Images from the Vault...Freshmen Dorms

In August we moved Billy into his Freshmen dorm room. Amidst all of chaos of boxes, clothes and extension cords, wrapped very tightly with the swirling emotions of moving our first born into college I looked around his room, from the three decade vantage point of the last time I was involved with this move, and it was really interesting to observe what has changed…and what has not.

I took a lot of pictures my Freshman year. Boxes upon boxes are filled with ‘party pic’ shots. But I also remembered a more intention driven effort, walking up and down the dorm hallway, hauling around my Nikon and Hasselblad, sometimes with flash and sometimes with natural light, to capture images, of what I realized even then, was a very unique moment in time.

The Freshmen dorm room is special. For many it’s the first time they have total control of what goes on the wall. The dorm room does not showcase any dusty AYSO trophies, Lego X-Wing fighters or other artifacts collected, but rarely curated, along the accelerating journey from childhood to adolescence. Just like day one of college, the dorm room is a blank canvas that is adorned only with a contemporary representation of oneself.

Looking at the image of my Freshman dorm desk, some things have not changed in 30+ years. The formica topped desk is still the same size, the walls are cinder block, there’s a wooden three drawer dresser that is pretty much indestructible, and there are only two outlets. As I zoom in, there are things that are now obsolete like a Webster’s dictionary, a box of #10 envelopes, a roll of return address labels, CD’s. On the shelf is my ‘Box of Rain’ book by Robert Hunter (I thought I was a Deadhead), on the edge of the corkboard a Ansel Adams calendar, and, just outside of the crop on this shot, a crushed Bud Light can biplane (yeah, thought that was pretty cool back then too). Those are individual things that combine to represent who I either was, or, who I wanted to be in the Fall of 1992. While that seems like a long time ago, it also just feels like a long slow blink.

From a photography standpoint, it was really interesting to revisit some of my earliest documentary work. Outside of getting better at some of the more technical aspects, if I were to shoot these portraits again today, on several of them, I would not change a thing. Perhaps that is influenced by a fair dose of nostalgia, but I’m okay with that because it’s kind of the whole point in going back into the vault…

I’ll be sharing the images organized, for purposes of presentation, by orientation and crop. More to follow soon!

It's the light that matters...

As a photographer, you often receive the gear centric compliment, “man, if only I had your camera, I could get great pictures too!”

That certainly may be true.

But I believe that the gear is mostly irrelevant.

What is far more important than the equipment is the art of learning how to see.

The two pictures above (spoiler alert, shot on an older model iPhone), were captured in the back office of a commercial building. The window you see in the bottom picture looks out into a warehouse. But from a lower angle, when the sun is at a certain position, as it happened to be when I glanced into the room, there is a very soft, diffused beam of light from a skylight that seemed to beautifully drift into the room. Ah, now there’s some interesting light!

The top picture was taken with my left shoulder parallel to the wall with the window. This is classic ‘window light’ type stuff, but my point here is that I was not in anyway looking to make a portrait. But my eye saw something, it stopped me in my tracks and from there it was just about envisioning a composition that evoked what I felt when I saw the mood of the light.

For an extreme contrast scene like this I recommend using an app that allows you to override the ‘auto exposure’ setting. Currently I use FilmicPro and Moment, but any halfway decent camera app will do. Other than that the only other thing I remind people is to clean their lens and have fun shooting.

Our camera phones are truly amazing. The cool part is that they’re pretty much within arms reach all the time.

So, don’t worry about the gear, embrace the challenge of really learning how to see light, and then go take more pictures!

The most important shot…is the next one

“The most important shot in golf is the next one.” - Ben Hogan

In a typical 5 hour golf match there are about 72 seconds of ‘action’.

Those action shots are pretty straightforward as long as you are in the right place, shooting with decent glass and have above average light.

I had the chance to follow a Varsity team through their season and I decided to focus on capturing their story in the time after the ‘last shot’ and before the ‘next one.’

That shift in mindset was a paradigm to how I’ve shot all other sports.

Instead of the high speed capture of a 110 mph driver swing I focused on a player’s eyes, as he stood on the tee box, visualizing how and exactly where he wanted his ball to stop after a 290 yard carry.

Instead of lining up for the triumphant fist pump shot after a long putt dropped, I moved to find a sliver of light etching across the player’s face as he tried to make a critical read on the green with the match on the line.

It was an incredible storytelling opportunity made even more special as the game was played in an amphitheater exploding in color while being overflown by once-in-a-decade migration of Painted Lady butterflies.