Category Archives: Black and White

AE-1 Adventures

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ASA200 50mm f/5.6 1/125sec

“Lost”

Thankfully I was conveniently over prepared when I went out to shoot yesterday! A couple friends had to bail out on shooting at the last minute which came in handy when I got out to downtown and realized I forgot my SD card for shooting digital, and because I switched bags to bring both of my film cameras I had forgotten to bring my back up card as well. So I was left shooting entirely with the AE-1 for the day, which was a fun yet slightly nerve-racking experience. I’ve been known in the past to mess up a roll or two when it comes to shooting 35mm, and its still very much a learning and experimental stage for me. However at the end of the day the pictures did develop and I had captured a few fun scenes along the way.

This first scene caught my eye just a minute or two into the days shooting. I love the ironic twist to the backwards tourism, with her Big City New York hoody on while being lost in the extremely contrasting small city of Grand Rapids.
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Red Rider

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ISO1600 90mm f/5.6 1/50sec

Now that spring has arrived and the city is coming to life, its probably safe to say I may be posting more mini series of street shots in the upcoming months. This post is a mixture of a new shot above, and a few street shots from yesterday that didn’t really fit into the story the rest were telling. So I now present the missing pics from yesterdays wonderings. Continue reading →

Graphic Shadows

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ISO400 50mm f/5.6 1/1000sec

Again its time to play a bit of catch up with daily exposures. Lately I’ve had a sudden rise of work come through the study, which is always a great thing to have happen, unless your trying to keep up on a daily photo blog haha.

Being in graphic design I cant help but to love interestingly graphic scenes like this. I find it interesting how most the shadows through out have a mildly soft edge yet the main element projects a very crisp clean round shadow. I walk by this building just about every time I am downtown, and have acquired a good number of photos over the months in various weather conditions. Its one of those scenes thats simple yet appealing to me and my design focused mind. Continue reading →

Smiles

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ISO800 50mm f/5.6 1/100sec

The city was definitely filled with life this weekend, so I thought I would take the opportunity to put up another mini series of people watching street photography shots from saturdays photo walk.

The first isn’t exactly a people watching shot, however it is related to the last series I posted. I absolutely love shooting this mens dress ware store because they are constantly changing the setups in the front window, giving me something different to shoot just about every time I walk past. You may remember this store from the “Half Off” image in the last mini series. This time I couldn’t help but want to share its smiles with everyone. Continue reading →

Bicycle

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ISO 100 51mm f/5.6 1/4sec

It’s posted in my bio, but Im sure most people still don’t know that I was an amateur magician a couple years back. I consider magic to be a piece of art, a well thought out example of creative expression. Still to this day I love the feel of a crisp just opened deck of casino quality playing cards gently gripped between the fingers. I love the sound of playing cards as their shuffled, riffled, dribbled and sprung and would find enjoyment in just playing with the 52 pasteboards all day long. I myself have close to 30 decks of playing cards in various colors, shapes and sizes, many of which are special limited edition decks that I rarely play with in fear of destroying them. Its kind of like my mini gallery of fine art playing cards haha. Theres literally random cards stuck to my ceiling, which makes for a great conversation starter for those who I have over to the studio. I know the stories behind the cards, and over the years have acquired many stories of my own. Continue reading →

Photographic Inspiration: Michael Levin

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When it comes to fine art, my taste resides in “the simpler the better”, with a few exceptions. Michael Levin’s portfolio is the definition of simplistic expression when it comes to black and white fine art! His ability to narrow in and capture a scenes most simple elements is a true inspiration.

