Last night I finally sat down and started developing a bunch of black and white film rolls I shot about 6 months ago. These are of my friend and long-term collaborator Jojo. Here are the first 3 images I scanned in. I’ve been experimenting with different combinations of film/developer and development methods for a future project that I’ll hopefully be getting into soon. These are all shot on tri-x pushed to 1600 and developed with minimal agitation in rodinal. I’ve been reading about controlling grain during devolopment by reducing agitation, but I think I really underestimated the extreme flexibility of tri-x as there is hardly ANY grain at all even after a 2 stop push. Apologies for the nerd talk, enjoy!
These are some shots from a wedding I recently 2nd shot with Andrew Collings. I’ve been shooting some weddings with Andy here and there recently to try and hone my skills a bit more. He’s been doing this for over 15 years, and has a lot to teach so it’s been a really great opportunity to say the least. We drove around an industrial quarter on the Southside of Chicago and got some pretty cool stuff before the ceremony which took place in Bridgeport. Brad and Arianne were totally rad. I’ve shot a lot of weddings where I wondered if the bride and groom even liked each other let alone were ready to live together forever, and this was certainly not the case with them. I recently attended a workshop put on by the super talented Sean Flanigan, and he talked a lot about how great photography (of people) is not an accident but rather a product of collaboration between the subjects and the shooter. I totally agree with this philosophy, and feel like the photos from this day turned out great because of the willing participation of Brad and Arianne. So yeah… thanks guys and congratulations!
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I was recently introduced to an Xbox 360 game called Limbo. At first I was skeptical. I hardly play video games these days, I just don’t feel like I have any time for it. My friend insisted I at least try the free demo on his xbox, and with that he turned it on and handed me the controller. As soon as the start up screen came on I knew I was in for something different: The game is in black and white! I love black and white! Beautiful, contrasty, flickery shades of it everywhere. This alone was enough to hook me before I started worrying about things like gameplay. I mean, I’m nearly obsessed with monochrome. I watch old movies, and develop rolls of Tri-X in my kitchen. Even though I shoot raw files I sometimes set my picture style to monochrome, just so I can instantly visualize everything in black and white. You get the idea…
The surprises didn’t stop there: the game is also a side-scroller. You know, like super mario bros. Two-dimensional. I’m 31 years old, and most of my favorite games of all time (like Donkey Kong) were made like this. Another major difference is that limbo has very little audio. There is no music to speak of, and the only sounds you’ll hear for the most part are from interacting with the actual environment. You’re basically running through a silent film. 1922′s scariest horror film “Nosferatu” comes to mind. I’m not much of a game reviewer so I’m not going to even try, but basically you play a little boy who is searching for his sister in limbo. There is a whole lot of over-sized forest to trudge through, a giant, scary spider, and tons of goliath industrial innards to hop around on. The part I like the best about this game is that it’s not just a pretty face. You are presented with obstacle after obstacle of physics and logic-based puzzles to solve before you are allowed to proceed to the next screen. The game makes you think, and I love that. Limbo is beautiful. It’s creepy, tough, and should definitely appeal to photo-nerds.
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These are photos I recently shot for Threadless. Each shirt was designed by a different comic book artist: Jill Thompson, Cliff Chiang, Art Baltaazar, and the legendary Tony Moore. This project was super fun to work on. Mig Reyes created the comic cell look, and Nicole Carlson did some great final re-touching on the images. We all put a lot of work into this, and I was super pleased with the outcome.
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Nate Van Dyke stops by Threadless from Threadless.com on Vimeo.
This is a video I produced with my friend Collin Diederich. Nate is an incredible artist. He’s worked on many video games, and comics and does lots of amazing personal illustration in his spare time. I started talking to Nate via email when I sent him a photo of a tattoo I had done that was based on one of his designs. I expressed interest in doing a short piece on him, or giving him a tour of threadless if he ever came to Chicago. As luck would have it, he was coming in the next week and was totally into the idea of the video. I called up Collin and we got together 2 Canon 7D’s, a 5Dmkii, and some really awesome lenses. I rented a set of ari fresnels for extra lighting and Collin brought his new toy the Kessler crane. We set up shop the day before, I wrote some interview questions, and convinced my girlfriend Ninna to interview him so I could fee myself up to shoot on the 5Dmkii. 9 hours later, we had ourselves a lot of footage. I’m really happy with the way this turned out, and it was great to meet and hang out with Nate! This ended up being used for Threadless TV as well, and I’m glad lots of people got to see it.
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