from walking around today

Stumbled across this old shot today. It’s fun to revisit old work. I suggest it. This is from a mini working vacation with some photo friends last summer.

Original Article

Self Assignment. My answer for why I shoot personal work.

selfassignment:

Why do you shoot personal work?

Cary Norton: Short answer: I shoot personal work because it’s what gives me the greatest sense of personal satisfaction. Photography is how I’ve learned to navigate life. Photography as a career can be problematic for me—something so intensely personal ones worldview/coping mechanism/raison d’etre (to be overly dramatic) intertwining with commerce sets the stage for conflict (internal, mostly, I guess). The compromises I make creating images that aren’t fully from/for myself (i.e. editorial, corporate, et cetera) creates an emotional need for me to make the work that moves me, whether I recognize it or not. And so I find myself shooting photographs that make me happy.

Longer answer: I shoot personal work because I have to. I found photography in college and pursued that as my career without question—but morphing photography, which has always been intensely personal for me, into something on which I rely for my life, has been a mixed bag. I’ve had several genuinely perfect jobs. Jobs where I was given an idea and the freedom to explore that how I saw fit. Jobs where I’ve been dealt an awful hand (weather, bad subject, et cetera) and managed to pull out beautiful work that I’m still proud of. Jobs that feel more like breathing than working. But they are the exception, obviously. Most jobs are just jobs, but I try to shoot everything as though I were shooting it for me, even if it’s a photo of something I couldn’t care less about. I strive for the FEELING I get shooting personal work no matter what I’m shooting. That feeling is why I take photos in the first place. It’s a fundamental part of who I am now. Making photos of my life is how I’ve come to cope with life. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. I just mean that, through all the stuff you can go through in life—all the emotions, twists and turns, gloriously beautiful parts of being alive, and all the stuff that knots your gut—it’s all so overwhelming. Photography is how I’ve learned to absorb it all and deal with it. For instance, in retrospect I can tell you almost every girl I’ve liked since I started shooting. I wear my emotions on my sleeves as a rule anyway, but man, the photos say it all if you know what you’re looking for. Also, having a camera, even if it was just my phone, was indispensable last year when my grandfather was passing. I’ve lost people in my family before, but never had the impact been so direct and intense. During his last days, I cut myself off from everybody that wasn’t in my immediate family and used Instagram to communicate what I was going through, more or less without words.

Also, a good bit of the personal work I end up shooting is my every day life. This, for me, is crucial. I don’t get too caught up in shooting that I don’t live in the moment, but my mind works so visually that shooting intensifies my experience. By that I mean something like this: When I shoot it I am engaging the experience visually which means I’m creating in that moment which means I’m more likely to remember it. Not only just recalling what we did at some point in the future (I’m horrible at remember that way), but if I look at the photo I took I can recall my emotional state when I shot it, the what and why of the composition, and all the moments in between. In waiting for the moment I want to photograph, I get to watch the others flit by and it gives the photo I do take in the moment more context in my brain. I don’t know, it just all lives together in my head like that.

Personal shooting also let’s me experiment with photographing in different ways and with different cameras and formats. I embraced 4x5 because I wanted a challenge (and how do you not want to shoot large format after seeing Avedon’s American West?—which is basically inevitable if you shoot for a living) and that’s turned into all kinds of learning. I’ve always shot film but shooting large format has made me slow down even more and learn more about how to interact with who I’m photographing, and it also gives me the ineffable joy of developing the film. That’s another reason I shoot for myself; It’s really fun. I get to be in control from start to finish and don’t have to answer to anyone but myself if the project succeeds or fails.

And I managed to forget probably the most important part of personal work for me—people. As private as I like to be, as a rule, I really love people. Shooting personal work let’s me connect with people and have no agenda except to try to learn about them, and life, and myself through that experience. Having a camera in my hand gives me an excuse to break through the barrier of not knowing someone. Shooting helps me form new relationships and keeps me engaged with the world around me.

Working on a large format gallery for my site so I’m rehashing some old photos. I’m sure I’ve posted this 1000 times now, but here’s Ashley again, shot on the Legotron. A scan I’m finally happy with. Loving this ANR glass.

this photo punched me in the face immediately.

via the sartorialist.

wonderful Lens blog today. →

Winslow, New Year’s Eve.

Stephanie at home, from the last roll of 2011 / first roll of 2012.

A few portraits from Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya

While I was on the road I posted a portrait of a dude I met at Lwala, which was our first stop on the DIG trip I took in December. I took several other portraits of people from the participating groups and thought I’d take a second to post a couple of them. I shot 4x5 as well but still haven’t gotten around to processing that mess. One day soon (he says hopefully)!

and Aluice again for good measure

Original Article

I’ve been trying different methods of getting good 4x5 scans for ages with results that were never fully satisfactory. I finally decided to pull the trigger on a big piece of Anti-Newton Ring glass for sandwiching my negatives and I’m pleased to find that this will very likely work perfectly, at least for my black and white negatives. I haven’t gotten color negs to show up without Newton Rings yet, and that may end up being remedied by yet another piece of ANR glass, but then I’ll have to figure out precise heights for shims so I can get proper focus from our scanner. I have a bit of color to scan so I wish I had this sorted now (I’m trying hard to get this Kodak 160 scanned so I can review it for them, shot on the Legotron and a normal field camera) but for now I can at least knock out black and white in a way that pleases me. IF YOU KNOW A GREAT WAY OF SCANNING 4x5 COLOR NEGATIVES ON A FLATBED, PLEASE TELL ME.

Enough nerdery. This shot was from a Halloween skate comp at the now-defunct Shoe Factory spot here in Birmingham. The skate was actually to raise money to move the ramps to a new location (which is important, because the ramps actually got thrown away before being salvaged for the Shoe Factory spot). It was put on by Faith Skate Supply, who is also currently pimping out a very worthy cause—A.Skate. In short, A.Skate has an opportunity to build an Autism-friendly, handicap accessible skate park, but they need your votes to help win the Pepsi contest. Hit that link to see the (EASY!) ways to vote!

And seriously, if you’ve got color 4x5 scanning tips, I’m all ears.

Original Article

More people waiting on arrivals at Entebbe.

Hanging out at the mental_floss office in New York

I made it a point during my last trip to New York to go bug the good people at mental_floss magazine. Conveniently located near about a million bead stores, where I’d clearly be shopping anyway, the office (which they share with The Week) was guarded by a delightful lady whom I managed to con into buzzing me in. Sucker.

I was greeted warmly by Mangesh and crew, above, though my presence clearly upset the force in the area, as a fight immediately broke out down on the street within minutes of my arrival.

So I left.

I came back the next day with a SWAT team, though thankfully it was not needed.

We all walked around for a while and quizzed strangers with trivia questions, occasionally cornering obvious tourists and peppering them with Amazing Facts, and we were eventually all arrested for doing science experiments on passers-by.

Winslow watches everybody’s back and totes a Journal filled with mind blowing information.

Josh, also up from the Birmingham office

old people walking around in the fashion district.

Rob at his desk

Original Article

I had the great pleasure to photograph Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper for the September issue of Birmingham Magazine. And when I say great pleasure, I mean it. He was simply wonderful to work with. When I think of people with a lot of power, especially in the realm of law enforcement, I think of hard-headed, bad-ass jerks, mostly thanks to Law & Order. Chief Roper was exactly the opposite of everything I expected, which really shouldn’t have been surprising since I read the story before I shot him.

His whole platform pretty much is to work with anyone who is trying to help make the city a better place.

He was warm and funny and down to let me shoot however I wanted.

Thanks Chief!

See the article online here.

Original Article