What is this blog?

So why the name? What does the name of the blog mean?
I started this project on February 18, 2017. The project takes place over the course of a year (two years), I will photograph 52 people. One 10 exposure roll of medium format film per person with a ten-minute time limit to make those ten shots. So basically  520 exposures over the course of a year will be made.

What do I want to accomplish with this project?
I want to accomplish a number of things. I enjoy photographing people. I've slowed down in the number of portraits I've made in the past few years. I miss working with some aspects of shooting film. (Note: I said some aspects.) I miss working with the awesome film cameras that I used to work with. Most of the digital cameras today lack something. The digital camera is an amazing and efficient tool, they are fast, precise tools. Film often forces a photographer to slow down, slow wayy down. The process is slower - even being required to wait to see the images is a slowed down process, digital seems to be about speed.


How will I find subjects to photograph?
I will ask folks to sit for me. But if someone sees this blog and wants to sit for me I will definitely try to accommodate them. I am limiting the project to 52 people - I would like at least half of those people to be strangers or folks I don't know very well.  

What film and cameras am I using?
I use a Mamiya RZ 6x7cm medium format camera. It uses 120 (medium format) film - giving ten exposures per roll.  I will not be using Polaroid type films to check exposures. I will be using a handheld light meter to determine exposures. I will not use a digital camera to pre-check exposures or compositions.   I started using Ilford's XP2 black and white (chromogenic) film at first - because of its forgiving nature and ease of use - but after determining that the lab I want to use is a 50 mile roundtrip, is expensive, and even more time consuming than I desire - I'm going to shoot black and white film and process it by hand myself. It will be more economical and efficient if I process the film myself.   I like Ilford's HP5 film. But I've settled on the Kodak T-Max 400 and 100 films and use the T-Max developer. With traditional non-T-grain 400 films, I was getting too much grain. I LOVE the Kodak T-Max films, I've found that they seem to work best with the T-Max developer. T-Max 400 produces excellent results. 

What do your subjects get from participating? 
I hope that they enjoy being photographed - I will give each subject a print of their choosing from their shoot.

Why did you ditch the ten-minute time limit?
Often during editorial portrait assignments, I would have a very limited time to photograph some of the subjects I was assigned to make images.  I once photographed a woman in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC.  I had the shot all set up and tested beforehand - she arrived and was on set for a total of 43 seconds!  I made about 20 frames of her. I don't know if she was seriously THAT busy that she couldn't be photographed any longer than that, or just hated being photographed. I did get the photo that was needed. I set the ten-minute rule as a challenge - but I found that I was cheating myself and the subject out of making better photos. I was also making big mistakes under the ten minute time frame. So I ditched it. Now I just attempt to make ten good photos.

So what happened to the goal of finishing this project withing one year?
52 portraits in one year is a lot of work. I accomplished half of the goal in one year and I'm really happy about that. See this post to read more about making and not making goals.

How can folks who want to participate reach you?
Send me a message here or at filmproject520 at yahoo dot com

#32 - Karuna Shinsho - July 15, 2018 - McLean, Virginia

An old high school friend of mine suggested that Karuna would make a great subject. He had attended high school with her in Japan back in the mid-1980s. So I got an introduction via Facebook and we set up a photography date to make these images. I met Karuna for the first time the day I photographed her for this project.
Karuna has lived an exciting and interesting life. She grew up in Hawaii and Japan. Karuna got an early start in television news as a news anchor in Japan while she was still in college working for NHK Television. A few years later she went to grad school in New York and worked for NHK's bureau there. Then she lived in Singapore working for Asia Business News (later merged with CNBC Asia) and then to Hong Kong as an International anchor for CNN. She has also lived in Africa and traveled to many places around the world. She left the news business when she started a family and raised her two boys. They are now teenagers and are both talented musicians like their mother.
Karuna is also pursuing a passion of studying and singing jazz. As of this writing she is learning to sing Bossa Nova in Portuguese and will perform with a renowned Brazilian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from New York at an upcoming concert. She has started to sing in clubs in the Washington, DC area and will perform in Japan this November.
In the year since I've met Karuna, I have photographed her many more times, but with a digital camera. She is now a good friend.

#31 - H. Darr Beiser - April 29, 2018 - Carderock, Maryland

I first noticed Darr's photos in 1996 when I started to freelance for USA Today. I'd often see his byline under his photos and I always wondered if I would ever get to meet him.  It wasn't until 2015 that I finally met Darr at an art gallery opening.

Darr was hired as one of the founding staff  photographers back in 1982 when USA Today was established. He was one of two photographers who established the photo department of the fledgling newspaper. USA Today eventually grew to have well over a dozen staff photographers and photo editors at one point.  Over the decades that he was there, he traveled extensively and photographed quite a few impressive portraits of some well known people. Take a look here. Darr worked there until 2015 (33 years), when the paper underwent massive buyouts and downsizing. He now freelances and does work photography and video work for several clients and political candidates. He also teaches video journalism at the University of Maryland.

