August 16, 2024 • 60 mins
"For me, vision is an intelligent form of thought." -- Andreas Gursky
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on.”
– Albert Einstein
In this episode, Antonio and Ward start with reflections on the changing seasons and how it influences their photography experiences. They transition into a discussion about the nuances of teaching Lightroom, where Antonio shares how he successfully engaged his students by incorporating personal insights and broader photography contexts rather than sticking strictly to technical instruction. This approach not only made the classes more dynamic but also underscored the importance of connecting deeply with one's photographic work.
The episode also touches on the different ways photographers approach their craft. Antonio talks about his recent discovery of 1,600 untouched photos on his camera, which he hadn’t downloaded for months. Revisiting these images led to a rewarding process of rediscovery, evoking the anticipation and surprise of developing film in the pre-digital era. Ward adds to the conversation by discussing his ongoing community project, which has been evolving over several years. Together, they explore the merits of quickly reviewing and sharing images versus allowing them to sit and mature over time, emphasizing the value of returning to work with fresh eyes and a renewed perspective.
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Show Links:
Antonio M. Rosario's Website, Vero, Instagram and Facebook page
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
For me, vision is an intelligent form of thought.
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
Music.
(00:28):
Hey welcome to the street shots
photography podcast this is
antonio and this is ward and this
is episode 213 213 for the
middle of august 2024 in
the august 213 is the area code for los angeles that's
(00:48):
yeah do you know you know how they came up
with the area codes right it had the middle digit had
to be either zero or a one to begin with that's one
thing i well but you know like new york is 21 new
york is 212 yeah yeah and los angeles
213 right because the old
dials now this is this is for anybody who's anybody who's
(01:10):
20 rotary telephone rotary telephone used
to have a dial on it and you dial the numbers but the 212
were faster to dial because they were closer
to the end of the dial to the beginning of the dial so so anything that was
really close that's where they had the like i think i'm gonna not get this exact
so anybody who's listening to this who knows you can let me know but the gist
(01:31):
of it is my guess is that there were more telephones or more calls being made
between New York and Los Angeles or anybody who had a,
an area code that was close to the beginning of the dial.
So two and two, he goes zip, zip, zip to one, three was zip, zip, zip.
Interesting. Washington is two zero two. So that's, you know,
it's quick and then slow and then quick.
(01:53):
And I don't know other others area codes.
So that has nothing to do with photography. I thought, yeah, it has to. Yeah.
So yeah, middle of August, this is the, you know, I'm hearing people already
say, you know, summer is almost over and almost in September and you know, yeah, sure.
Okay, fine. It perhaps if we're
counting the days like that and I was in a, I was doing a shoot at the.
(02:18):
Prospect park the celebrate brooklyn shoots and so
we were talking about stuff like this and for some reason i had this
really kind of sort of
time travel experience feeling of like when i was a kid again and i remember
middle of august didn't feel like you know two or three weeks of summer left
it still felt like i was in the middle of summer right yeah so i was like yeah
(02:40):
it's just like try to capture that get yanked out of it exactly right it's summer until like yeah Yeah.
And even, you know, even in September. Canadian speaking here.
Like, you know, it's warm.
It's like in the 80s today. We beautiful, warm, one of the warmer summers we've had here.
And in three weeks, there's going to be frost. I know. You know.
(03:02):
Really? Just how it goes. In three weeks for you? Well, September.
September? Sometime in September, yeah. Wow. Okay. Wow. That really.
Yeah. Do your transitions in seasons happen pretty quickly?
Well, they happen, I would say, in fits and starts. So you'll have some freezing
and then there'll be an Indian summer.
(03:22):
Indian summer can be between two days or two weeks and then it kind of like settles down.
Yeah. All right. That's interesting. But the leaves haven't started turning
or anything like that yet. Started turning. Yeah. That's weird.
I mean, I like the fall. I've always liked the fall and I don't mind it in any way.
But yeah, we're in the middle of August. The show is in the middle of August.
(03:43):
And welcome, everybody. buddies you get to hear welcome to this show we're two
codes and weather reports that's what we're in baby boomer slash generation
x people were the i'm i think up at the cusp of that we talk and banter about
photography you know which is so.
Last, our last episode was really great talking to Gino.
(04:05):
It was, yeah, it was, it was great fun and just getting on the same wavelength
and sharing our observations of things and very good.
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I, I realized we can have him on the show more often.
I think he really likes to talk with us and, and I know I talk to him all the
(04:25):
time, you know, once a week, but his,
and what's interesting is, you know, kind of
neither of us are commercial photographers anymore
and we'll do jobs here and there but you know he's doing his teaching and he's
living in new mexico and he's doing his own work and
i'm doing my stuff and and yet you know for him i think now he's he's his camera
(04:47):
stays in the shelf a little bit longer because he's dealing with you know having
moved in the renovation and stuff like that i understand i haven't had renovation
but i can imagine i know that takes up all your a lot
of energy so the the few times he can get out and shoot is really great didn't
worry yeah and then money and it was like everything you know and trying to
keep keep tabs on that and so but the fact that even with all that going on
(05:13):
he can still like he taps into the sort of.
