alia’s favorite chair.
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Due to unforeseen visa issues over in Shanghai, my visit to Los Angeles overlapped with my brother and his family’s visit for just three days. And in those three days, my niece Alia quickly found her favorite zonking-out spot: my father’s favorite chair, which soon became her own. Had I stayed longer, this would have been a pretty spectacular series. As it is, it’s pretty adorable.
In case you think the zonking-out qualities of this chair are limited to three year olds, here’s a old photo demonstrating why this is also my father’s favorite chair.
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laramie (1).
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I’d read recently that there are only two sets of escalators in all of Wyoming — and neither set is in Laramie, a town in the southeastern part of the state that’s home to the University of Wyoming and roundabout 30,000 people. From what I could tell, there’s little need for escalators in a place that, by and large, has few buildings over three stories tall — and in a place with few tall buildings, you can take in the majesty of the wide open skies all that much more.
Laramie sits between two mountain ranges, and there’ll be a future post showing some of that loveliness. But for now, here are some photos taken around town, mostly around dusk. All but the first were taken with the Pentax 6×7; that very top photo, of a nearby cement plant, was taken with the Leica M6.
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That shade of turquoise blue is very popular in Laramie, from what I can ascertain.
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That’s an empty plant in the photo above; a few minutes later, we made a u-turn of sorts down a parallel road and took one more shot as the sun peaked out from behind the clouds and inched ever closer to the horizon. Photo below that: the local second-run movie theatre. Gorgeous signage!
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And of course, the open road.
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LAX.
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While waiting in the international arrivals terminal at LAX earlier this month for my brother and his family to clear passport control — they’re in from Shanghai for a monthlong holiday here in the States — I wandered around the place with the Pentax, first with Kodak Portra 160 color film, and then a second walk through with Fomapan 100. I don’t think I’m actually much of a formalist, but the sheer scale of airport architecture can’t help but elicit some musings on the intersections of lines and shadows.
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As I was setting up the shot above, an airport worker walked in front of the camera with a whole row of SmarteCartes. I just had to snap a photo.
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san francisco (1).
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A few photos from my all-too-brief stop in San Francisco.
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venice beach verticals.
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[AKA, Three Plants and a Chair]
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I’m back from my vacation out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Wyoming. Quite rested, and now quite exhausted from scanning 37 rolls of film (and I’m still not done yet!). Here are some photos from early in the trip, on a bright Sunday afternoon in Venice Beach, CA, where I met up with some friends also visiting from New York City. Before and after brunch, I snapped some photos with the big fat Pentax. The 2pm light was far harsher than I would have liked, but I figured I’d try it out anyway.
Many — MANY — more photos to come.
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jet plane, etc.
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I am outta here! For two weeks, anyway. I’m heading to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Laramie (Wyoming!) for a whirlwind vacation full of family and friends. Though I’ll love New York City to the end of my days, I have to say that I’m ready for two weeks of non-NYC-ness. (Even with the best skyline ever!)
I’ll still be posting a photo a day over on my Tumblr, so go there if you’re itching for some film photography. In the meanwhile: be well, take a photo or two, and if you can, do as I most certainly will do and relax a bit, won’t you?
[Photo above: taken with the Hasselblad at Brooklyn Bridge Park this past week.]
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monumental brooklyn.
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Way back in the mid-aughts, I filed a dissertation that relied heavily on the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an Italian architect whose etchings of the rediscovery of ancient Roman ruins depicted a world in which men were dwarfed by the monumental structures around them. (This was only part of the dissertation; for more, go here, and STOP CRINGING ALREADY.)
On Friday afternoon, en route to meeting some old friends in Brooklyn Bridge Park, down near Dumbo and the Manhattan Bridge, I stumbled upon a family hanging out on the rocks by the water’s edge. In color — aka Real Life — the scene was sort of sweetly mundane, with the afternoon sun casting a warm glow over the water and the park, and Manhattan in the distance across the river. In black and white, however (I’d forgotten that I still had b&w film loaded in the Hasselblad), the photo takes on a bit more of that Piranesian quality: darker, even a bit ominous, slightly out of its city-specific context, with everyone appearing tiny against the backdrop of the bridge looming large and grey.
A bit of inadvertent Piranesi. Or perhaps the dissertation — itself a beast of a thing that nearly consumed me — still looms large in my photographic imagination.
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frank.
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Over the weekend, before the heat broke and when all of New York City was still sweltering and the idea of being outside seemed like the absolute worst idea ever, I ventured out with Percy — not a light load! — to take some late afternoon photos. At one point I needed to reload film into the camera, so I found a stoop, shaded by some scaffolding, and sat down with the camera. Percy, mind you, isn’t a very easy camera to load: the sprockets where you connect the spools of 120 film are tricky to latch onto, and well, I could go on, but long camera geek explanation short: it’s a pain in the ass.
While this was going on, a fellow walked up to me and inquired about the camera. That’s quite a camera!, he laughed. So big! I smiled and nodded, and we talked a bit about the weather and the camera and the neighborhood. Throughout the conversation, I was still trying to get the camera properly loaded. Percy was ever so persnickety this afternoon! Even so, I decided to brave the question anyway to the man standing in front of me: May I take your photograph?
The fellow smoothed down his hair, asked if he ought to wear a hat (I shook my head, Nah, you look great!), and agreed to sit on the stoop for me while I finally — FINALLY — managed to get the camera loaded and used the light meter to make sure everything was exposed properly. He sat patiently for three shots, then ambled down and shook my hand. My name’s Frank, he said. You should come out to the salsa party on the pier sometime! There’s some good photographs to be taken out there!
He was awesome. And I just might.
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tumblr.
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Frustrated a bit by the WordPress platform and its subtle, but still noticeable, degradation of image files, I’ve started a Tumblr to showcase photos from my archives. I’m still going to post new photos and projects here, but if you need a photo-a-day fix, in large-scale glory, head over here. I’ll post daily, around 9:30 Eastern Standard Time.
[Above: Llewy, 2002, from the archives. More recent photos from the Pentax to come!]
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sunday afternoon.
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It was a hot and muggy weekend, alternating between a bright white overcastness and bright blue skies. Brightness, all around.
There’s a ladder next to my bedroom that leads onto the roof of our brownstone, and on Sunday afternoon, one of my housemates threw the hatch open and went up to get some sun. Light flooded into the hallway from the skies above. You wouldn’t know it by this photo, though — simultaneously woefully and wonderfully underexposed. The light meter that just came in the mail yesterday should take care of these sorts of things, though with film photography, it’s the happy accidents of mis-exposure that are sometimes the best.
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hong-an tran 