Being Surprised by Your Own Photographs

Every now and again, a small moment of intrigue will prod me to take a picture in a setting where I wouldn't normally be interested in taking out my camera. I'll notice a face or a shape and snap the shutter, then shrug and forget what I saw in my viewfinder almost immediately. On rare occasions, though, I'll find myself enamored with one of those forgotten images after seeing it developed.

Photographers today have a general tendency to pretend that this occurrence doesn't happen to them, though. Perhaps they fear that viewers will question their abilities if they knew that a successful image wasn't entirely made on purpose. Or maybe they're stuck with a romantic vision of themselves as artists with vision strong enough to always inform whether or not an image will "work" before a picture is taken. 

This contradicts the thinking of some of the most influential and esteemed photographers of all time, though. Henri Cartier-Bresson, who's often cited as the father of street photography, famously mused that developing a roll of 36 exposures and finding one usable image meant that he'd had a successful day as an artist. That's a .038 percent success rate for one of the most successful photographers ever born!

Edward Steichen, a Luxembourgish-American photographer credited as one of the founding fathers of pictorialism, also embraced the element of chance in his work, resolving that droplets of water on his lens or a little knock against his tripod could lend a picure a mystical quality that he couldn't create intentionally.  

This isn't just artistic humility; these famed artists are hinting at the fact that a photographer's talent doesn't wholly consist of her ability to aim a lens and create a perfect image every time. So much of legitimate photographic talent and vision is carved after the sun has set, after the light-sensitive paper is soaked and hung to dry.

What's more important than the idealistic gift to nail a shot the first time every time is the vision to view a set of images one has taken (most of which will be inevitably experimental) and select the few that stand above the rest in a detached, objective way. Most photographers discover their style only after they've taken hundreds of images and made note of the compositional techniques used in their favorites!

So don't be a sniper behind the camera. Ignore any advice to take as few shots as possible. If you can afford the film (or if you're shooting digital), snap away. You'll never know what you'll wind up with.

As Kieth Carter, one of my favorite living American photographers earnestly advised in a recent interview with Ted Forbes, "Just take the picture. You've got the whole rest of your life to figure out what it means."

Why I Love Portraits in Color (Especially on Film)

About a month ago, I wrote a short piece about why I love portraits in black and white. The piece promoted a kind of romanticism for photography's original monochromatic aesthetic, as if color were a mere distraction from composition and form.

I'm happy to say, though that I've come around, and I now find myself more attracted to color portraiture than ever before. 

I took these portraits in The Tent during Fordham's homecoming weekend, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I love the way the blue denim each subject is wearing complements the maroon of their Fordham apparel and the event's balloons, and I'm particularly compelled by the way their somber, meditative expressions contrast with the event's celebratory air.

On a digital camera, all image files look more or less the same before they're edited in terms of color rendering. When you snap the shutter on a DSLR, the camera tries to capture (as accurately as possible) the color and form of whatever happens to be in front of it. All color editing comes in post-production.

On film, though, it's an entirely different story. Each type of film stock carries with it its own look, feel and color scheme. Kodak, for example, sells a variety of film types, and each looks markedly distinct from the rest. For my color portraiture, though, one Kodak film stock stands out, and it's called Portra 400. It's renowned for its vibrant color rendering and smooth, fine grain; and in the hands of an experienced portrait photographer, it presents an advantage, particularly for its beautifully-realistic representation of skin tones. 

That's not to say that Portra 400 is the absolute best, though. It's certainly not the only kind of film I use, and that's kind of the point: film photographers often experiment with different color film stocks they're unfamiliar with to open their eyes to the different looks, feels, and color schemes they can create. 

I took these portraits in The Tent during Fordham's homecoming weekend, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I love the way the blue denim each subject is wearing complements the maroon of their Fordham apparel and the event's balloons, and I'm particularly compelled by the way their somber, meditative expressions contrast with the event's celebratory air.

When Everything Goes Wrong...

On a long Saturday night during my recent trip to Warwick I sat around a covered fire pit with a  group of friends drinking, smoking, and enjoying the crisp upstate New York air. I remember slurping down the last of my beer and tossing it into a big blue bin as I walked up Erin's stairs towards the bathroom. While climbing, I looked to my left and was engrossed by what I saw. A curving path leading to a gorgeous flying buttress-like archway I hadn't seen during my first time exploring the house stood in front of me, partially blocked by a thriving hedge. The path and the form of the archway created a gorgeous s-shaped curve I knew I needed to capture on film, so I trotted away from the bathroom and towards the basement, where my film camera rested in a backpack underneath a pile of clothes.