Darr and I met close to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal path near his home in Maryland to make these photos.  He spends a lot of time photographing nature and wildlife along the path as a meditative practice.

There are only nine frames from this shoot. As I was moving the camera for the last photo I had my finger on the shutter button and misfired the camera. I got a blurry underexposed image of the ground.

#30 - Wendy de Boer - April 19, 2018 - Washington, DC

I'm not quite sure how Wendy and I started following each other on Instagram last year, but it happened. As I started to see more of her photos it was apparent to me that she is really a special person.  She has a "joie de vivre" (cheerful enjoyment of life) that is a joy to be around.  

One of the things Wendy is deeply interested in is people. She has a deep passion for people from all walks of life, their traditions, culture, ways of living, their food, customs -  simply stated - she loves people. She loves photography and has pursued it many years. One of her projects is to meet with photographers around the world that inspire her to team up and share experiences. She also learns from them by spending time making images together.  As Wendy says "I team up with photographers around the world to learn more about photography, their culture and photo projects. We share a passion, we connect with locals on the streets and learn about life."  So far Wendy has teamed up with photographers in Dubai, South Korea, Spain, Argentina, Malaysia, Uganda, Iran, India, and the United States. Please check out her project and her videos here.   Wendy also has quite an Instagram following with about 31,000 followers and growing. 

Wendy works for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines as a flight attendant. KLM is the oldest airline in the world still operates under its original name. Wendy is Dutch and lives in Amsterdam when she is not working, which involves traveling to anywhere KLM flies. I asked her where she has been over the past twenty or so years she stated that she has probably been to just about every continent in the world.  She logs hundreds of thousands of miles (kilometers) every year traveling the world. She will soon celebrate 10,000 flying hours. That is 417 days in the air!

I contacted Wendy last fall and asked her if she ever flew into the Washington, DC area that I'd like to meet her and make her portrait for the project. She had a 24-hour layover in DC back in April and we spent a few hours together. Wendy made some videos of me working, but most of the day was spent making images of her for the 520 project.  It was a short but fun day. We made a few images at places in DC and I asked her if I could photograph her in her uniform. She had to go to work right after the photo shoot so it worked out that those were some of the last photos on the roll. 

#29 - Kelly Padgett - April 15, 2018 - Raleigh, North Carolina

I met Kelly Padgett for the first time the day I made these photos. Kelly contacted me after I put out a call for photo subjects for this project. We had chatted a few times on the phone several months prior to the photo date and we finally worked out a day to make his portraits many months after we initially made contact. 

I learned that Kelly grew up in North Carolina but spent a few years in Vietnam where he worked as a photographer, videographer, art director, and director of photography on a wide range of commercial projects. Give a look at his photo site here. While in Vietnam he fell in love with his partner Hỷ and they later became married. 

I had no planned idea where to photograph Kelly and I decided to "wing it" in a few locations that caught my eye on the way to meet him in downtown Raleigh. We set up the first location near the construction and revitalization of a $36.9 million effort to remake a 1-mile stretch of Capital Boulevard at the north end of downtown Raleigh.  Later, we drove over a few blocks to the Brutalist architecture of nearby concrete parking garage. 

I'm learning that it is a big challenge to distill the essence of a person into just ten frames.  It probably isn't impossible, perhaps extremely difficult, and I'm not sure what "distill the essence" even means at times.  Someone said; "Photos aren’t supposed to be the perfect depiction of anything. They exist for delight." They exist as a sort of record too, a bit of history,  capturing a slice of time. 

The nature of this project is showing everything from the shoot.  It either is ok, sucks or is good. That’s part of the challenge.  A lot of "professional" online photography is extremely curated and edited. I have always enjoyed seeing everything a photographer made on a shoot and perhaps getting a view of how the images were achieved.

What is to be learned from just making ten frames per person? More hopefully will be revealed as time goes on with the project.

#28 - Jeff Hutchinson - March 11, 2018 - Raleigh, NC

I've known Jeff Hutchinson for about forty years.  Jeff has owned and operated All-Star Bikes in Raleigh, North Carolina since 1978. In the late 1970's I was the ten-year-old kid who would often ride his bike over to the bike shop to look over the new BMX bikes he had in stock and pine over them. Over the years Jeff has repaired and sold thousands of bikes from his shops.  All-Star Bikes is a fixture in the Raleigh biking community. Jeff has many faithful employees and some of them have been with him for over twenty years.  The employees love what they do and they are great at it.

