David Evan

last month, in the midst of a flurry of purchases posing as pain relief for having missed out on the SXSW festivities, i bought a new lens and a camera, the above Sigma 50mm 1.4, mounted on the new Canon A2E.

well, “new”.

both were used, purchased from really great used camera resource, KEH. Aside from KEH having website technical difficulties during the delivery of the camera (neglecting to send my tracking numbers in the process), delivery was without hitch and both arrived quickly, safe and sound.

the Sigma 50mm 1.4 is a beast of a lens, the largest 50 1.4 on the market by a great margin. i lost my Canon 50mm 1.8 over a year ago after a shoot, and hadn’t replaced the focal length for some time, partially because i wanted to upgrade to a better quality lens, and partially because i was being very lazy. it’s a well built lens, lots of big glass and a hypersonic motor. i won’t go into a spec sheet listing, since they’re all over the net and this is lens has been around for some while.

the Canon EOS A2E was/is a very popular 35mm film SLR in production from  1992 til 1998 i believe, when it was replaced by the EOS 3. as i’ve posted about before, i’m currently in a (most likely never-ending) film phase which has me wanting to get my hands on experience with all different formats and emulsions of film, and i also have wanted to really get experience shooting a full frame SLR with the speed and convenience of autofocus. no 5Ds are in the horizon just yet, and the price was right. the A2E can use all the EF lenses i own/will own for my digital bodies. it was a logical buy.

within a few days i had a pro-pack of Kodak Portra film (my new favorite) and popped on the 50mm 1.4, and jumped out to burn a roll of film.

Yes, once again my excuse for not having blogged in ages is that I’ve been working steadily, pushing my envelope a little bit and seeing what workloads I can handle. Turns out that it’s quite a bit.

As you may or may not have noticed, i’ve been putting in hours with the portfolio redesign and it’s starting to look like something. When you’ve been kind of haphazard in the projects you’ve worked on for a few years, it takes a little time (and a good memory) to rein everything in and consolidate.

Anyway. Good news! I’m working on a new music project. This time around, I’ve named the project Bending Light.

(A 10 minute sampler/teaser I put together to whet the appetite for the project. Have a listen.)

I was originally shooting for an end of March release date, but the project’s not finished, and I’ve been swamped with day job work, so as of now it’s being pushed back to April so I can do some finishing touches and make sure it’s something you can fully enjoy and I can be proud of.

Since I’m so behind in posts and news and there’s so many things I want to share, over the next few days I will try to post fairly regularly to get the blog back up to speed. From there I’ll try to make a post a week with new things to share about the daily goings on. Trying new things, seeing what sticks.

Know this, though. 2012 is shaping up to be very awesome!

so, i got all my film back today.

4 rolls of film. these were the shots i really liked.

i missed focus so many times, man! wtf! i knew it’s take some practice to get the hang of quickly hitting manual focus, but man…i hate practicing. lol. allen iverson mode.

PRACTICE?

one thing i know i did is shoot wide open, and with these super larger apertures, it’s really tough to nail focus. i’m pretty sure i shot my boy rashid at f4 or higher, as it was a really sunny day and the m645 shutter only gets up to 1/1000 sec, so i had to control the sunlight with aperture. i tend to shoot wide open on my 7D as the AF system is pretty hi tech and i can get fairly sharp on an eyeball, but i should have known that that wont translate to a far larger image with older glass and an untrained eye. i do find it quite pleasing that Rashid is like, *incredibly* sharp. lets me know what the mamiya can do stopped down a bit, with good light.

on to the photo lab. learning experience.

getting this stuff just developed and scanned is EXPENSIVE. wow. i mean they’re solidly priced, but for 4 rolls of film it was 50 bucks. it’s just an outlay. financial commitment if i’m going to be shooting like i plan on it. thats a bill. on top of that, these were lo-res scans, they gave me a CD of jpegs. thats some bull, i was expecting PSDs or TIFFs. for all that money. so now i know what to ask for, hi res, and lemme get ONE roll done. the sooner i can get a v700, the better off i’ll be.

all in all, i learned a lot. there’s a bunch of things i want to try to eliminate the issues i encountered this go round. that’s the cool thing about photography, non-stop problem solving.

cheers!

would you believe, with a camera that i purchased probably 4 months ago, this is the first completed roll of film i’ve shot? a 120 roll at that! ah well. slow and steady gets the prize, as they say.

my plan is to primarily shoot film for the next few months, most if not all of my personal projects and stuff. it’s a bit of a financial commitment, since the digital route has a lot less middle-men involved, but there’s a tremendous amount to be said for the positives that film – particularly medium format film – can bring to the table. also, as all of my film cameras are manual and fairly old, it will require me taking off the autopilot and using the force, or a least learn how.

the above photo was taken on my iPhone, about which i was supposed to blog many months ago. i really bought the phone for the camera, more than anything else, truth be told. 8mp, ƒ2.4, seemed like the perfect pocketable “best camera is the one you have with you” camera.

it hasn’t disappointed at all.

