Photo Friday

This is probably the last Friday post of the year. I would love to share some quick hits and varia, but the hectic end of the semester routine of grading, reading, and writing has made it hard for me to get my act together. So instead sharing what I’ve found in my rambles on the web, I’m going to share some of another little “project” with you. 

Over the last year, I’ve started to take photography a bit more seriously. I’ve always enjoyed taking photos and my dad was an avid photographer. As a kid he taught me the general principles of photography and helped me figure out various kinds of cameras.

When I was in graduate school in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I practiced being more deliberate in how I took photographs. This made sense partly because I was using slide film (!) and as a graduate student my budget was limited. I also was visiting sites that, at the time, I had no real idea whether I would be able to see them again or using my camera to document archaeological work that was methodologically (or procedurally) ephemeral. In many ways, I came to treat my camera as a professional tool.

During the last decade or so, I had the opportunity to work alongside some great photographers: Ryan Stander, John Holmgren, Kyle Cassidy, and Richard Rothaus. They’ve all taken the time to remind me how to use my camera in a more technically proficient way and that making photographs is more than just taking snapshots.

All this is a rambling prologue to this. I’ve posted about 125 of my photos here. Most of them come on my various walks in Grand Forks; some are from my walks on Cyprus and Greece.

I generally shoot with two cameras: a Ricoh GRIII and a Sony a7CR.

The former is what it is. I tend to crop things and occasionally fuss with color, but mostly like high contrast black and white.  

On the latter I use a range of lenses. My favorite at the moment is Voigtländer Nokton 50 mm f/1.2.

I have a Zeiss Batis 40 mm f/2 that I mostly use when I absolutely have to get a photograph right.

When I can make a mess of things, I use a Jupiter 8 50 mm f/2, for example:

Or a vintage Super Takumar 28 mm f/3.5:

Or a Super Takumar 55 mm f/1.8:

As far as some kind of vision for my photographs, I’m mostly trying to gain technical confidence, but the more photos I take the more I’m coming to appreciate how light produces texture and the fleeting character of the slight variations that exist on the surface of all things. As I take most of my photos on my mid-morning walks, I’m finding that I’ve started to slow down and look more carefully at my surroundings. Rather than producing a deeper appreciation of what I see on my walk, taking photographs has led me to see the world in a much more superficial way.

Maybe there’s something in this that reflects our growing interest in the interplay between objects rather than their deeper meaning. 

Anyway, you can see some more of my work here.