Embracing our differences: Shot on film. I enjoy shooting contemporary photos on film because it tends to give more of a timeless feel to them. I decided to do this because I really liked the background that I had at my disposal inside my living room mirror. Glancing into a different plane. I wanted this to give almost an ambiguous feeling towards it. The main reason I enjoy shooting film is because of the characteristics of it. As much as film is becoming less and less used, I still hold the belief that the medium is still alive.

This took a while to put together. I had to do a final project for my 2-D design class and I decided to do a photograph for it. Originally this was going to have a lot more into it, but I was pressed for time. Still took about 45 minutes to put this all together. Not one of my best images, but I think it came out good nonetheless.

Bookworm, I wanted the story behind this image to go back to Bradbury's dystopian vision of a world where reading is outlawed. The story takes place during a time when this law was first put into place, a journalist runs home after hearing about this new law, frantically trying to find places to hide all of his books, stories and journals when he hears a knock at the door. When he realizes it is too late, he takes one photo of his belongings before throwing a match into his kerosene soaked house.
The leather bound book is my personal journal, I unlocked it for this image because I wanted it to show that no matter what, a person's writings and stories are always everlasting. You can't take away memories. My goal with this image was to capture as much detail as possible within the photograph. This was a twenty five second exposure @ F/11 and an ISO of 50. 

In honor of veteran's day, I decided to take a worms eye perspective shot of a memorial we had set up on campus.  I placed a graduated filter over this to give the image a more somber look, a sharp transition from high contrast to low contrast. As if it were going from present day to a time in the distant past so that we can draw parallels to our current state and similar conflicts before.

This is a film image I took recently. About four weeks ago, I was walking around antique shops with my mother, while she was looking for what she wanted, I decided to take a look to see if they had any film cameras. Lo and behold, they did have one just sitting on a shelf, a Carl Zeiss Contina mk II. Aside from the film release button, everything else on the camera was in full working order. I've always been fascinated with film and the process that goes along with it. Film honestly feels more intimate and personal than digital. The craftsmanship of developing it, anticipation, surprise. With digital, if you don't like an image, you can delete it and start over; you don't get that luxury when working with film. Film really makes you slow down, compose and recompose several times, and makes you think twice whether you really do want to take the shot or not. I prefer shooting film over digital, in fact, I actually have more film cameras than digital cameras.

About a week or two ago, I was walking to a SoBol nearby my house and brought my camera with me to shoot some photos on the way. Recently, my class was given an assignment to capture a "decisive moment". As I was walking, I stopped at the corner of two streets and I saw this scene which I felt was a good photo-op but needed 'something else' As soon as I had that thought, a biker rode passed me and I snapped this image.

Banana No. 3

Banana No. 3 and an untitled image. Both inspired by Edward Weston's "Pepper No. 30" This was done partially for a school project, partially because I love Weston's style and lastly, it gave me an excuse to use my studio lamps. These were taken on my Sony a7 and were edited in photoshop.