Category Archives: Black and White

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Toronto Streets – People

September 16, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Lest you get the idea that I travel to and photograph completely depopulated urban areas, I thought I’d do a feature on people in urban areas, doing things. Part of the reason I don’t have many photos of people out in public is, believe it or not, I’m shy behind my camera. I’m working on getting better at taking people’s pictures that I don’t have a relationship with.

I saw this young man on the street, playing with his phone. I liked his look and wanted a candid shot. I think it worked.

Two young women buying gelato bars from a vintage canvas-top delivery truck. The truck is almost a scooter it’s so small. I wouldn’t want to be the ice cream vendor, having to stand stooped over under the cover all day. Unless I were Peter Dinklage, then I would fit comfortably. But if I were Peter Dinklage, I’d have better things to do with my time than selling ice cream bars. Like trying to manage the kingdom without getting killed by my sister.

I’m seeing more cities installing public plazas like this where they close off part of a street, put in plants and chairs, and turn the area into a social space for people to relax and interact. The most notable example is parts of Broadway off of Times Square and Herald Square in New York City. Here is a spot in Toronto where they’ve adopted the same idea – obviously successful, from the napping young man. You can see a tiny piece of the Scotiabank Theater in the upper left of the image, which is where I went to my international short films screening at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival).

I had shown this before, in my color series about the Distillery District. Here it is again, from a different angle, in black-and-white. The distillation sculpture draws people in and encourages interaction, both under and around it. It also makes a great focal point for the Distillery District space – you can always tell someone “meet me at the sculpture in an hour” and you won’t get lost trying to reconnect.

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Toronto Architecture

September 15, 2014 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

I’ve always loved buildings, since I was a little kid. I was fascinated by castles and old buildings of all kinds (I grew up in a house that predated the Civil War in a town that was burned by the Confederates). Now, I’m equally fascinated by modern urbanity. Here’s some of my take on super urban Toronto.

I like black and white for architecture, especially modern glass and steel architecture, because it amplifies the abstraction of geometry found in modern design.

A street car emerges from the shadows of the urban canyon carved between high rise office towers. Pedestrians become silhouettes in the early morning light. An early Sunday morning in downtown Toronto:

A daring facade wiggles between more traditional office towers:

A modern condo building rises above the traditional Victorian and Edwardian streetscape of the city center. Taxis fill the street below in the hustle and bustle of the human beehive of activity, while overhead power lines for streetcars divide the sky into grids:

The CN Tower soars above downtown, framed by other towers. The sweeping roofline of the concert hall below directs the eye to the CN Tower from any angle:

Modern apartments frame an industrial-era chimney in a contrast of textures:

Two street lamps crane forward into the scene in zoomorphic curves, the necks and heads of two flamingos, breaking the chaotic geometry of the polygonal tower behind them:

Two Streetlamps, Reflections, Glass and Steel

Looking straight up, towers and street lamps criss-cross the sky:

Mirrored windows of one tower reflect upon another, as vertical lines converge out of frame:

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

Neighborhood Walkabout – loose ends

September 3, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

This didn’t really ‘fit’ with any of the other neighborhood photo groups I posted earlier, so it’s getting its own post. The Industrial Bank branch at 11th and U Streets NW is the original location for Industrial Bank, which was founded to cater to the African-American community in the early 20th century when many mainstream banks wouldn’t lend money to black people. They have kept the vintage neon sign with the clock outside, probably a 1930s addition from the look of it. They never light the neon, though. The clock does work, but nobody seems to be bothered enough to get the time right. When I took this shot it was around 1pm, but the clock says a bit shy of 5pm. But hey, it’s 5pm somewhere!

Black and White, Darkroom, Photography

Oriental Seagull VC-CLS Cold Light enlarger head manual

September 2, 2014 dcphotoartist 2 Comments

I think I mentioned this previously – there was a man here in DC who was getting rid of his darkroom and contacted the school where I teach about donating it. He also sent the inquiry out to all the faculty. One of the items he was disposing of was an Oriental Seagull VC-CLS variable contrast cold light head that fit a Beseler 45Mxx series enlarger. I happen to have a Beseler 45-series enlarger, so I told him I would be interested in the head. At the time he delivered it to me, he didn’t have the owners manual with it, but said he thought he still had it and would get it to me if he found it. Being the skeptic that I am about such things (I know myself and my best of intentions), I started searching online for a copy. Nobody had one. I had several requests, though, from folks saying “if you do get it, could you please please pretty please with sugar on top make me a copy”. A few days later, I got an email from the man asking me for my mailing address – he found the manual and would mail it to me. Now I have it and I’ve made a PDF file out of the manual. I’m posting it here for folks who need a copy.

