography, i’m not completely sure. As far as I can tell, he’s just some dude that likes photographs.
Colberg is running a photography competition. He plans to showcase the work of the winner on his site. It’s not a pay-to-play contest, and there isn’t any money to be one. It’s all about getting exposure. I think this is a great way to showcase new talent. This seems to be one of Colberg’s goals, since he states, “[the Conscientious Portfolio Competition] is aimed at emerging photographers.”
If you don’t have a website you will not be able to enter the competition; this might strike you as unfair, but I think every serious photographer should have her/his own website, because it shows that s/he is serious about what s/he does (plus, my blog is about linking to websites – and what can I link to if there’s no website?).
I can’t say I know too many fine-art photographers, but one would assume that being able to take pictures and being able to write HTML are two independent skills. More so, if there was a group of photographers who were most likely not to have a portfolio site of their own, I suspect that group would be photographers who need to get exposure by entering online photography competitions. Colberg actually calls out Flickr in particular as being unsuitable for this competition. Certainly there is a lot of crap on Flickr. And then there is a lot of amazing photography. The derision sometimes expressed about the site seem more than a little lame, like my earlier complaints about LiveJournal.
No doubt the contest will produce some good results, but I think by limiting where he sources contributions, it will also be far less interesting than it could have been.
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Sentimental Journey, Winter Journey
22 July 2009, terribly early in the morning
My copy of Sentimental Journey, Winter Journey arrived yesterday. It was leaning against the door to our condo when Shima and I arrived home. I honestly wasn’t completely sure it would make it to me.
Nobuyoshi Araki is one of Japan’s most infamous photographers. I first saw his work in a Phaidon book Martha bought me, which collected together photographs of some of the best photographers in the world. Araki was featured. The photographs Phaidon picked to showcase were the sorts of photos he is most well known for: nudes and Japanese rope bondage. I had mixed feelings about Araki for a long time. In my mind he was little more than a pornographer. Some of his photos were interesting, but many really didn’t seem particularly good, especially outside of the contexts of the books they were made for. I think my opinions of his work changed after I watched Arakimentari, a documentary about the man. In the film, a reasonable amount of time is spent discussing Sentimental Journey, Winter Journey.
The book is split into two sections. The first section features a selection of photographs from a book Araki made on his honeymoon with his wife Yoko, called Sentimental Journey. (This book is incredibly rare. Apparently it was self-published, and only 1000 copies made.) This section is predominently filled with photos of Araki’s wife, clothed and unclothed, before the two have had sex or after. (Ruffled sheets and other elements in a scene hint at what has transpired between two photos.) The next section of the book is quite different. The Winter Journey is about the death of Araki’s wife in 1990 to cancer. The photographs are unlike anything else i’ve seen by Araki. Photographs are all marked with the date, and look like they were shot with some cheap consumer camera. There is a snapshot aesthetic to them all. Many of the photos are of the skyline or his wife’s cat. It’s very repetitive, and gives one the feeling of being on a forced march. We see photos leading up to Yoko’s death, of her death, and Araki’s life after her death. The last photo is both brilliant and simple. What’s impressive about this portion of the book is that the photos aren’t technically good at all, but when taken as a body of work they become something stunning.
I bought this book from Japan Exposure for ¥3,990 plus shipping. The shipping was expensive, but compared to the prices I was seeing for the book in North America it was a steal. (One reason I didn’t expect to get the book was because I thought the price was a mistake.) The book is completely in Japanese, but another reviewer seems to have translated the important captions.
I can’t recommend the book enough. (And i’m not alone here.)
Mamiya C33
30 May 2009, late evening
I bought a Mamiya C33 last week, used on Craigslist. This camera takes medium format film, setting it apart from all my 35mm film cameras. The negatives are big and square, as pictured above. This is a TLR. The top lens is a view lens, used for framing the photo. The bottom lens is what actually exposes the film. My camera has an eye-level viewfinder, but these cameras are normally used with a waist-level viewfinder. I’ll probably try and track one of those down next. The camera is massive and heavy. It’s cool, and using it should be an interesting experience. (Loading the 120 roll was strange coming from 35mm film.) I’m not sure i’m at the point where I have too many cameras or not. I certainly have a lot.
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More Magnum Talks at the Drake
8 May 2009, terribly early in the morning
I arrived at the Drake early to make sure I got a seat for the lectures by Magnum photographers Peter Marlow, David Allan Harvey, and Christopher Anderson. I arrived so early — before the doors officially opened — I had time to get a drink upstairs in the lounge. I ordered a Manhattan and sat at the bar reading a comic book. Christopher Anderson was sitting near by. If only I knew what he looked like. I finished my drink and went back downstairs, only to discover the room was packed. God damn it. This talk may have been even busier than the last. Somehow I managed to get a seat, after some miscommunication between me and a lady who was apparently not saving one for a friend.
Each photographer discussed the path they’ve taken when it comes to their photography. Peter Marlow was up first, and he was hilarious. He got his start by borrowing his buddies portfolio to secure a job as a cruise ship photographer. What? He managed to get press work while the cruise ship was docked in New York, and things moved from there. He showed us his early work, and then moved on to work he is currently doing exploring a factory closure in Liverpool. His early works are full of people, while this later work is about the absence of people.
Christopher Anderson was up next. He was actually showing us the portfolio he would present to the Magnum photographers next year when he goes up for full membership. We got to see a full retrospective of his work, and the stuff he is working on right now. He also presented his new book, Capitalio. He studied anthropology, but ended up choosing to pursue photography after working for a newspaper in their photo lab. Much of his work is about people — refugees — so his anthropology studies probably do come in handy. He has some pretty amazing photographs, though many of them seem to be the result of his not being too careful with his life.
David Allan Harvey was last. He started with some of his earliest photographs, an album he made for his grandparents when he was 14 or so, and then moved on from there to show new work he is doing on families that is in a similar vein. His plan is to create an exhibit and book that hopes to captures what he produced as a 14 year old boy — though he feels there is no real way to recapture that innocence. Harvey seems very interested in helping out aspiring photographers. A lot of his talk was advice for budding photographers and passing remarks about former students. I picture him more as a teacher than a photographer.
I was planning on mingling with the crowd after the talks, but Shima was making Persian food, and that trumped talking to strangers.