Autumn Woods Revisited

Some of these photos will look familiar to those of you who follow my Instagram—I posted them there back in November shortly after this shoot. I had a few that hadn’t been shared yet though, and since launching the blog, decided to include the whole set here with a little update.

I shot this set of self-portraits on an expired roll of Kodak Max 400 and my dad’s old point & shoot at Bryan Park in late October. Expired film often comes out a bit dark, and while I liked the original scanned images, I made some edits using VSCO to bring out the color a bit more. It’s rare for me to edit film photos post-production, meaning I don’t tweak things like color saturation or contrast beyond the basic corrections the lab makes when they scan the images. I shoot film in part because I like the look of film, and I like the element of imperfection and unpredictability that comes with not being able to see your images in the moment they are created and make adjustments to your camera settings if something isn’t quite ideal, like you would on a digital camera.

I like using my dad’s old point & shoot for self-portraits because it has a self-timer, and while my SLRs take a bit sharper images, I have to use a manual cable release to make self-portraits on those. The cable release I use is basically a long, narrow rubber tube with a little attachment on one end that screws into my shutter button (the button you press to take the photo) and a hollow rubber ball on the other end. I squeeze the rubber ball when I’m ready to take the shot, and a gust of air travels through the tube and presses the shutter button for me. There are a few limitations to using the cable release—I have to be within 20 feet of my camera because that’s how long the tube is, and I have to consider the fact that I am going to be either squeezing the ball in my hand or pressing on it with my foot when posing myself. It’s doable, and worth the trouble, and I shoot the majority of my self-portraits this way, but on a day like this one when I just wanted to wander into the woods and snap a few hassle-free photos of myself, the self-timer comes in handy.

I hope y’all like to hear a little bit about my process, and if there’s anything I do that you’d like more insight into, please leave a comment and let me know. When I started this blog, I knew I wanted to move away from Instagram being my primary platform for photo sharing, and I wanted more freedom in how I share my work. I didn’t really have a plan in terms of how the work would be contextualized with the text in these posts, but I’ve found I like to share the process behind the photographs. I like talking about how things came together, what happened the day the photos were made, my approach to photography and technique and style. It’s nice to have the space here to do that.

Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Romanticism School of Art

Part two of engagement photoshoot with Haley and Colter, shot in December at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Check out my previous post, “Love in the Museum,” for more images from this day and commentary on the shoot.

The above image is called a “first of the roll” in the film community, characterized by the white portion at the bottom of the frame. The first of the roll is the first photograph taken on the roll of film, and if you don’t wind your film too far before taking the first shot, you will get an image on the portion of the film that was exposed to light when you were loading the film, with the portion that was fully exposed to light coming out white.

The color images were shot on CineStill 800T and the black and white were taken on Ilford Delta 3200. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Love in the Museum

It’s not often that I take people’s portraits outside of my series projects, but when Haley asked me to photograph her and fiancé Colter’s recent engagement, it was a emphatic yes. I’ve worked with Haley a few times over the years, photographing each other, and I was honored to be asked to capture this moment for the young couple.

Haley and Colter got engaged at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts about a month before our shoot, and we agreed the museum was the perfect backdrop for the photos. Shooting in the museum proved to be a little trickier than we expected—I’d done a photoshoot with my cousin there a few years ago with no issues, but it seems their policies have gotten a bit stricter since. Our plan had been to shoot mostly along the perimeters of the museum, near sunny windows and away from the main galleries, and especially wanted to capture a few shots in the space featuring the tall stained glass panels above, where Haley and Colter had taken their first engagement photos on their smartphones the month before. But as we entered the space and began setting our things down, a museum guard informed us that photoshoots were limited to the museum’s downstairs atrium and the Marble Hall. He was friendly about it and almost apologetic, a wink in his voice as he said he was obligated to tell us the policy before he left the corridor, giving us a few minutes alone to quickly snap the first-of-the-roll shot above.

We had a little better luck in an alcove on the east face of the building where the original museum entrance is located. The first guard had told us that the photoshoot policy had to do with something related to copyrights, so I asked the guard manning the east entrance if we could grab a few photos as long as we didn’t feature any of the art in them, and he shrugged and said sure.

We moved to the Marble Hall and atrium for a few more indoor shots before heading out to the grounds. The day was a mix of “act now, apologize later” and asking permission, grabbing what we could in restricted areas and making the most of the approved ones.

More from this day to come. The color film stock used is CineStill 800T and the black and white is Ilford Delta 3200, both shot on Minolta SLRs.

Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.