the one thing that’s surprised me, however, is the way i’ve slowly started to feel my compositional abilities improve just by using the camera and must have app Instagram every day. i am also starting to notice more things, feel more compelled to really survey my surroundings and find things of interest, and figure out how to tell a story with a photograph quickly. i hate to gush and make it seem like a phone is a necessary part of an image -maker’s arsenal, but this is the experience i’ve had with it. a few usability niggles aside, i really enjoy looking for opportunities to use the camera. far more fun and convenient than using my old point and shoot.

this has also led me to want to explore how other cameras and their restrictions and strengths can shape my photography. there’s an enormous history of image-making tools just waiting to be explored, and more than a fair share of my downtime is spent reading up on new stuff i wanna get. i think it’s safe to say that i’ll be a collector of sorts before this is all said and done. a big factor will be the image quality though, so larger format cameras and Leicas (someday?) will be my primary areas of focus.

i have a few film related projects that that i want to dig into in the next few months. there’s the portrait project that i’ve been slowly embarking on, i definitely would like to mix in some film portraits (especially as i get to know the Mamiya better and get new lenses) for the Superthink series, and i’d also like to mix it into my LessGentleMen stories. walking around with 3 cameras isn’t great on an ever-aging back, but we must do what we must.

tomorrow i hope to take a bunch of the film that i’ve already shot and drop it off at the lab i found for processing and scans. i just found out about a new software called Wunderkit (made by the makers of the fantastic Wunderlist) which i’ve started using to keep track of what rolls i’m shooting, which are in the lab, and which are sitting on the shelf. seems like over all it will be a great project management tool – not that i have much room for any more.

safe to say, film has me excited. i can’t wait to see what i got from these rolls.

what a start to the new year! i’ve been working like crazy. well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, ‘cause i have had nice stretches of downtime, but the workload has definitely ramped up from only a few short months ago.

it kinda hit me like a freight train at the start of the year, and while i expected things to pick up considerably after the holiday season, i was booked pretty nicely in January, going straight into February. so, work’s ahead of where it’s supposed to be i guess, considering the amount of investment i’ve made in marketing and promotion (nil).

it hasn’t been all easy peasy peaches and cream though. i still kinda feel like i don’t know what i’m doing. i’ve been banging down doors trying to figure out how to get into a photo assistant position and i’ve turned up nothing. i’ve also been looking for affordable spaces to get my lighting game up to par. i visited a studio last month, the space itself was somewhat promising but the location, i don’t know how many times i’m willing to get robbed to develop my skills. just a little less than none, i think.

and in general, the ebb and flow of emotions about my future is kinda insane. non stop roller coaster.

some days i fee super strong and focused, others, not so much. so it’s an everyday struggle. things still aren’t where i want them to be, but the overall outlook is positive and i’d really like to get my situation to a point where i’m not moaning and groaning about how i’m trying to do this and having difficulty doing that on the blog. i’d rather be talking about what projects i’m working on.

the portraits project i conceptualized a few months ago is still floating around in my head, and i’ve got the film to shoot the entire thing now. i found a great place in philly that does scans and prints of color and b&w negatives, and will even do slide film. going into the spring i really hope to push out a lot more film work, so i’ll be going every where i go with either one of or both of my film cameras, the Pentax K1000 and the Mamiya 645.

i’m going to try again to post here more, keep it relatively consistent. also try to make it look better here.

and this is when i’ll stop typing. lol.

as we approach the end of yet another calendar year of living, breathing, working, doing, loving, hating, and pushing for the carrot at the end of that stick, i’m sure more than a few of us have the same tendency- to prognosticate pithily about plans and resolve and whatever else we feel comfortable giving ourselves another full year to do.

this post is gonna be about that. sorta.

i do this kind of thing regularly, not just at the end of the year- but the approach i’ve taken of late is to make sure i’m really listening to myself. not just to keep in mind the goals i’m setting, but to also refine how i express my intentions- in the name of efficiency- so i’m not just bloviating for the sake of blog content, but actually putting things in front of me that i can reach out and grab and pull myself forward with.

when i look back at 2011, i worked, a lot, and very hard. i did a lot of things that even 3 years ago would have been distant dreams, being stuck behind a desk pushing papers around and putting people on hold 8 hours a day. the money is even starting to show up now. as i’ve pushed through from one project to the next, a reduction process has kind of happened by default, as respects my career goals. as the picture gets clearer on exactly what i want to be doing for the “forseeable” future, i realize more and more that i haven’t been doing it.

that sounds way worse than it actually is. it’s fine, it’s good. a learned life can end up being an endless process of elimination. it’s always about learning from where you’ve been to help you see where you want to go. and i’m lucky enough to have a general direction, even though the specifics of this year’s work have ultimately been unfulfilling.

i’ve been spending a lot of nights up, restless, trying to prepare myself for the new year, walking in as a legitimate businessperson with a high quality product to offer in an increasingly competitive and independent economy, but also as an artist finally getting what it means to explore yourself through your given medium(s). even though i’m trying to make money with my camera and sell a couple of records before it’s all said and done, how can i feel great about what i’m doing?

flipping through my google reader app today, i happened across this post by Seth Godin, titled Your Competitive Advantage:

Your competitive advantage

Are you going to succeed because you return emails a few minutes faster, tweet a bit more often and stay at work an hour longer than anyone else?

