Howdy-Ho

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve made a blog post. Since then, spring has officially hit and with it, a busier time of year for me. Since beginning this blog a few months ago, I’ve mostly used it when I have a larger collection of photos to share, some sort of cohesive set. As I type this, my “unposted” folder is a menagerie of one-offs, snapshots of friends, shots that didn’t make it into sets I’ve already posted—things I would typically post on Instagram but not make a full blog post with.

Also as I type this, eight rolls of undeveloped film are enroute to the lab to be processed, brimming with blog posts. I can’t even remember what’s on all of that film, as is usually the case, but I know there is more macro moss, skate, and tattoo series work to come.

Last year I shot 95 rolls of film. That’s almost a roll of film every four days. I entered 2022 feeling like I wanted to shoot less film—I sent a lengthy voice memo to my friend Amy that February rambling about how I wanted to take fewer frames and make more intentional work, and limit the projects I invested time into. At the time I was feeling a bit directionless in photography, and I didn’t want to waste film on things that didn’t mean anything to me.

Then, really, the opposite happened. I photographed everything. I photographed usual suspects like skating; I began photographing surfing and rodeos for the first time; I took self-portraits and portraits of friends; I documented my days and took lots of snapshots; I launched my tattoo stories series; I photographed my cats and plants and buildings and flowers and beaches and mountains and family. And all of it meant something to me.

I don’t know what to expect this year, even as we’re a quarter in. I’ve developed some solid projects I’ll continue working on; I’ll go where the lens takes me. I think this current batch of film I just sent out is probably the beginning of the year’s onslaught—from here the days will just get longer, the sun will shine later, daytrip roads will be calling, skate parks, surf breaks, bull pens, secret wooded enclaves with just me and a tripod. In the meantime, here are a few random shots from that unposted pile of detritus, just little moments my lens found her way to. Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.

Nevermind

I’ve posted recently about expired film, and also about skate photography, and today’s post combines the two. The following photos were shot on Kodak Max 400 (expired in 2008) at a small DIY in Richmond. I already had this film loaded in my camera (Minolta X-700) and killed off the last few frames, realizing I haven’t shot much skate on expired film before, if at all.

One of the things I love about photographing skate is the nineties nostalgia. Visit any skate spot and find skaters in wide-leg jeans and oversized t-shirts reminiscent of mid-nineties fashion. I was fourteen years old in 1995, and my brother and I were the first kids at our high school to rock the massively-legged JNCOs that soon overtook the denim zeitgeist. We paired them with boxy band tees, Hawaiian shirts, and pierced eyebrows.

Last spring I was standing along the perimeter at Texas Beach skate park, camera in hand, waiting for the right shot to come whizzing into frame, when I found myself transported back to my adolescence—all around me, boys in baggy jeans, and blaring tinnily from a portable speaker connected to someone’s iPhone, a playlist of Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana.

I like the worn quality of expired film, the softness of the images similar to the faded graphic on a thrifted tee, how it makes you think of the year it was meant to be used. There’s a timelessness to film photographs, and to culture that pervades multiple decades, a sense that no matter where you are in time and space, you can show up and see that you have a place there.

Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.

Time Capsules

Part two of my tattoo story series with Amber focuses on pieces she’s collected over the years commemorating family, friends, and identity (click here for part one, Amber’s love of nature and childhood ties to flora and fauna). One of my favorite tattoos of Amber’s is a bright collection of designs dedicated to her late grandmother.

“She absolutely hated my tattoos,” Amber told me. “And I only had maybe like five when she knew that I had tattoos. When she passed away, I wanted to get one for her. She was a country club lady, very rich, very prim and proper. She would never go anywhere without her lipstick and her nails painted, so that’s what those are.”

“She had these plates that were from Japan, because my granddaddy served over in Japan, and she fell in love. It’s a specific kind of Japanese blue. She had a huge amount of that kind of pottery around her house.”

Amber’s finger traveled down the same arm to a simple tattoo near her elbow. “Dan, my bestie, and I have that one. It’s a fork and a paintbrush because we met in grad school, which was an art program, and then Dan and I love to eat food together.”

Some friendship tattoos, however, don’t age as well as others, and not just in terms of how well the ink holds up. On the back of Amber’s arm is a dinosaur and volcano cleverly hiding an old connection gone sour. “It was a triangle with three triangles in it,” Amber said of the piece that the volcano now covers. “It was a friend tattoo, and I am no longer friends with one of those people, like bad separation. So I got it covered up. I wanted a velociraptor because I fucking love dinosaurs.”

The velociraptor is not Amber’s only coverup. Another spills over her shoulder, a large colorful flower. “It was a whole bunch of words written over each other that spelled out ‘bisexual.’ And it was the colors of the bisexual flag. I got that when I first came out, and I no longer identify as bisexual, I identify as pansexual as language changed and developed. And I was like, I don’t want to get another tattoo for pansexuality, so I’m just going to get a queer, pretty rainbow flower.”

We move to a deer head inked on the back of Amber’s left calf. “That one is for my granddaddy. He passed away before Granny did, a good handful of years. All of the things in that are things I grew up with around him. He taught me how to plant tomatoes; there was a magnolia tree in his front yard; he was huge into landscaping and gardening. And he loved snapdragons, those are the flowers.”

“His signature’s on it, as well as a little cat. Granddaddy would always sign his name with a little cat. Every single one of the cards or letters he ever wrote me. And they never had cats!”

Towards the front of the same leg is a matching tattoo Amber shares with her wife, Chris, two overlapping triangles. “Mine’s pointed down, which symbolizes earth, and if it’s pointed up, it symbolizes air. And it’s also just a queer symbol. A lot of queers have it and it was used to identify yourself as someone who’s in the queer community. And I think also, I forget if it’s up or down, but one’s masculine and one’s feminine. And Chris likes having it on her arm because it can be either way.”

I love Amber’s way of combining a bunch of details in a tattoo to commemorate someone she’s lost, like the memorial pieces for her grandparents, and the circular otter swimming in a pool of things that remind Amber of a late friend. It feels like a time capsule dedicated to that person.

“It’s for my friend Meg who passed away in grad school. She died of cancer, which really fucking blows because she was in remission for almost ten years and then in grad school it came back, and it took her within like five months. It was awful. But it’s just a bunch of her favorite things. She was from Ohio and had never been to the beach, and loved the sunshine. The triangle was like feminine, beach. She loved otters. She was a big yogi. And that’s her favorite Carolina rose.”

These photos are part of an ongoing project documenting people’s tattoos and their stories. I originally began sharing this work on my Instagram before moving to a blog format, so more can be found there. All the stories and photos collecting in this series will eventually be collected into a zine you can hold and smell and keep on a shelf.

Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.