Seagull VCCLS Manual

As a side note, I spent half of Saturday this past weekend unpacking and cataloging the darkroom equipment he donated to my school – 16 boxes in all, including some beautiful enlarging easels, a 16×20 print washer, an Omega D-series enlarger with 35mm, 2 1/4 square, 2 1/4 x 2 3/4, and 4×5 negative carriers, and a Beseler 45-series enlarger complete with Adjus-table (a specialized table made to fit the enlarger that would allow you to drop the baseboard so you could make bigger (20×24 or even larger) prints without having to flip the head and do wall projections). Every darkroom accessory you could think of was in this bundle, including the empty 1 gallon and 1/2 gallon chemical storage bottles. The bottles, and the darkroom trays, and everything else for that matter, was packed in styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap sufficient to protect it from a nuclear apocalypse. If I don’t see another styrofoam peanut for a year, it will be too soon.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

Neighborhood Walkabout – Graffiti

September 1, 2014 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

Another sign of change and transformation is the ebb and flow of graffiti. My latest find was this:

I loved the serendipitous juxtaposition of the advertisement wording for the cellphone repair shop and the graffiti – “Any Make, Any Model… Black is Beautiful”. There’s truth in accidents. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident.

A generic graffiti tag on a bricked-up window of a house. This is casual art, that has its own accidental grace and beauty despite not having any great aspiration beyond marking territory or gang initiation.

Then there’s graffiti that is transformed from simple defacement by virtue of adopting the form and structure of the object upon which it is inscribed, like this manhole cover.

Some street art I found in Toronto. There’s a point where graffiti transcends defacement of property and really does become art in itself.

More graffiti as street art. There is part of this wall that I intentionally cropped out as it makes a statement that I don’t know I’d want to make or pass on (decapitated nude female torso).

Back to simplicity, this bit speaks to collective identity questions – the figure transforms the Washington DC city flag of three stars over two bars into a humanoid with a hand for a head. Politics, ethnicity, religion, all rolled into a piece of temporary public art (the wall upon which this figure was painted has been gentrified into several very expensive restaurants).

The camera of record is a Rolleiflex 2.8E, and the films used are FP4+ for b/w and Kodak Ektar 100 and Portra 160 for color.

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

Neighborhood Walkabout – Surviving Gentrification

September 1, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

The signs of gentrification, both good and bad, abound in my area. Funky old shops in decrepit buildings are being forced out and razed to be replaced by condos and market-rate rentals at prices I don’t know how anyone can afford and being serviced by shops and restaurants worthy of being spoofed by AbFab. At the same time, the drugs, the street crime, and the random trash are all disappearing too.

I’m not sure Mitoni’s salon is still in business, or if it is, for how much longer. But I’ve not been sure if it is in business for the last decade, frankly. Regardless, it will shortly be going away to be replaced by an 8-10 story condo/retail complex.

You can very clearly see the layers of old and new, gentrified and recycled here. A former post office (that was once notorious for a rat infestation that destroyed tens of thousands of pieces of undelivered mail) is now a trendy taqueria. An old antiques store is now the Policy restaurant and bar with the roof deck you can see. In the upper left background is the old cold storage facility which oddly enough still rents out storage lockers. Behind the street-level buildings in the foreground is The Louis, a high-rise condo complex with swanky restaurants, coffee shops, and a Trader Joes (which is actually a welcome addition to the neighborhood). This shot was taken from the roof of Room and Board, an upscale furniture shop in what was a long-boarded-up former car dealership building.

T Street, From Room&Board's Roof — T Street, From Room&Board’s Roof

The dining room at Doi Moi, a new Thai/Vietnamese restaurant.