I think that’s unlikely. When you push to turn intellectual work into factory work (which means more showing up and more following instructions) you’re racing to the bottom.

It seems to me that you will succeed because you confronted and overcame anxiety and the lizard brain better than anyone else. Perhaps because you overcame inertia and actually got significantly better at your craft, even when it was uncomfortable because you were risking failure. When you increase your discernment, maximize your awareness of the available options and then go ahead and ship work that scares others… that’s when you succeed.

More time on the problem isn’t the way. More guts is. When you expose yourself to the opportunities that scare you, you create something scarce, something others won’t do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

so there’s a big part of my last year/professional development/life that i’ve neglected to talk about in any depth here, mainly because i haven’t been posting at all.

the Free Film Collective is a group of creators/friends/co-conspirators at it’s core, but also a set of ideals and concepts that guides this group in the work we do and the way we work. to get a better grasp of our philosophies, check the site.

i’m very proud to be a part of this group; in it’s embryonic stages, we’ve managed to do quite a bit, and the brilliant team-within-a-team of Chakka Reeves and Rashid Zakat (two great friends who i owe so much of my professional development to) spearhead everything we’ve done thus far, and are absolutely fantastic. these people are likely going to change the world someday soon. talent.

anyway, i work with these folks, often (as is our mantra) and our latest embarkment was the promo above, for TEDxPhilly. TED, if you don’t already know, is

a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

TED also “sponsors” independently organized TED style events through it’s TEDx program. Philadelphia is hosting one such event next month at Temple University’s campus.

i’ve got a little bit of video work there at the end, and if you’re familiar with my Beta Max project from earlier this year, you’ll recognize the track Ruby Red.

dopeness!

if you can, you should try to get out to the conference. should be very exciting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

great info, and…I wish.

really stresses the importance of covering your butt though. all those hard drives… I’d go crazy.

it’s been really hard for me to post with any regularity here.

perhaps you’ve noticed.

i think the problem is that i’m learning a lot about myself and my direction, a lot of litmus testing, and in the name of maintaining an air of professionalism (as this blog would be a portal for all things concerning my employable self) i am careful of what i talk about here.

but, there’s lots of ideas and ventures to share, and i ain’t really turning over profits like that, so whatevs! lets get nuts!

at this point, regular work is few and often far between. i’ve been fortunate enough to have been kept busy for most of the summer and i’m thankful for that, but there are still too many pockets of dead space in-between that i haven’t been capitalizing on.

personal work is a really big focus of mine, in part because i’m needing to prove to myself once again that i can actually deliver on an idea. beta max was huge in that regard, but it will be a year since i dropped that, and if you knew how much my life is basically a never-ending ideation session, you’d know i’ve been kinda behind the 8 ball. i watched a great interview with Kareem Black on ProFoto’s website a few months back discussing downtime and personal work.  it’s so important to keep doing these things, so i’m really conceptualizing along these lines these days. basically start making the work i want to be getting paid for.

a few weeks ago i came across one such project in my late night internet persuals. i ran across this Kickstarter project that really brought home the kind of things i want to do, and i wanted to share it with you. (btw, if you’re not periodically/regularly checking in on Kickstarter and seeing what projects these super creative folks are trying to get funded, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. there’s some really great, inspiring stuff there.) Tim Navis is a photographer i’ve been following for some time on Flickr. He makes beautiful images, and his image quality has always been something i’ve aspired to achieve. one day while dragging myself along his internet presence, i happened upon a project he’s working on with a landscape photographer named Kim Høltermand, called Outliers, vol. 1. here’s the video trailer they’ve prepared for their Kickstarter page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

how amazing is that? if there was ever a definition of the personal work I’d like to be doing, that is it. music, video, photography in a beautifully designed package. i really appreciate when things like this are assembled purely for posterity’s sake. taking your tools to new places and experiencing new things through them, and then bringing back pieces of that experience to share with the world, layered over with your own perspective. combining different mediums to better tell the story. it really made a lot of ideas rush through my head, so i’ve been spending some time trying to tie them down so i can come back to them at a later date. this project truly, truly inspired me.

the first thing i want to jump into is a portrait series. a few weeks back i purchased a Mamiya 645 Super medium-format camera.

i have a lot of friends and cool people i’ve met in the past few years, and i’d like to do a portrait series on em. i also want to get it in the studio and see what i can make happen. a lot of my personal project ideas are visual based, but there is a ton of music to organize and release.

speaking of music, my homies The Stuyvesants just dropped a new project called The Finer Things.

it should be clear that this is a must-cop suggestion. off rip.

grab it here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

this is awesome. not the most expensive rig in the world but it’s so thoughtfully assembled. plus it can do pretty much everything you could ask out of a capable video rig.

I never thought I’d be looking to set one of these up but yeah…looks like this is another direction I’ll be headed in. gonna research some of these products a little more.