New thing here. Let’s try it out.

I’m going to start doing a photo(s) of the day kinda thing. Doesn’t mean I’ll post everyday but I’d like to start. I’ll post a photo that I like and talk about it for a bit. I think that’ll get some pent up energy out of my head, maybe? Let’s see..

Here’s Jonathan Richman. I caught him for a second time at the old Northside ZACC basement in Oct. 2018. It was crowded. The tiny eight inch high stage wasn’t really accommodating for getting a good view of his beautiful face. You could hear him though and it was wonderful. The crowd was quiet, respectful, hanging on every whimsical song and word that Mr. Richman seemed to conjure out of the basement air. He’d stare off in the distance and say something in French, maybe say something in Italian, maybe something in that weird Massachusetts drawl. Talk about his wife and then he’d dance. And he sure danced.

He’s been an influence on me for quite awhile. Ideas of simplicity and restraint and finding beauty in being stripped down and unembellished. His songs get stuck in your head and never leave. I think it’s also his nasally delivery too, it’s endearing.

I shot this photo with a Nikon F5 and a Nikon 85mm f2 manual lens I believe. It’s a big camera and it’s still super capable and tough despite being 25 years old. It still looks modern too, strangely. Regardless, for a quiet show like this I needed a quiet camera. Im always super nervous about disturbing the performers. At punk shows il use a flash cause they don’t seem to mind. Shits going off, stuff is loud, so a flash is pretty innocuous. I always ask beforehand though.

I wasn’t going to use a flash on Jonathan though. Definitely wasn’t that kinda show. So I opted for a high speed film, wide aperture and slow shutter speed. Im glad I got these shots cause you run the risk of motion blur, unfocused images and just an image that’s too dark. The high speed film is another factor. I used Ilford Delta 3200. With that film stock you get gobs of grain, like snow flakes or tv static but that’s what you have these days if you want to shoot film and im fine with that. I like grain, looks real, looks cool and in this case I think it makes the images work better.

The final darkroom print that I made looks fantastic and I think that’s all that matters. That’s the last stop for film photography. That beautiful big print that you can hold in your hand and hang on your wall. The technical aspects that I mentioned above don’t mean much to your non-photographer buddies. It doesn’t mean much to what the feeling is in the photo, the feelings that the viewer gets, what’s captured in the image and what it means to the outside world devoid of anything else. As long as you get anything that says something visually. That’s the goal.
I feel like I rarely do that and im always working towards that.

Here’s a third picture that isn’t is good but I like it:

It was shot with my Leica M4 on Kodak Tri-X film. I pushed it to 1600 ISO since I didn’t have much light using a 50mm Summicron lens. You can see that grain here as well.

Im glad I got to see one of my musical heroes. It was as I imagined too, sweet and funny and weird. All the stuff I love.