I ran back and framed the shot many, many times, struggling to manipulate my shutter speed and aperture to find enough light to balance my meter. When I felt my settings were right, I took the shot and walked back to the bathroom feeling content despite my dizziness. 

When The Color House sent the scanned roll of HP5 black & white film back to me, I raced through the images to find this one frame, and when I did, I felt absolutely deflated. I'm not sure what went wrong, but the image looked hazy, the blacks faded to a soft gray. The image below is what I was able to salvage from the scan file with some light dehazing and contrast-boosting in Adobe Lightroom.

This made me consider one of the most inevitable, yet crippling quirks of the photographic medium, especially on film: no matter how perfect your framing, composition, and light are, there's always the chance that a brilliant opportunity turns into a horrifically unusable photograph. I came to appreciate (and even like) the image's flawed charm and relocate what I'd loved about the original composition, but I was frustrated to see a frame I fell in love with turn into something imperfect.

Something similar happened to the image below of the two chefs on their smoke break. I passed these gentlemen on my way to work a couple of weeks ago and spotted how elegant and stoic they looked smoking in their all-white uniforms against the grittiness of the garage backdrop. They saw me pause and notice them, but I'd lost my chance to capture them in as nonchalant a state as they were in seconds before. I told them that I was a street photographer and that I thought they looked very cool smoking against the garage, and asked to take their picture. They appeared uncomfortable and awkward, unsure of how to position themselves. The best frame I walked away with is the one below, which I'd like more if the younger chef wasn't blinking and the older chef's head was turned the opposite way, looking into the frame.

How do we, then, as photographers, cope with our inability to capture every "decisive moment," every perfect gesture, gaze, or expression that appears in front of us? How do not consider what could've been when we look at images that are almost there, but not quite? Obviously, I'm still struggling to find answers to these questions.

The best one I've ever been able to come up with, though, is actually a bit of wisdom I gleaned from one of my favorite photo-vloggers, Sean Tucker. In a recent video, he urged his viewers to shun perfectionism and view each imperfect picture and missed opportunity as a mere draft along a longer journey of creativity. While this might not take the sting away from looking at an image I'm almost perfectly happy with, it allows me to sidestep my fear of failure and encourages me to get my ass back out on the street and get back to shooting.

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To end this post on a more positive note, I'd like to veer away from the existential doubts that plage any artistic pursuit to share some images from the roll that I do think worked quite well. I hope you enjoy them!

I took this portrait of my friend (and old acapella buddy) Gabby outside my apartment building. I absolutely love the strong, but calm look in her eyes, and the way the light catches in her highlights. 

I took this shot peering into the window of a barber shop on Fordham road. It's a bit abstract, but I found myself feeling really drawn in when I first looked at it. There's evidence of life in the frayed corners of the magazines, stories asking to be told. Plus, the light's awesome. That always helps, I hear.

Why I Love Portraits in Black & White

Photographer Ted Grant, who's often described as the father of Canadian photojournalism, once wrote, "When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls."

I couldn't agree more. Sure, color photography does create infinite color-grading possibilities and allows for color theory to be employed to make a scientifically-pleasing photograph using complementary colors, and that can make for some truly amazing portraits. Most of the best portraits by Steve McCurry, one of the world's most renowned portraitists of all time, feature vivid color. 

But there's just something about portraits taken on black and white film that speaks to me. They represent a purer form of portraiture for me, one free of distractions, gimmicks, and color science. If a subject, or "sitter" is properly lit, the only thing a photographer must do is make sure the subject's eyes are in focus and wait, shutter cocked, for the desired expression to appear on their face.

That's exactly what I did to capture this image of my girlfriend Kaitlyn. I snapped it while she was sitting on a bench at the New York Botanical Garden on my very first roll of black & white film stock. The light and shadows across her face, and more importantly, the openness and honesty in her gaze make it my favorite image I've ever taken on film.

Fall Colors and a Roll of Kodak Portra

During the final weekend of September, I traveled with a group of friends to Warwick, New York, an upstate sanctuary known for its scenic landscape and fall tourism centered around its apple orchards and cider distilleries. While I looked forward to the craft cider and pumpkin donuts, I thought of little but the reds, oranges, and yellows that zipped past us as I loaded my camera with a brand new roll of color film in the passenger seat. It was the first of my eight-pack of Kodak Portra 400, a film stock widely used for its vivid color and warm skin tones. 

