Imitating Jan Scholz

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Photoshoot with Sandy, 2012
Nikkormat, 135mm lens

Photography has taken me down several paths, one of which is portraiture with models. In 2012 I accompanied my friend Katie to her shoot with Sandy. This was my first shoot with a model. I had a five dollar Nikkormat with a color roll from Walgreens. Kirk gave me a 135mm lens. Katie helped pose Sandy and I got a decent photo or two out of the deal.

I upgraded to a DSLR the next year and booked a few models to photograph. Katie recommended I create a “mood board” so I did. I collected other peoples portraits that I liked on Tumblr and referenced it during the shoot. I even opened a casting call titled “Moody Portraits”. I had decent luck shooting this way for some time.

Over the years I added and added to this “mood board” and, well, there was no cohesive mood left. My photos became disconnected from any central idea. All my portraits in 2016 and 2017 reflected nothing more than an average mash of the mood board. Any photographer with a DSLR would get these shots. My “Moody Portraits” project was effectively dead.

I started photographing medium format in early 2018 and decided to dust off the old profile on Model Mayhem. I wanted to come up with a new project. This is when I discovered Jan Scholz’s work. He is based out of Belgium and like me holds a non-photography full-time job. His portraits are breathtaking. I later realized that he shoots only film in small, medium and large format.

Jan’s work gave me the idea for a project of my own. I built a new “mood board” with photos only from Jan.

My current mood board; all photos by Jan Scholz

I made a list of the type of poses I liked the best, a list of angles of the head, placement of hair, line of sight and bends of joints, etc.. I wrote these down in index cards and I take them with me to a photo shoot. When we are stuck during a shoot, I pull out the index cards for a quick reference.

To be clear, I am not trying to copy Jan’s photos. I am only trying to imitate the feeling in his portraits while using my slow, deliberate style. Further, my choice of models, venue, camera/lens, and film choices all color my particular interpretation of this project.

Austin Kleon said it best: Steal like an artist

Iterate

Ask any good artist and they will tell you how important it is to iterate. Like lifting weights to build muscle, iterating for artists builds an art-muscle. Artists must iterate to develop their taste in art and their skill in performing the art. More importantly, iterating helps distill an idea into something elegant.

I continue to sharpen the focus of my portrait project. I want to iterate on this idea and I am committed to it. To do this I approach my friends, family, and acquaintances for their time to sit for me. Photographing people you already know and like makes better photos; your images become deeper than the veneer of skin. Guy Tal talks about this in his blog post The Healing Landscape:

“Most images presented as photographs of the natural landscape are, in fact, not made in the natural landscape. Rather, they are made at the edge of it, where it meets the artifice of the human-made landscape—from roads and well-used trails, within easy reach of comforts and services—the edge delineating us from it: the wild. Such images portray the appearance of the landscape — its veneer, its skin — same as the portrait of a person’s face made by one who possesses no deep familiarity with that person.”

— Guy Tal, The Healing Landscape

The response from the people I approach is mixed. Some readily accept while others hesitate. Some messages get lost entirely in the confusion of social media. I will have better success if I run into more people in real life so I can make a bid for their time. Unfortunately paths only cross virtually in a fleeting comment thread on the News Feed. The News Feed is the new edge of natural landscape using Guy Tal’s words.

I approach models to fill the gaps in my time and to iterate more. We may not have a personal connection but I can still practice the medium. I try to find up-and-coming models who might want to add my project to their portfolio; we both get practice and it only costs us our time. Since I live in Lakeland which isn’t exactly drowning in creatives I have to travel to Tampa or Orlando. This limits me to weekends and time becomes a bottle-neck quickly.

Moreover, unpaid models typically reschedule, cancel or just not show up. A guaranteed shoot comes at an additional cost. I may have to travel somewhere to meet the model and I will have to pay their hourly rates. I will willingly pay a model when my idea is solid and when I can depend firmly on my skills. This is just not a cost I can bear right now while I am still iterating.

More people will be willing to work with me when I can show more consistent and developed skill, but I can’t develop my skill unless I have worked with more people. Catch 22. Where does this leave me but in the mercy of patience? I have a few shoots scheduled for the next several weekends. I expect a number of them to get cancelled or rescheduled.

I just have to keep at it. Perhaps I should take this time to make portraits of landscapes.

“…portraits of the natural landscape offer a glimpse into the depth and drama of its story, and arouse instinctive notions from far recesses of our brains — those places that remain wild and that are often consciously suppressed to accommodate demanding careers and urban lifestyles.”

— Guy Tal, The Healing Landscape

Reading Fiction

A funny thing happened when I started reading fiction last December: I wanted to work with photographs again. Creative pathways came unstuck. Good fiction paints vivid word-pictures much like a photographer builds an image. I started looking through and processing all the photographs from the October's Boston/Shenandoah trip. I sent off six old 35mm rolls to get developed. I started carrying my Nikon FE around.

