Choosing a 35mm Camera

Check out my most recent set of pictures from Venice Beach Here.

I found a good article on I Still Shoot Film talking about what to look for when you buy a 35mm film camera for people who are looking to get into film photography. Shooting a film camera has great benefits such as slowing you down/thinking critically, higher quality images (even still at 35mm), and being a hell of a great time to shoot.

Finding them are ridiculously easy. I bought both of my 35mm cameras on ebay. My old pentax K1000 I got  for 45 bucks but regularly go for 45-100 for a decent one, and my canon rebel for $20 practically brand new. I highly reccommend it to anybody who shoots pictures regularly. Even more so to my readers in Japan since film is still fairly easy to find and get developed.

I've also shot with a Nikon FM10 and a Canon AE-1 and those were great options as well.

You can check out the article here.

 My newest set of pictures will be out on Thursday morning.

Go out and shoot this Wednesday and have a great time not blowing up your hands with fireworks, and enjoy your 4th of July. I think i am going to Downtown Disney to get some Firework shots.

Venice, The Menace, Part 2. Moar?!

Welcome back all to Part 2 of my epic journey to the heart of Venice Beach. Most of Part 1 was made to show off some awesome colors and the work of some ridiculously talented artists. Part 2 is to show off some of the landscapes and buildings from the trip there and the surrounding area.

I guess I was too lazy, or it was very difficult to actually map out the locations of my vantage points. So, There isn't a map this week.

Let me know what you think

Venice, The Menace Part 1

I took many photos on this shoot so I split em up into separate groups. Once again, My thanks go out to Susie with all the bad ass ideas.

Here is a general map of where the photos were taken for this set. I'll probably run the next set on Friday so stay tuned for that.

And you can check out my older slideshow photos here

Old Town Garden Grove

Sorry for being a day late. I was being really lazy yesterday.

This weeks adventures took me to Old Town Garden Grove. It was a nice, short 15 minute bus drive down the street from where I live. While Southern California has many cities, some seem to have better downtown districts than others. It might be that some of these cities like Anaheim, Fullerton, and Santa Ana have literally been in existence since the 1800s. Garden Grove was nowhere near as spectacular as Santa Ana or Fullerton, but you have to make do with what you have. Lucky for me, I am an expert at making do with what I have.

You can view where these photos were shot Here

I hope you enjoy.

A Quick Look Back at Spring

I've recently been working my images using Adobe Lightroom. I had heard people talking about how good a program it was and how fast it was to edit your pictures in it. I scoffed at them mostly because I shoot film. Why do I need a program that cheats for me? Now that I'm using it, I don't see an end in the foreseeable future. These are all pictures that were shot in Black and White film, scanned in at least at 1200dpi. Most of you casual readers have seen many of these, but I did throw in a couple of new ones, like the picture of my cat and the garden from Stone Brewery.

I have a set that I shot at Old Town Garden Grove last week that'll go up on Friday and I have two sets from Venice Beach that will go up next week.

You can check the Garden Grove pictures out a little early Here.

Laziness?

I think so!! This rant/thought is not intended to be toward any casual photographers. IE Instagram, smartphone cameras, or people who don't go as full out as I do (which happens to be most everybody).

As many know by now, I am an avid film user. Its how I learned and its how I can focus on subjects. I held out a rediculous amount of time from buying a digital because I thought it would make me lazy. It turns out, after two months of shooting digital, I kind of have become slightly lazy. Not the kind of lazy where the only exercise I get is getting up to grab another beer (that was last summer) or pushing the buttons on the TV remote, This kind of laziness is where I shoot a butload of pictures without really caring about what I shoot.

My percentage of usable shots has gone up from 1:4 to 1:3. Thats a pretty good jump. The laziness hasn't affected that part of my work. Where it has messed with me is the frequency I've been planning and thinking before shooting.

Planning is an important step for us overactive people. I've been getting pretty darn good at it while buying off of Ebay. Planning works its best magic by keeping me grounded to what I'm working on, what I am looking for, and how easy it is for me to reach my goal. If you've been reading along the last month or so, you can see how well I plan my writing out because it is real shit most of the time. Spelling mistakes, and horrible grammer. Everything to make every english teacher I've ever had cringe and hope to god that it ends. Why oh Why, does it keep on happening?

Thinking, even more, is crucial. Photography is quite similar to a contact sport like hockey (the only real sport coincidentally). Every moment is fast and crucial. You never know when that right portrait jumps in front of you, the winning touchdown is caught, or you just happen to walk in front of the most beautiful house you have ever seen. My mind moves at an extraordinary pace. Plus, when I was born, they forgot to install a shutoff switch. Once I move up to 4x5 sheet sized film, in the next month or so, my critical thinking will need to reach a level I never fathomed. Setting up the right composition. waiting for people to either get in the frame or to leave it. measuring the correct sunlight in every single shadow.

Christ... Who am I kidding. Life will be just the same. I just need a meter and some chemicals and welcome home my black and white film and my trusty Lubitel 2. Yeah, that sounds like what I want to do.

/rant

Oh by the way, check out my lovely pictures I made at Huntington Central Park. Part 1 and Part 2

ps.. as one last thought, well more of a self admission. My shots are not shit. They are quite good. I prefer my black and white photos shot on medium/120 format Ilford HP5+ film and developed by my hands using Xtol in my Paterson 2 reel tank. The only part I hate about the summertime is buying my own chemicals or waiting till August.

Huntington Central Park: World of Color

A map where all of these pictures were taken here