His images are so well balanced you cant help but to enjoy the process of being drawn in. The composition is executed in such a brilliant way, that even with a photographic eye I immediately focus on the scene itself rather than scanning for the  building block of the image, which I think as photographic creatives we do to often. With a wide variety of subjects across his portfolio, its truly a joy strolling through each photo. Continue reading →

Shades

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ISO100 109mm f/16 1/8sec

I won’t lie, the recent snow fall has me a bit bummed, let alone chilly. I had gotten so used to the warmer weather that I about forgot it was still winter. With the flop of temperature I’ve been somewhat longing for summer time to arrive and have been gazing over to my summer wear the last few days in hopes it would warm things up a bit. So to somewhat express my mood I decided to shoot some of my summer shades to add to my simplistic approach on fine art. Continue reading →

Window Washing

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ISO 1600 55mm f/5 1/250 sec

So I had gone on an adventure to capture last nights sudden snow for my daily exposure today, and some where along the line lost my sd card with all the pics on it. Not sure what happened to it, but it was no where to be found when I returned home. Luckily it was only a cheap 4gb card and not one of my better larger cards. So with the sun already resting past the horizon of the earth I decided I would take the opportunity to share some of my other shots from yesterday. Now obviously I don’t typically share more than one image at a time, but with the special circumstances of losing a card I’ve decided I would cheer myself up by sharing more than the usual. Continue reading →

Street Statements

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ISO 1600 50mm f/5.6 1/250sec

Walking around downtown I come across a few homeless “shelters” tucked into cubbies on the side of abandoned buildings and into alley ways. But none are as well equipped as this one. If there was such thing as homeless elegance, Im sure this would be one of the defining situations. This adopted area was fully equipped with sleeping bag, mini book shelf with tattered books, a blender (despite having no plug-in) and a few signs with various messages. Unfortunately most of the scene was lost into the deep shadows cast by the partial cover of the wall to the left.

I find scenes like this extremely interesting, and instantly find myself in a state of gratitude. I couldn’t imagine living in a situation like this, and cant fathom the situations it would take to get to that point. But at the same time find it interesting in all the things that the homeless can find interest in themselves. It often leads me to asking genuine questions as to why they may do something, like what is their purpose with these signs? Why are they so pro credit unions? What happened to the extra 1%? Are they apposed to that single percentile? Are they only 99% for credit unions? Random questions continued to pop into my head while originally observing the scene. It was actually almost like a fun game to browse from a distance (Im not into invading anyones home with out asking) and find things of intriguing values. Is it all just a collection of worthless “junk”, or does this stuff hold a certain value to its rent-free owner?

Be grateful my friends, for when times get cold we have sweaters to wear, thermostats to regulate. We are contained in the comfort of our homes, shielded from the elements. We have cars to take us to our next exciting adventure, and friends and family to bring the adventure to us when we get lonely. Don’t take life for granted! Live life to its fullest, but don’t forget to love the life you were blessed with!

Flatware Simplicity

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ISO100 50mm f/11 1/30sec

I’ve been really inspired by extremely simple fine art lately and have been meaning to give a go at it. Having been in Cutco Cutlery sales for some time I knew just the subject and was quit enthused about bringing my passion for the worlds finest cutlery to my passion of creative expression.

Usually when I come to a creative project like this, I only have a general idea of what I may be going for, however with this project I had the end result in mind and went to town setting it up to get just the right outcome. I actually originally had this idea to shoot a dog on a seamless white back drop and have the front half to one side and the back to the other. I still look forward to creating that, but found the same inspiration for this project. I think I may turn it into a series eventually.

Interest Above

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ISO 64 4.28mm f/2.4 1/20sec

I love when things make me stop and think “Thats interesting”! For whatever reason this was one of those things. I happened to look up at the store we were at and this made me pause and gander for a few moments. The crazy thing was I looked at it as if it were black and white already. I find that the more I develop my photog eye the more I seem to separate scenes in my head. I will not only see in color but strip the color away and leave its bare essentials all in my mind before even taking the camera out. Its exciting! Already this year I can feel my photography improving and were just now nearing the end of the first month.

I love this scene, simple yet complex! Its quit busy, yet everything seems to have its place. The lines are simple with various angles, parallel and perpendicular threads of interesting cables and soft circular curves. I cant help but scan the whole scene to see what little bits of fascination I can absorb.