And then I started getting really into it. I bought the Mamiya C220, a Pentax Digital Spotmeter and started shooting medium format. I am deep into sensitometry in Ansel Adams’ Book 2. I went all academic with this pursuit.

This is how I overthink. I will get impatient soon, then burn out! I’ve done it before with other interests.

Incidentally my enthusiasm to purchase novels far surpasses my conviction to read them all. Ian McEwan’s The Children Act is next in a long queue of unread books. I am one page into it and it is already working.

Muted Colors

I am a fairly new Lightroom user. After learning basic adjustments I started using VSCO presets on my photos. I was particularly fond of presets that produced lively greens and warm hues in my photographs. My taste has changed to muted colors lately; I particularly notice blues and earth-tones.

I first noticed these muted colors in the beautiful photography of Voaa and Missy Prince. Negative Feedback's LA eposide had these tones. I was drawn to the subtle colors of the light and airy photographs. Someone didn't just turn the saturation dial down.

Shifting work-life balance affects my photography. I feel notably less creative to shoot in months when I am particularly busy at work. I have also taken on more responsibility and I think the added pace makes me seek out colors and textures that are more subdued, less bombastic; colors that give me space to slow down a bit.

Fujifilm Pro 400H

I shot three rolls of Fujifilm Pro 400H and I love every frame. The colors feel true even though they are a bit muted. The photo of the farm needed an exposure range of 5 zones (shadow in EV 10, sky in EV 15) and the film nailed it. The shadow of the trees did not lose any detail, and neither did the clouds. Given this was my first clear day exposing with a spotmeter there is a fair chance the film fixed my mistakes.

Color negatives are more forgiving than black and white negatives especially if you overexpose. Plus or minus one stop barely makes a difference. Fujifilm Pro 400H is particularly forgiving. I try to get the exposure right but the colors stay muted and slightly washed. Such is the nature of this film. So different from the always-golden-hour tones of Provia 400.

Provia 400

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Cypres buddies, sunny morning, Provia 400
f11, 1/250 sec handheld
Metered with a Nikon FE, 50mm lens

I took this photo with Provia 400 in the morning light. Warm tones on the foliage are nice but the yellow tone in the sky is a bit too much for my liking. In my eyes, the photo of the farm above renders the blue sky better. The sky in the farm was Zone 8 and it should be close to getting blown out but it didn't. I don't know what EV or zone the sky was in this photo with the Cypres because I took it before I owned a spotmeter.

Provia cast a similar yellow tone on portraits. More on that in another post.

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Duvet in the morning light, Provia 400
f4, 1/60 sec, handheld
Shaded duvet in EV 5 to EV 8, placed EV 8 at zone 5
Highlights are EV 10, placed in zone 7

Provia 400 worked better on the duvet than it did the cypres trees. Maybe Provia does better with indoor shots. I have loaded my last roll of Provia 400 in the camera. Maybe I will spend it on some indoor portraits.

Other considerations

I don't want to stop at Pro 400H before trying a few more options. As my work falls into a manageable cadence I want to try out a few rolls where the color is richer.

Films like Velvia 50 are more saturated and I haven’t felt the need to try these. I am not a big fan of the green tones of Porta though the colors look really good. I hear Ektachrome is coming back! I ordered two rolls of Cinestill 50D. At $18 a roll, they are twice the price of any other roll I have used. It is a new roll to the market and I want to give it a shot. I also want to try Ektar 100 but the internet says it should have a similar color saturation to the Cinestill 50D.

The real trick is to find a film that does both landscapes and portraits well. All signs point to black and white.

Changing Trajectories

I have left a trail of blog posts marking every time an idea crystalized in head. I haven’t captured the little course corrections I made along the way. There is a logical path and you can trace it. I purchased a super cool and portable rangefinder style digital camera last April and now I lug around a 1960s twin lens reflex (TLR) camera. The orderliness part of my head wants to write about the trajectory but I want to skip it for now.

I have nearly abandoned my digital cameras. I abandoned iPhone photography ages ago. The new FujiFilm X100F sits neatly in its soft shell carrying case. I am out walking with a heavy 3 pound TLR camera around my neck looking through a Pentax Digital Spotmeter figuring out which EV reading should go in which Zone. I write down EV readings, camera settings, etc. after every shutter click.

Somewhere along this trajectory, sometime in the last 6 months, digital photography became moot. I shifted away from the decisive moment. Guy Tal too explored this idea in the most recent Lenswork magazine (Issue 134, Feb 2018).