Transformer Gallery is one of the pre- to mid-gentrification vestiges. They’re a small space, and perhaps their saving grace is the fact that the space is too small for most developers’ interests. I don’t know how they survive as, from my perspective, a lot of the art they show is hard to sell.
When I took the photo, it was still August, so I thought the leaves made an interesting ironic statement about the nature of the changing neighborhood.

The Fabulous Vegas Lounge is another vestige of the old neighborhood. They must own their building to have outlasted the condo buildings that went up around them. It’s been a Jazz club since the 1970s at least.

Las Vegas Lounge — The Fabulous Vegas Lounge

As usual, all photos taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E, on Ilford FP4+.

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

Neighborhood Wanderings – People

September 1, 2014 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

I went out on one of my neighborhood walkabouts and found these scenes. I’m still not good with getting people’s faces in street photos because when I try for a portrait, it inevitably becomes non-candid because I take too long trying to compose and focus, they see me, and at best the moment is lost. So I do photos of people from behind. Maybe I’ll work on making it into a thing.

Scenes with activity in them, though, work better. I guess because I’m standing off at an angle to the action and people can pass through without being aware, so they get included from a variety of angles.

And sometimes they get included because they’re completely unaware of the camera’s presence, like the worker inside Ben’s Chili Bowl.

All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E on Ilford FP4+. The Ilford FP4+ is part of a large stash of it that I bought more than a few years ago when there was a scare that Ilford would go out of business. I bought a box of 100 rolls (B&H was running a special on the bulk lot). Well, Ilford stayed in business (thank heavens!), and my use of medium format waned for a while (I sold off my Hasselblad outfit to finance a large format camera), so the bulk lot sat in my basement, going past its expiry date. Now that I’ve found and fallen in love with the Rollei, I’m finally making a dent in that box. It’s a great compliment to the quality of Ilford that I can still use this film this many years past the expiration and I have yet to need to tweak the chemistry to compensate for the film’s aging.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel, Washington DC

NYC Subway shot found!

July 20, 2014 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

I found the shot I had taken of the NYC subway train oncoming. Again a bit impressionistic, but you can still feel the difference between it and the other city’s subways that I’ve photographed, even though the car isn’t at all visible in the exposure. I THINK this is the N/Q/R platform at 5th avenue and 59th street- it’s been a while since I took the shot.

Here are a couple more of my subway shots as a comparison. Please pardon the repetition of the recent post:

All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E. Film used was either Ilford FP4+ for the b/w shots or either Kodak Portra 160 or Ektar 100 for the color.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography

Ordinary Objects

July 19, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

This is part of a series I’ve been working on – photographing ordinary objects we pass by on the street every day but take for granted. They are things we see but don’t see, and they may well vanish, like pay phones, mailboxes, and newspaper vending machines, before we realize they’re gone. Pay phones are all but replaced by the cellphone. Newspapers as a physical object may cease to exist thanks to the internet, and along with them the newspaper box. Email has just about killed the personal letter – the only thing keeping the postal services alive these days are mass marketers with their junk mail, Ebay and Amazon with package deliveries. Not everything in the series is vanishing in a literal sense like pay phones, but some of them do vanish from our perception like the fire hydrant, the lamp post, and the traffic cone. We know they’re there because we don’t trip over them when walking on the streets, but they exist at the periphery. They each have their own beauty and form, however, and within their function there are a remarkable variety of forms – the hydrant in Chalon-sur-Saone, while as recognizable as a fire hydrant as the hydrant from Washington DC, has a very different form, as does the Siamese spigot.

Everyday Objects - Payphone — Everyday Objects – Payphone

Black and White, Cameras, Color, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel, Washington DC

Bikeshares – riffing off the Public Transit theme

July 15, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

For rather obvious reasons, most of these are of the bikeshare here in Washington DC. I will be shooting more in other cities where I find them – I’m going to try New York the next time I’m up there, as the CitiBikes are everywhere in Manhattan. I do have token representation from Paris, though. I shot these with a range of cameras, from my Rollei to a loaner Fuji GSW 690 II, to my RB-67. Each has their merits and the different formats I think actually work together to convey the varied moods and perspectives of the bikeshare experience.