Because I was traveling with a large group, though, I knew I wouldn't be able to lag behind the group for too long. None of us had left the city since August, and all were raring to tear through as much of the warm-hued fall landscape as possible. So I had to take a documentary-style approach to my photography during the trip, shying away from lingering in a location for too long to frame a shot perfectly. 

What follows is a collection of memories hastily captured, but that mean a whole lot to me. I hope you enjoy!  

Capturing People in Their Element

A couple of weekends ago, I photographed some good friends of mine during their band's daytime performance in a backyard not far from Fordham's campus. It was a small event, so I was lucky enough to be very close to the band as they played through their set. I came prepared with a fresh new roll of black & white film loaded into my camera, and within an hour or so, I'd used all thirty-six frames. To my disappointment, though, I hardly liked any of the frames I'd captured when I had the roll scanned. 

From an objective standpoint, most of the images were perfectly fine in that they were all reasonably in-focus, properly exposed, and showed a subject (or part of a subject) in motion. What frustrated me, though, was that very few of the images achieved what I set out to accomplish: capturing the emotion that's put into playing an instrument or performing for a crowd. All three members of Free Advertising are earnest, passionate musicians, but this passion wasn't appearing in many of my pictures and that infuriated me. 

This failure, while disheartening at first, made me think of what it means to me to capture someone in their element. By this, I mean photographing someone as they perform a task they're personally dedicated to, one that they'd still be doing regardless of whether or not I was there with a camera. How do I, without manipulating a scene or having any sort of control over the gesture, expression, and placement of my subject, capture them in a way that translates their energy and passion to the viewer? Is it better to wait for, as Henri Cartier-Bresson would suggest, the decisive moment, or to capture as many images as possible and pick the best later, submitting to the fact that it is impossible to predict when the perfect, second-long gesture will occur?

Sadly, there aren't any stock answers to these questions, as they haunt and inspire every photographer in different ways. All I can offer you now, then, is my selects from this roll of film: three images that I feel captured at least some of each musician's energy as they performed. 

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This frame of the band's bassist, Gus, is probably my favorite one on the roll. For me, it captures the raw joy he gains from and channels back into the music. As he plays, he smiles, bites his upper lip, and bobs his head to the rhythm of the song's bass line, and this picture captures that emotion in a flattering, yet candid manner.

This close-up of the band's singer and guitarist, PJ, emphasizes the musician's hand as he strums and plucks. What's always stood out to me about the way PJ plays guitar is that he moves his fingers as little as possible to create the notes, instead of strumming forcefully and swinging his forearm as I've seen other guitarists do. This image's slight blur around PJ's fingers in contrast to the sharp, still form of his guitar captures this subtle quirk for me.

I've struggled to get a frame I liked of Free Advertising's drummer, Graeme, during a few of their shows, but I'm very pleased with this one. I used the band's drum kit and PJ's guitar to subframe Graeme's face, which is focused and deadpan as it typically is when he performs.

Why I Love Silhouettes in Street Photography

Allow me to begin this post with an admission. As I write this, I toy with two black plastic cylinders, each housing a roll of undeveloped film: one Ilford HP5 black & white, and one Kodak Portra 400 color. This past couple of weeks has been such a whirlwind of deadlines that I haven't found the time to travel to The Color House to have them processed and scanned.  

I will note, though, that the transition to color film was one I found very liberating. I struggled to find interesting compositions I knew would work in black and white because I'd taught myself photography by only imagining the world in color. When I traveled and shot with a digital camera, I reserved the option to convert an image to black & white in post-processing if the colors present didn't add anything to the picture, so consciously shooting in pure black and white proved to be a challenge for me.

Admission aside, I'd like to tell you about a compositional tool I've found quite useful and attractive lately for street photography: silhouettes. Shooting a shaded figure in front of a bright background means that if the background is to be correctly exposed, the figure will be rendered in black, as a shape suggestive of a person, but lacking visible qualities that'd enable a viewer to learn too much about the person or identify who they are. This creates a sense of mystery and darkness that can make an image stand out if used correctly, particularly in black and white. 

So, because I have no new, developed film work, I humbly offer you a few images featuring silhouettes that I shot on digital and converted to black and white in post.

The first image was captured almost accidentally. That night, I'd lugged my digital camera to a small backyard concert a friend of mine was performing at. Disappointingly, though, light was sparse and uneven at the event, with the only available light coming from a string of fairy lights placed behind the band. I noticed some guys sitting at the edge of the roof above, though, and despite the fact that they were obviously there to watch the band perform, I saw them looking at me, watching as I snapped the photograph. This made me feel uneasy for some reason, as being watched has always brought me anxiety. This image, I feel, conveys or evokes the feeling of being watched from afar by distant, faceless figures.