”When I trip the shutter, it’s not because some serendipitous decisive event had presented itself. Rather, it is the random moment when I feel prepared, having spent what time I needed to comtemplate whatever called out — sometimes just whispered — to me…”

If you want a good digital camera then upgrade your phone to the newest, shiniest flagship. I want photography to stay more relevant to me than capturing decisive moments. I want to work hard at it. I want to learn a deeper more focused skill. The TLR camera mirrors the world under its ground glass; it makes you stop and think before clicking the shutter. Nothing in this Mamiya C220 tells you what the correct shutter speed should be. You must figure it out. You decide how much light to let in.

You decide what’s important. That’s hard.

P.S. I don't mean to imply photographing the decisive moment is easy. It isn't. It is a different skill and requires different mental muscles.

New and Old

My interest in photography waned in 2014 and kept declining. I did not take a single photo with my DSLR in 2016. I was occupied with woodworking, youtube video production, work, and my wedding. I dusted off the DSLR a few months ago at a whim and began shooting again.

In the past years when I was actively shooting, I knew exactly how a scene would photograph through the perspective of my prime lens. I would have already made the photograph in my mind before lifting the camera to my eye. The click of the shutter was a formality and nothing more. I have lost that skill without constant practice and I have to learn it all again.

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Shooting with a 35mm film SLR accelerates this learning process. Even though I shoot fewer photos with the Nikon FE, the shot is not accessible immediately after releasing the shutter. This lag forces me to be vigilant and mindful, and learn very quickly to see the world through the perspective of the camera. The pressure really helps.

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The Fujifilm X100F is a rangefinder style digital point-and-shoot. You can see the similarities to analog cameras of yesterday. Sitting side by side with the Nikon FE, they could have come from the same factory in Japan a few decades ago. The real charm of the Nikon FE and the Fujifilm X100F is their ability to get out of the way of the shot. A good camera is one you don’t have to think about. A good camera does not come between the photographer’s eye and his photograph. The little Fujifilm promises this.

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I see myself shooting with both these cameras in the next few months, and dare I say exclusively these two. They look like close cousins even though enormous canyons of time and technology separate them both.

They will make a fun pair.

Familiar yet unfamiliar

I tried blogging daily for a while. I was on a roll about the Metaphysics of Quality till I realized that I did not really understand it entirely. So I stopped writing what I thought I knew and started reading the two books by Pirsig back to back. This time I marked pages and wrote in the margins. I feel closer to understanding MOQ than I have been.

Reading Pirsig always sends me off on a pursuit of sorts like riding a motorcycle in familiar yet unfamiliar country. The curves of the road and the sights after turns seem familiar, but are they?

I have put woodworking aside since I paused it before my wedding a year ago. My youtube channel gets comments asking when I will post new videos. I thank them and tell them I don’t know. Two videos a week was hard. That channel became about video making which I love. Woodworking lost the focus which I want to love.

Over the years I have picked up several major hobbies: bicycle commuting and advocacy, photography, videography and woodworking. To be honest, these are amateur-apprenticeships, not just hobbies. I was serious about them and I invested my time and money into them.

The simple fact is it is hard to nurture several amateur-apprenticeships if you want to make deep and meaningful progress.

To make it worse, I switch from one to another.

And every time I make a switch, I feel guilty and sad about the last amateur-apprenticeship I have left behind. These days, I am making a focused effort of doing street photography and street portraiture, something I have naturally been drawn to anytime I have been out photographing. I want to spend a day a week photographing people on the street. Maybe start woodworking on the weekends.

It feels like a ride on a familiar yet unfamiliar road again.

My Relationship with Photography

Towards the end of 2013, I was intellectually diverging away from the snapshot style photos that I was taking since I bought my iPhone 4s. These photos were becoming ubiquitous in social media. Most people had phones with very good cameras and good photos were becoming common place.

It was also during 2013 that I was discovering my aesthetic with DSLRs. My go to set up is a full-frame Canon 6D with an old Nikor 28mm prime lens in its all-manual glory: manual focus, manual apperture and no zoom. My journey with this set-up, and with my experience taught me the emotional world captured through photography. Photographing was transcending from a documentary and social media sharing venture to an emotional exercise for me.

I think about this time often. This is one of the times I have come close to Pirsig's idea of quality -- the intersection where reason and emotion meets. The physical set-up of the camera was key, but the photos that came out of it were so much more than the sum total of the parameters of the photograph.

That time has gone. I met my now wife, Heather and switched most of my emotional focus towards our relationship. Then my lovely Laya died. Sighthound Studio finds its name from her. These things change our minds. Neither for better, nor for worse. Just change. I don't pick up the camera for photography any more. Heck, I raraly use my iPhone to take pictures. The Canon and Nikor lens set up is not just a tool to record video for my YouTube channel.

My time spent thinking, feeling, and loving photography will always bring fond memories. I am better off for having lived through that time.