Bang Bang

Another set from my impromptu New Years shoot with Amy. This was Amy’s wildcard look (see my previous post for more on the concept). I’ve been toying around with a Vivatar hot shoe flash that I bought on eBay last year—these are some of the first photos I’ve gotten processed using it, and I’m really happy with the effect. This’ll be a quick post text-wise; I’m shooting it off in the last ten minutes of my lunch break. Sometimes it’s hard to find time to do all the things I want to do. I work full time, and I’m writing a novel, and I have friends and meals to cook and laundry to do, and I go to the gym. Taking the actual photos is the least time-consuming part of my work with photography—I spend more time in the process of organizing and sharing that work, creating zines and this blog and compiling series and so much more. Every minute of our busy days is valuable, so I appreciate the time my readers spend visiting this space.

Photos taken on Kodak 200 film and Minolta X-700 camera. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

Her Own and Better

Wintertime is often a time of hibernation for me. The sun sets too early for natural light photo projects after work, my clothes feel heavy and bulky. It’s cold (well, usually). I mostly want to veg out on the couch and binge bad TV. But when my good pal Amy, whom I hadn’t seen in awhile, texted me on New Years Day morning and said, “Wyd today? Was thinking we should have a shoot,” I got my ass in gear.

The idea was three looks for both of us: one Amy outfit, one Lydia outfit, and one wildcard. Often when Amy and I get together for a shoot, we wing it. We each have photographic pursuits that are more intentional—Amy is a queen of conceptual photography and meaningful portraiture, and I tend to focus on documentarian series. I think we tend to see photoshoots with each other as a time to play. We pick some interesting wardrobe, a location, and then just see what happens.

This first set is of the “Lydia” look. Have you ever hung an item of clothing beside another garment, just to put it away, and thought, Oh I should wear those together? I had that revelation hanging a romantic, blousy top beside a pair of light pink hot pants (gifted to me by Amy, incidentally) one day, and had been meaning to photograph myself in it. Amy took her cue from this ensemble and went pastel romantic in her own pair of the same hot pants and a cheeky bow tie tube top. We met at her house, draped a swath of pink Swiss dot tulle over a lamp in her living room, and set to work.

The photos in this post are primarily of Amy—she took her own set of pictures of me. There are a couple at the top featuring both us, photos I took using the cable release I mentioned in my last post. I think it’s a little unusual for Amy to portray herself so softly in photos. She like a bold aesthetic; she likes strength, and color, and lines. Pretty romanticism is definitely a Lydia lane, and I love seeing how my friend interprets this piece of me. These are some of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken of her, and I’ve taken a lot. I love the muted light, and the way Amy brings an element of mystery to a set that could otherwise read banal. She elevated my original idea, and made it her own, and made it better.

I’m really bad at notating what film stocks I shot because I use so many, and haven’t gotten the negatives back yet to check, but this was either a Kodak 200 or 400, Gold or Ultra Max. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.

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.