I took the second photograph on the gorgeous University of Amsterdam campus after a day of classes. Since the start of my trip there, I'd been drawn to the little bridge that connected the bike lot to one of the class buildings, but hadn't found a way to capture it in a way that I liked until I took this shot. I love the way the man's body is framed by the buildings and trees in the background, and how this makes him stand out against the white, clouded sky. When I see this picture, I want to know more about who the figure is, where he's headed, and what's in his briefcase. It isn't the best picture I've taken, but it still provokes curiosity and creates the feeling of mystery I absolutely love in street photography.

Second Roll: Film on the Street

Before I fell in love with photography, I fell in love with street photography. The concept of documenting street life by arranging it into compositions that bring intrigue to ordinary subject matter is what first inspired me to pick up a camera.

I discovered this passion during the time I spent studying in Amsterdam. In the Dutch capital city, there's no shortage of eye-catching characters to capture on camera, but because I was a novice who'd only recently learned how to fully operate the manual controls of a modern DSLR, I only returned from the trip with a handful of images I was proud of. I quickly learned that because of street photography's improvisational nature, most of the images I'd take wouldn't work out the way I wanted them to; Henri Cartier-Bresson, arguably the most renowned street photographer of all time, famously mused that if he returned home with one good, usable image after a full day of shooting, it was a successful day. This daunted me as I walked along Amsterdam's canals and biked through its park, camera slung around my neck, as prepared as I could be to capture an interesting scene or composition should I come across one. 

When I returned to New York, though, I paused on street photography. I'd been able to compile enough decent work to catch the eye of creative agencies I'd worked with in the past, so I was quickly hired as a freelance photographer to shoot lifestyle, food, and hospitality projects. These required large amounts of time and a ton of coordination with clients to ensure that their vision for a given project came to life through my lens. While I was grateful for the opportunity to use my craft to gain income and diversify my portfolio, I regret that the time I spent developing my client work detracted from my longing to get out onto the street and shoot carelessly as I once had.

Since my transition to film, though, my love for street photography has been reinvigorated. The medium of film, though, presents even more challenges to the art form. For one, I'd often relied on my DSLR's ability to burst-shoot several frames per second, which made it simple to find a compelling backdrop, wait, and fire away once an interesting subject came into my frame. While my bulky Nikon D610 intimidated potential subjects, causing them to stay away from me, burst shooting allowed me to capture a perfect stride or interesting gesture without having to worry about snapping the shutter at exactly the right moment, and the ability to view my shots on the camera's rear screen made it simple to choose the best frame and delete all the others in the field.

Since a 35mm film camera can only capture one frame at a time, though, this technique is impossible to implement on film;  I learned exactly how much of a crutch it'd been the first time I walked the street with my Pentax. This isn't to say, though, that using a small, retro-looking film camera doesn't have its perks for street shooting. I've even noticed that people on the street tend to react far more positively to having a lens pointed at or near them if it's mounted on a retro-looking film camera. It's my guess that most pedestrians who see me with my Pentax assume I'm a photography student or aspiring artist, neither of which is untrue. 

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Below are a few frames from my second roll of Ilford HP5 black & white film that I was very happy with after they were scanned and sent to me. Though I only liked a select few of the street photographs taken on this roll, it's inspired me to become more selective with the moments I choose to fire my shutter, if only to save cash (one roll of 36 frames costs $20 to be scanned and sent over by a professional film developer).

This shot, taken through the bars of Vincent Ciccarone Park on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, showed me just how agreeable subjects can be when you're out shooting with a small, friendly film camera instead of an enormous press-like DSLR. At this playground, I'd noticed a host of seniors who remind me of my Sicilian relatives, playing checkers and bocce in the midday sun. The Stoic facial expression and casual posture of the man on the bench, facing the street and watching, inspired me to take this photograph. The feeling I had in my stomach when taking this photo was exhilarating. He didn't scowl at me and turn away as many had in the past when I was shooting digital; he maintained his posture and stared down my lens, almost posing for the photograph. When I snapped the shutter and lowered the camera, the man waved at me and I walked away so energized that I forgot to pick up the sandwich I'd ordered from Tino's Deli minutes earlier.

I took this photograph under the newly-installed structure that overhangs the entrances directly to the Metro-North tracks on Fordham Road. I'd always been interested in the ways people interacted with architecture, and had been wanting to get a shot of someone sitting in the crook of this V-shaped structure for quite a while. When the girl talking on her mobile phone turned and noticed me, though, she became the dominant subject in my frame. My attraction to this photo may mean that I should experiment with only snapping the shutter once a subject discovers I'm looking at them, rather than capturing completely candid moments as I'd been used to.