In the early 1980's I raced Bicycle Motocross (BMX) and was a member of the All-Star BMX team. In 1983, our team was one of the top-rated teams in North Carolina and I think we won the State Championship in points ratings.  For many years, there was a poster-sized photo of the team hanging in the North Raleigh shop.  In the photo, I was the taller older kid in the back row.  A few years later I got involved in road racing and I learned a solid foundation of road riding from Jeff and the Carolina Velo Club (CVC) on weekend group rides. I was never that fast of a road racer but the experience of riding with the club influenced me a great deal to become a bicycle tourer later on.

For the photo shoot, I met Jeff at his beautiful home situated on a few wooded acres of land in south Raleigh. His driveway winds down a long path through the woods to a modern home with large glass windows that overlook a private pond just outside his back door.  His home is a pretty incredible oasis and Jeff has an impressive collection of pristine vintage bicycles and automobiles.

We met on a cool rainy March day to do the photos. The weather did not help us as it rained off and on the whole time. During the shoot, I stumbled a lot with perfectionism. Making only ten frames for a portrait session can be a challenge, especially when going on the premise that every shot counts.  Attempting to make each shot work slowed me down a lot and I struggled in the cold and damp late winter day juggling setting up the gear and moving it from location to location.   I had a gear failure on the final frame. I had set up an image using a radio-synced flash and the flash did not fire when I made the exposure. It found that a bit frustrating as it was the final frame and I wanted that shot.  I was reminded why I shoot so many pictures when I can on other types of shoots, the fear of not getting the image.  The ten frame, one roll of film rule of this project is definitely a challenge.

#27 - Ron and Gavin Flory - March 10, 2018 - Wendell, NC

A photographer/painter friend sent me a video recently of photographer Nadav Kander giving a talk about his work and influences.  Kander in the talk said, "..we have to think of portraiture not so much as looking into the soul of somebody else - which is such horseshit." "Portraiture is about the baggage I bring into the room, and that the subject brings into the room and the collision creates a dance".

I've known Ron about eight years. Ron is an avid photographer who often employs various analog and digital techniques to create his images. He sometimes shoots with 8x10 and 4x5 cameras.  Over the past year or so he has been sharing images of the dolls that once belonged to his wife as a child.  His 13-year-old son Gavin has also helped him with the project of photographing the dolls in the woods around his home.

While I was setting up my lighting gear for a photo Ron showed me an old photo from decades past of photographer Minor White. It was an image by photographer Abe Frajndlich of White clad in leather jacket and dark sunglasses with a menacing looking heavy chain around his wrist, his black t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "Ball Busters".  See the image here.  The image was created as a series of portraits and book of White called "Lives I've Never Lived: A Portrait of Minor White"  Ron wanted to create a similarly inspired image.   I made one frame of Ron in that scenario, Ron dressed in a leather jacket, black leather gloves and intimidating reflective sunglasses over his eyes.   While setting up this image Ron's son Gavin created a pile of dolls at my feet to show me all the of them.  A light went off in my head and I had an idea, why not photograph Ron and Gavin together with the dolls?  So that is what we did.

Later we moved down the street to a swampy creek where I had spotted a discarded couch surround by bald-cypress trees. Ron works as an engineer/bridge inspector so I made a photo of him sitting on a bridge pier.

Making and not making goals - One year.

Yesterday marked one year since I started this project. I've met half of the goal of photographing 52 portraits.  That is on average a portrait every two weeks. I am not finished. I am not done.

I created this project with a set of arbitrary rules, some of which I discarded along the way.  Such as the very challenging 10-minute rule, which was that all ten frames of the session had to be photographed within a 10-minute time period.  That was created to see if it would make the shoot more spontaneous and to challenge me to make great pictures under a time crunch. Mostly it freaked me and the subjects out and felt a bit ridiculous.  Haste makes waste, so I jettisoned that rule a few portraits into the project.

Another rule was to finish the project in one year. That parameter is now changed to two years, or however long it takes. It is easy to sit around and come up with a project idea - the rubber meets the road when actually executing the project. I still have great enthusiasm for this project - I love photographing portraits and spending time with the people I photograph. The project is going slower than I thought it would and I'm OK with that.

I knew going into this project it would be a challenge.. but it would produce fun, good memories, and images but would be attainable. It just wouldn't happen in the time frame I initially set up. I have thus far photographed in six states plus Washington, DC for this project. Doing this while juggling work and other life commitments, I'm pleased how this is going so far.

I'm proud of the work.  Here is to another year!

#26 - Joe Martin - January 27, 2018 - Washington, DC

Joe Martin asked me the other day when we first met.. I could place a location but I could not place the exact year.  I do know that it was on a photo shoot on the west side of the US Capitol Building near the reflecting pool and I think the year was 1997.   I was a second assistant for a portrait shoot with a New York City photographer and Joe was the location manager and scout for the job.

