New York City | 2023

An October visit to Manhattan has become an annual ritual for me (pandemic lockdowns notwithstanding). It’s the perfect time of year to spend a few days in one of the richest street photography environments in the world, visit some of my favorite museums, catch up with a few old friends, soak up a city vibe unlike any other.

This year, while I took pictures every day, I only really had one day dedicated to being in the streets with the camera. I was rained out on Saturday, but Friday was perfect — the sun was shining, the weather was typical NYC Fall plus 10 degrees, and the streets of midtown were full of tourists and locals, shoppers, protesters, and general hangers-out.

Starting at Bryant Park — there were a ton of photographers there, I’ve never seen so many other people out doing what I’m doing in such high concentration — I shot for a while around 42nd, then walked down and around Broadway to Madison Square, Union Square, and finally to Washington Square Park, lingering when the scenes called for it, moving on when I needed a fresh perspective. I suspect that route is a fairly standard trail for photographers shooting street in NYC. There’s a lot happening in that corridor of the city.

About half the photos in this set are from that day, the rest were shot in various other locations around the city — Central Park, Hells Kitchen, West Village,  Chelsea. All these photos were taken with a Leica MP and a 50mm f/2 Summicron. I shot a couple of rolls of Portra (one 400 and one 800) that Friday, which were processed at Underdog in West Oakland, and shot Tri-X 400 the rest of time, which I processed home, where I scanned it all.

Los Angles, CA | July, 2023

My year in photography really began over the summer. It’s not that I wasn’t taking pictures during the first half the year, but my effort wasn’t consistent and my output was far from prodigious. I was coming off a creative slump following what felt like a big project, work was crazy, the stars just weren’t aligned, so my attention to photography was sporadic.

So it was at this point that I found myself in Downtown Los Angeles over the fourth of July weekend with the expressed purpose of shooting photographs. My wife had work obligations in LA that weekend, and as I have no qualms whatsoever about riding her professional coattails for a free hotel room, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some dedicated solo time with my camera in the subject rich streets of DTLA.

But it was kind of a rough go, a rocky start to what’s shaped up to be a reasonably productive second half of the year. The rough patch I experienced that weekend in LA was not necessarily a collection of pronounced individual issues. Rather, the vibe was weird and things just didn’t click.

I never really felt like I found a flow state while shooting over those three days. I only shot four rolls of film in that time, and I remember thinking that I botched more shots than I hit. I was frustrated with my lens choice and decided that I prefer a 50mm over a 28mm lens for street photography…but I hadn’t brought the 50mm with me. The weather was hot as hell, the air was swampy and smelly. Anime Expo was happening at Staples Center and there were costumed nerds everywhere, but they were uninteresting to me and I barely photographed any of them. An off duty jewelry store security guard threatened to shoot me.

More than once I stepped into a local bar and knocked back a drink or three in search of my mojo, to no avail. But I put in the work, and photos were taken. And that’s what matters.

I burned one roll of Portra 400 color film and got one decent shot out of it, so it got top billing, and three rolls of Tri-X 400 black & white, selects from which fill the gallery.

Closing Out 2022: I’m Still Taking Pictures

What Was I Even Doing in 2022?

As I look ahead to next year and plot some high-level goals & aspirations, I’ve been looking back over the last year of photographic output. While I can’t help thinking about how, why and when I pursue creative endeavors, and what my personal relationship is with it all, I ultimately tend to get frustrated with all that creative metacognition and go back to focusing on just doing the damn thing.

And when it comes down to doin the damn thing, I didn’t shoot enough this past year.

In any case, the images contained in the galleries sprinkled throughout this post represent my favorite film photos from 2022, taken with a variety of 35mm and medium format cameras. Give ‘em a click to expand.

What’s in Store for 2023?

Keeping it simple for 2023, there are just two things (I think) I want to focus on when it comes to photography:

1. Shoot more. And shoot more film…maybe exclusively shoot film? I guess I shot quite a bit of film in 2021 too, but some of my more notable photo excursions were shot with a digital camera. And to be clear, I really like my digital camera rig and I really enjoy shooting with it. And I’m not a film snob. But I regularly consider limiting my options as a means of up-leveling fundamental skills and digging deeper into creativity.

This idea of focusing more (if not exclusively) on film started in October, after a trip to NYC in which most of my film photos turned out like shit — I think because I split my focus on shooting digital and film simultaneously, and in the aftermath I really came face to face with the realization that I don’t approach them in the same way.

Fresh off that realization, I went to Tokyo in December and, while I took my core digital rig with me (a Fuji setup that, again, I like very much), I didn’t snap a single digital photo. I opted instead to use the Leica MP 35mm film camera exclusively as I explored that city. And while, as of this writing, the results are still TBD (the lab is closed until the new year), the experience was exhilarating, and also a little challenging in that it was entirely without any of the luxuries that digital or more feature-rich film cameras offer. The MP is all mechanical and all manual — it only requires a battery for the light meter, and the camera works fine if the battery dies, you just need to find an alternate way to meter — so it forced to me slow down and get used to having to manage every aspect of the process while on the move.  I came away from the experience with the unwavering feeling that I need a lot more of that.

2. Make more physical media — prints, booklets, foldy zines, whatever else I can come up with that’s equal parts a little polished, but still DIY, and not crazy expensive.

Sharing photos online is the quickest and easies way to connect with photo communities, especially in engaging and supportive environments like Glass, Mastodon and Flickr. But posting digital photography on the internet, even in places where genuine interest thankfully takes the place of algorithmic imperative, can feel a little like stuffing content into a void.

Exploring the impact of physical media, of sharing the tangible results of my photographic endeavors, is increasingly appealing to me these days. The reach won’t be nearly as broad as it can be in a global digital environment where finding new things is as easy as clicking on a hashtag, but I don’t care about that — I want to share work with people in formats that are tactile and interactive, held rather than scrolled through, can be passed on, left out on coffee tables or bookshelves or the tops of toilet tanks, and can be easily revisited.

Physical media just seems like a more worthwhile endeavor than posting for the fleeting engagement of likes, boosts and comments. Not that I’ll stop posting photos to the internet…

All that said, I’ve had 5”x7” prints of the photos for my next booklet project on the wall in my home office for literally months without any movement, so a bias toward action on the production side of things is definitely needed.

I think what it comes down to is that, more than any other kind of photographer, I’m an opportunistic photographer — I almost always have a camera on me — and unless I’m traveling, I rarely set out with the specific intent to shoot. That needs to change.

I need to make the time and put in the effort to approach photography with purpose: take pictures because I set out to take pictures, make things with the pictures because that’s how I want the work to be represented.

I’ll figure out what it all means later.

Los Angeles Noir | A Short Story in Four Photographs

“Please… I’ve come so far.”

Long Time No See | A Return to Blogging (sorta)

I’ve got a wicked case of writers block.

The last time I put anything on this blog was January, 2021, about 20 months ago, around the time I started my monthly newsletter, One For The Road, which became my main outlet for sharing photos, writing, and music.

I recently decided to make a change to the way I do things with photos and general writing — that is, to post that stuff to this blog instead of the monthly Substack email — and use OFTR to share some music recos and drop links to whatever I’ve done here.

And for some reason, that’s the only writing topic I’ve been able to focus on for a week: basically a blog post that classifies as a “meta procedural.” And holy shit is that boring.

So in lieu of something interesting to read, here’s something (hopefully) interesting to look at: a gallery of black & white 35mm film photos taken over the last few months, on Kodak Tri-X 400 with either the Rollei 35S or the Olympus XA.