Winter 2019
- By s1ree1
I’m aiming for quarterly updates to my blog at this point, which should be a little bit easier for me to maintain. There may be the odd post stuck in between, but for now I’m not writing very much. The photography, however, has been progressing. I took my first big break from shooting this winter, after picking the camera back up in 2016. The wintertime I think is always a bit of a lull for many photographers who shoot primarily outdoors, but the previous couple years I actually shot a decent amount during the colder months. Last winter, I spent all my indoor time editing City of Dreams, and I would go for photo walks just as an escape.
This winter, I’m just editing photos, but the backlog is still tremendous – stretching back to 2017, which is almost hard to believe. So the photo walks have now ceased for a few months, because I realized I definitely don’t need more material to edit. Although there are huge benefits to not editing photos for months or years, there are risks as well. You run the risk of repeating yourself – taking the same photos over and over while never taking one to completion – only to be disappointed. But I think there is also the problem of your eye evolving – what intrigued me photographically a few years ago is in some ways less relevant.
I also got back into shooting film cameras over the last couple of years. This blog has basically avoided talking about equipment because there are a lot of places to go for that, but suffice to say that analog photography is sufficiently different from digital that this is at least worth a mention. Shooting a lot of film of course changes your eye and changes how you look at digital photography. I’m partial to the 35mm format for both, but ultimately both the format and medium itself are secondary and my intent is to move fluidly between them. In short, I truly love all cameras.
In terms of street art and graff, I’m still deep into documenting it. Living in Bushwick makes it fairly simple to incorporate capturing these pieces into my daily routines.
Speaking of daily routines, I took a break from Instagram this winter, and I highly recommend trying it if you haven’t. I’ll be back soon enough, but this break is beneficial enough to my sanity that I think I’ll probably repeat it at least once a year. For all its flaws and bullshit, I enjoy Instagram because it is the best way to reach new people, I’ve met some very cool folks there, made a few fans, and found so so many talented photographers. Too many, perhaps.
As important as it is to not live and work in a bubble where other artist’s work is alien to you, sometimes you need separation from external stimuli as well. This break resets, recharges and replenishes my own capacity for creative, original work, and my desire to seek out the same from others.
In other areas I’m still just getting started. Ive never shown any of my aerial photography before. Flying around the city is one of my true passions and I think we are finally at a point where portable drones have reached good image quality. The compositional possibilities this technology makes possible are really inspiring; there are so many angles of the city that we’ve never seen before once you leave the ground. However, let’s start with a familiar view.
The city itself never ceases to amaze and inspire me to shoot. That is why I made City of Dreams, which is going to be available to watch online soon. I felt like if I didn’t make this film, nobody else would, and after completing it I understand why – it was almost impossible, and it still has some rough edges. Since then I’ve worked on some smaller personal filmmaking projects and helped a few friends with theirs, but I have not committed to making a second film in 2019 yet. I don’t think the process of creating City of Dreams left me disillusioned about filmmaking – in fact it was very rewarding. But it was also an all-consuming and difficult process. Art can kill you if you’re not careful, but almost dying makes you feel very, very alive.