Joe has been a location scout and location manager for over twenty years in Washington, DC and has also worked on movie and photo shoots all over Maryland and Virginia. So what exactly does that job entail? A LOT of work and knowledge of WHO to contact and HOW to contact the right people to get permission to film or photograph in locations.  Joe has a lot of experience in DC in procuring locations for major motion pictures, television, and photo shoots.   He knows how to get permits and all the "ins and outs" working with the Capitol police and National Park Service and the assorted law enforcement divisions in DC.  However - pulling location permits is just part of his job. He finds locations for directors and producers. He knows DC like the back of his hand and will go out and find specific places and procure the permissions, and sometimes will negotiate location contracts and use fees.   During a movie as a location manager, he will be responsible for finding and securing locations to be used, obtaining all fire, police and other governmental permits, and coordinating the logistics for the production to complete the work. Sometimes he is the public face of the production, and responsible for addressing issues that arise due to the production's impact on the community.

Joe grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and came to DC to work as a policy staffer for U.S.  Congressman Barney Frank (1985-1991). He used those organizational and people skills gained from working on Capitol Hill to work in location scouting and management.   Joe has worked on dozens of films and TV shows over the years. Take a look at his impressive but incomplete IMDb listing of credits here.  Some of his credits include being the location coordinator for the TV series "The West Wing" - location manager for the TV series "K Street" and host of movies including "Deep Impact", "Enemy of The State" and "Spy Game".  He has also done location work for many Condé Nast publications including this shoot for Vanity Fair with photographer David Burnett. Joe procured location permits for Burnett to photograph filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.  Joe knows what a film/photo crew can and can not do in historic locations such as the Vietnam Memorial. Tripods and lighting equipment are out of the question for use in such a location. The National Park Service just will not permit it - so Joe will consult with the photographer/ director to help them understand the location beforehand and know what to expect. Sometimes knowing some of the restrictions changes the way filming is done or sometimes excludes a location from use. Many areas around Washington DC are tightly restricted. Joe's knowledge of this helps film crews avoid many pitfalls.

Joe and I spent a recent warm January afternoon together visiting several locations near his home in the Petworth area of Washington, DC.  We first made images at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America which provided some good background textures.  We then made our way to the United States National Arboretum but were quickly and ironically told we could not photograph there as we had no permits.  An eagle-eyed security guard zeroed in on my tripod and large medium format camera before we could even get the tripod established in a first set up.  We half expected to get denied photography permission at the Arboretum, being unfazed we made our way just down the street. I made the final frames just outside the offices of The Washington Times on New York Avenue.

#25 - Paul Wood - January 27, 2018 - Washington, DC

Paul Wood and I had not seen each other since the spring of 1990, making it almost 28 years. We both graduated from RIT in Rochester, NY and Paul graduated from the photo program that year.  Paul comes from a Rochester, NY family of scientists and engineers with family members working for Kodak and Xerox.  He started out in the highly technical/scientific program called "Imaging & Photographic Technology".  It is a highly scientific program and many graduates go on to work for governmental agencies such as NASA, the FBI, the CIA, and the US Treasury; corporations such as Google, Kodak, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Epson; and industrial powerhouses, including DuPont and General Electric.

After a while, in the highly demanding program, Paul decided he wanted to work as a photographer in the advertising and illustration field and switched majors to Advertising and Illustration photography. He also had to help put himself through school and at times worked three part-time jobs. After graduation, Paul worked as a studio photographer for the grocery store Wegmans as a photographer.  In 2003, he moved to Washington, DC and started a job as a photographer for the US Department of Education - now he serves as the lead photographer and videographer there. His job often requires him to travel to schools all over the United States.

Paul bought a carriage house on Capitol Hill in DC and partnered up with Emmy award winning cinematographer and director of photography Christopher Albert to open StudiowerksDC in a carriage house adjacent to his home. (Chris lives above the studio - Paul lives in another carriage house across the courtyard)  I photographed Paul in and around Studiowerks on a very pleasant late January morning.  The studio is often very busy, but we used a two-hour gap when it wasn't being rented.

We did a setup and I quickly noticed that my camera was not functioning properly. The source was a dead battery. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening, the camera would fire but the shutter speed sounded wrong.  I switched camera bodies to backup and was up and running again. After this false start, I ditched the first roll I had loaded and started with a fresh roll of film. I'm glad I did as the first few exposures on that roll were blank.  Again - using a film camera is in some ways more prone to "painful" user error.  You often won't know if you screwed up until you process the film.  Seeing the processed film is the feedback. (Remember I don't shoot Polaroids now) Digital cameras provide a constant and instant feedback if needed.   When I'm shooting with the film camera I'm much more careful with the mechanics of the camera - I listen to shutter speeds - listening to the camera operation plays a big part. I know how things should sound and feel as the camera clicks and the film advances. You need to be on "high alert" to how the camera is operating or you can make big mistakes if the operation of the camera is wrong.