Kodachrome against a 255,255,255 sky
The rich but natural colors of Kodachrome 25 brought grayscale memories into a color age. The memories of the past captured on this emulsion were shaped by the film's tonality. The images are infused with a certain nostalgia for a time and place that feel far away.
In my first few working years as a photographer, I burned through hundreds of rolls of Fuji Press 800. Looking at the cool, deep colors of that film, with its minimal grain and great shadow detail remind me of those beginning years in Portland as I tried to figure out the complicated visual language of photography and where I wanted to go with it.
I'm mostly disappointed by the technology we now accept to record our present day. Everywhere I look, I see the ugly texture of digital noise from small camera chips, the clipped highlights that whiten so many skies and the slightly blurred, murky video grabs that pervade many news sites and newspapers.
The character of these images suggests a certain time period that for me at least started on 9/11 when my wife and I huddled around a computer screen, watching a tiny live video feed on WashingtonPost.com of the towers after the first plane hit. We didn't own a television at the time and watching the second plane hit was confusing, since the online video at that time consisted of a 200px wide image that denied the viewer anything in the way of detail. Yet for better or worse, it's that image, with the small, gray plane that took up just a few pixels as it moved jerkily across the frame and into the second tower that stays with me most when I think about that day.
As I set up for this shoot, the two subjects arrived, followed by ten more members of the DC Rastafarian community. We did one large group shot that my lights were maxed out to cover, but in needing to fill a vertical page the two person portrait won out.
after the event
Just a quick check-in from a two day shoot that brought me to NYC, Boston and now New Hampshire. Outside my hotel window my rental car is slowly being covered by a steady snowfall and a Sopranos rerun is on mute on the television. The access in New Hampshire hasn't been great, but it's hard not to be optimistic about this strange, plodding electoral process when you drive up to a middle school on a Wednesday night and see a line of people one hundred yards long waiting in the cold for a chance to see a candidate.
Clinton from afar
The disconnect between what the advance people for a presidential campaign think makes a good photo and the reality of what makes a good photo was on full display last night during a Clinton campaign stop in DC. After being escorted to the stage for 105 seconds (according to my image date stamps) of close access, we were brought to a 2nd floor spot approximately 50 yards from the stage, a position that demanded at least a 600mm lens to get any kind of close shot. After some discussion with the press person, it was clear this night was only going to get worse, so I hung back a bit as the rest of the press was escorted away and made my way downstairs.
At this point it might be more exciting to list my repertoire of stealth moves I used to get near the stage, but in reality it was lots of back tracking as I walked behind some curtains, through the kitchen that had been set up to prepare food and out into the glare of the stage lights as I found myself a few steps from Terry McAuliffe who was standing on the side of the stage.
I moved up a little bit more until I got that look from the Secret Service agent that meant going any further would result in a violent and efficient removal of myself from the area.
The sidelight worked well against the dark backdrop and I hung close as Senator Clinton wrapped up her speech and I waited for the inevitable breakdown of order that always concludes these events and would hopefully allow me to get closer.
In the end, negotiating fair access with the press people would have benefited them, as the photos of their candidate would have been better and benefited me in that I wouldn't have had to jump through so many hoops in order to get anything solid from the night.
I think there's a few factors at work here that have made these situations more difficult recently. First, you have people showing up with a point and shoot digital camera mounted on a monopod and getting self-righteous about freedom of press until they're allowed to stand with the rest of the press photographers. I'm not against free and open media access, but I am against people acting unprofessionally, casting a negative light on the whole profession and thereby making it harder for professionals to do their jobs. This in turn makes the campaign's press people wary of the photographers, lumping us all into this same unruly and combative group and results in the sort of penned-in situation that happened here.
I'm not sure there's an easy solution here without getting into some sticky issues about what constitutes legitimate press, but as the campaign season reaches a fever pitch, this feels like a situation that's going to get worse. The upside to all of this is that these restrictions will help separate the professionals whose ability to make great images in difficult situations will continue to be a valued skill.