This image was actually a suggestion made by my girlfriend Kaitlyn, who actually was one of my initial inspirations to advance my photography. I've been fascinated by dark silhouettes in photography as of late; this interest has mainly been spurred by the work of street photographer Craig Whitehead. I was drawn to the symmetry and mystery created by the light and dark portions of this composition, so I chose to include it here.

This isn't a street photograph, but I decided to include it because it was my favorite image on this roll of film. I made this portrait of my girlfriend Kaitlyn as she sat on a bench in the New York Botanical Garden. While the composition isn't perfect, I absolutely adore her slight smile and the way the shadows, made by harsh afternoon sunlight, fall acoss her face.

My First Roll: Composition Studies

My favorite film photographs, shot by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nick Brandt, and Fan Ho, were all made under the assumption that composition is the one crucial component, the secret sauce that makes a great photograph. I thought of this as I wound my very first roll of Ilford HP5 black and white film into the body of my camera. I wasn't looking to embody or imitate the styles of these great artists, though I did resolve to keep this "composition first" philosophy at the center of the work I'd shoot on my first roll of film. 

After wasting a few frames to test that I actually had a grip on the fully-manual controls of the Pentax K1000, though, I decided that my philosophy for this first roll of film would be composition only, not composition first. This means that I wouldn't so much consider subject matter or theme, but that I would only fire my shutter if I was looking at a shape or form I found compelling its own right, regardless of whether or not it was something as pedestrian as a street curb. 

So, these selects from my first roll are merely studies in composition, line, shape and negative space. 

Sky

I snapped this first image on the grass in front of O'Hare Hall on Fordham's Rose Hill campus. I don't know what compelled me to make a picture of a little plane edging towards the border of the frame, and truthfully, I had no idea that the cloud forms in the image would turn out the way they did. When the Color House on Lafayette street developed, scanned, and sent the full roll of images to me, though, this picture stood out as one of my favorites. The darkness in the upper left corner of the frame, the bright whites of the clouds, and the pure black silhouette of the airliner in contrast to the gray tones behind it evoked a feeling of mystery when I saw it for the first time. Also notable, to me, is the pronounced static-like grain across the whole image, as well as the subtle horizontal lines probably made by imperfections on my camera's sensor. Not surprising; the thing was made in 1976, so I'll have to regard those as an endearing quirk of the camera's age. 

Sausages

I took this picture at Arthur Avenue Ferragosto, looking return home with one composition that captured the day's spirit of remorselessly gorging on meat, cheese, bread, and sangria. At the festival, Italian sausage and peppers sandwiches seemed to be the crowd's snack of choice, as the booth's line stretched from the middle of the block to the corner. When I walked past the grill on my way to the end of the line, I was fascinated by the swirling shapes the sausages were rolled into, and I knew I wanted to capture the pattern they made in a frame.

Curb

This is by far my favorite picture on this roll of film. The s-shaped line made by the curb in the center of the frame in contrast to the dark, wet blacktop found outside Rose Hill's Keating Hall led my eyes quickly to the edge of the frame and left me questioning.

It is purely a shape, though, and it means absolutely nothing, but I feel like I'm a better photographer for having found and captured it. When I'm out with my camera, I operate under the assumption that there are interesting compositions waiting everywhere, but because I don't see the world as a rectangular frame, I miss almost all of them. Every time I'm lucky enough to notice a captivating shape or line in something mundane, it dulls the frustration that comes with a sad truth about photography: no matter who you are and what kind of images you make, most of the photographs you take are going to be shit. Most of the images I've ever taken have been horrendous, but sometimes they're not, and for me, the process of separating the successful pictures from the awful ones has been just as important and formative of my style as the work done behind the camera.

Crosswalk

I took this waiting to cross Fordham road a couple of weeks ago. This is my least favorite of the batch, but I included it because even though it's a snapshot of a crosswalk, it made me consider the cracks in the white paint and the peppery appearance of the asphalt, which I wouldn't have ever done hadn't I fired my shutter at the time. Because of the picture's minimalism, I felt it sequenced well with the others in this slideshow.

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While I'm not as proud of these images as I am of any of the digital photographs on this site, this sequence charts my first attempt to explore a concept since my turn to film. It is a worthwhile entry into my body of work, and an encouraging first shot at this unfamiliar form of photography.