FL to CA 1999 - 2000

On the eve of the millennium melt down I threw a bunch of film in my 1984 Dodge Ram and hit the road.  I wanted to get out of Florida, and had this girl I wanted to see who was living in California.  I think I spent two weeks getting there.

 

The first stop I made was in Port Arthur, TX.  I wanted to see where Robert Rauschenberg grew up.  No artistic divine hand touched me.

I spent the first couple of nights along I-10 in the south at rest stops, once I hit Texas I got off the interstate and found this lonely road to stop and spend the night.

  A day later I was in Marfa, TX to see Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, other than getting to see the girl that day was one of the best on the trip.  I barely had enough money for gas, so I spent every night in the back of the truck on a twin mattress with my sleeping bag and all the blankets I owned to stay warm.  I broke down and splurged on a portable heater one morning after I though I might actually freeze to death (okay a slight exaggeration), only to read hundreds of miles down the road not to use in an enclosed space ... a choice cold feet or brain cells.

 I was dying to see White Sands, so I stopped for a day or two in Alamogordo where I also found the Space Hall of Fame.  I visited a buddy from college in Tucson, we hiked and photographed for a few days right before Christmas.  

I didn't want to impose so I headed south to Tombstone and Bisbee for Christmas Day, it wasn't the first Christmas I'd spent on my own, and I was going to see the girl in a few more days. 

Who knows how much T-MAX I shot, and I'm not sure if I knew going in I was going to print all the negatives as diptychs or not.  I do know I shot a bunch of film in that Fuji 645 for a couple of years

4x5 contact prints

I shot these in the spring of 2000 while at the University of Florida.  When everyone was talking about their "issues", making video's and photographing their butts (and most of those prints looked as bad as their butts with the exception of Marni's), I just wanted to make some beautiful photographs with out having to reference my id or super ego.  My neighbors Will and Mary bought a house, leaving a mostly empty apartment for a while.  I think I shot these with an old speed graflex, long ago sold on eBay.  Now let me be honest these are 11 year old prints which were thrown in a box under a bed since arriving in California and scanned on my crappy three in one printer.  You'll have to trust me when I say the prints are really quite nice.  I did know how to make nice prints at the end on the wet darkroom age.  

I'm working on a personal project and yesterday I was looking for models on a popular modeling web site, I was astonished by what I saw.  Models and photographers self select their own level of experience from none to very.  Now I'm not saying you have to have archivaly (is that a word?) processed gelatin silver prints under your bed to be a very experienced photographer, or a Helmut Newton polaroid in your portfolio to be a very experience model, but if half your portfolio are cell phone self portraits and the other half were taken by your boyfriend on the beach please don't sell yourself as very experienced. 

Zaks Girl, yeah more film.

Natalie loved Metallica

Zak ... film

Mikki (and her dog who's name I can't remember) Film ... all natural light

09/28/10 Chris and Nate

Film:

Remember, like, back in the old days (less than ten years ago)when you had to put those aluminum canisters filled with celluloid coated with a light sensitive emulsion in the back of a light tight box?  Get in your way back machine, cause in the 1950's Olympus started making this nifty little gem that made half frame images.  I can't remember owning an Olympus Pen (no not their new micro 4/3), so i must have borrowed it from my buddy Dunker (on the left).  These two negatives were made consecutively then printed in a 35mm film holder.  

09/28/10 Dan