I'm not going to say this right. I mean, I'm going to say the,
I'm going to say the zeitgeist of photography or something like he,
it's still part of his, it's part of his being, part of his being, you know, and,
and that's kind of what I think like for me and even for you and maybe a lot
(05:37):
of people that we know is that, yeah, we're not necessarily commercial photographers
and we may be doing it every day just as a, I want to say a hobby,
but we can still, we can still just
sort of put ourselves into that pool and and
talk about it in in in hopefully
a deep and meaningful way you know and so you know
(05:57):
it means that if you if you do put your camera up on the
shelf for a little while or something like that but there's still many ways of
still being involved and loving photography so that's
what i really love about him is like you could just you know and
we could go from talking about you know refrigerators and
our cats to like suddenly talking about you know gustav legray
or something which we did we did
(06:18):
talk about him right yeah so that was that was that was a wonderful conversation
it'd be great to get him and somebody else on so it would be like like a foursome
and like how to how to weave that conversation i wouldn't know who the fourth
person should be maybe he might know somebody,
and and we can have a texas scramble whoever hits the furthest gets the shot.
(06:41):
Takes a scramble what is that oh that's
where you a team of golfers play and you play best shot
oh so everyone shoots off the
tee and the best shot takes the takes where that ball lands is where everyone
plays from on the next shot and so on it's a way to get really bad players to
say a little bit faster i never heard of that yeah oh that's interesting so
(07:04):
so what have you What have you been up to besides working,
walking the dog, taking pictures of clouds?
We've got cloud pictures. Not too much of us. I get this. Yeah, it threatens.
We've had a few thunderstorms roll right by us, not over us, right by us.
And we did have, we're getting into the weather report section again, but.
(07:27):
Yeah. Bad hailstorm, lots of damage, other parts of the city here,
it skipped us, so that's good.
Yeah. But, you know, I do like, I do like the dramatic clouds this time of year.
Clouds are, I have to say, they're very addictive. I had some really nice ones yesterday.
And again, I face east, so I'm seeing the clouds being lit by the sunset.
(07:48):
So not the, so they're front lit, not back lit. But there were some really nice ones.
And, you know, I mean, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago or whatever.
But, like, instead of pulling out the Fuji cameras and stuff like that,
and I sort of have them scattered around the house.
But, like, none of them have the lens that I want on it. I was like,
you know what? The hell with it. I reach in my pocket. I pull out my phone.
(08:10):
I turn it on to raw. So it's a raw capture.
Because I just know that we had those, you know, really kind of puffy cumulus
clouds that are lit brightly by the sun.
And then the really dark ones and so i just know that jpeg is
going to really mess those up although actually iphone does a pretty
good job of on the regular on the yeah i'm
sure it even has a really good time or has an easier time dealing with jpegs
(08:34):
yeah though you can't with open sky you can get a banding thing but yeah yeah
but i i shot the raw and and there were the 48 megapixel raw file so there's
a lot of a lot of space with that picture and and i just processed i haven't
i I haven't uploaded them yet.
I'd probably put them on the neighborhood Facebook page or something like that
because they were just really nice.
(08:55):
But, yeah, I mean, it was just easier to go and get the phone.
And clouds are like one of those things, like, even when I was shooting film, I would shoot clouds.
Actually, clouds were a really good stock subject.
We had a cloud file at the Image Bank that was insanely large,
physically insanely large.
(09:17):
It's so funny that I didn't even think about this for a while. clouds
these are slides are there slides they were slides because
everybody shot clouds and then once they heard once the photographer
heard that you know some other photographer made a
fortune on a cloud shot they would start submitting clouds and
there'd be clouds from tahiti and low barrier
to entry yeah exactly yeah i mean i actually made
(09:37):
a pretty good sale once on a cloud shot and again people
are going to say cloud shot how did you make so much money and that was just because
that was the way things were built they build based on
the usage so if it was like a worldwide usage you'd
get paid a lot of money no matter what the subject was which was
a little kind of weird because you know a
cloud shot would be equal to someone who in terms of that kind of usage then
(10:00):
you know a shot of someone who had climbed the top of mount everest and caught
you know the summit there yeah and that's a much harder picture to get yeah
and you know but in terms of usage, anyway, clouds.
So yeah, clouds are low-hanging fruit for me for photography, but it always gets...
(10:21):
People to sort of say, wow, look at that, you know, look at that.
And I like looking out my window and seeing clouds that look like they could
be in the Midwest or the Southwest or something like that.
You know, I was like, no, it's just Brooklyn. So.
It's North America. Everybody gets clouds.
Yeah. Yeah. And they're always something that looks new. Anyway,
so that's our weather report.
(10:45):
Now sports. Yeah. Well, what was I going to say?
Oh, also I wanted to mention that i can't remember exactly when but since the
last time you and i spoke on our own so in a month,
i did meet up with our listener and new friend of the show not new friend he's
(11:05):
a friend of a show jeffrey saldinger in astoria queens so jeffrey you're listening
that was a great we hung out for For like, shoot,
like three or four hours.
And there was this great diner on whatever street we were on.
I think it was Broadway in Astoria.
And, you know, it's just like a diner diner. You know, nice,
(11:26):
nice, good food, big plates. Right.
And they didn't bother us, which was nice.
They let us sit there and talk for a long time. And we went through a whole
bunch of different subjects and talked photography.
And I had his book with me and I had him sign it. so and he was he was actually
worried that he wouldn't be able to sign one for you and i was like well you
(11:47):
know when when you know word comes back to town we'll we'll make sure we get that,
yeah be great it was yeah i was we had a really nice talk and then we walked
around a little it was one of those like pretty miserably hot days and so we
walked around a little and he was showing me some of the places where he photographed
excuse me and and we actually it was really fun
(12:08):
to talk about like look at his
neighborhood from that point of view of like photography
and where things are and the context of
stuff and that that was very
fun to do and we didn't have that much time to hang
out because i had to head back to back home but it was it was really nice to
(12:28):
just do that with another photographer and yeah so it was really great to hang
out with with people who listen to the show if they're in the area so like even
like a meetup or something.
So someday because yeah yeah well jeffrey and i plan to get together at some
other point so jeffrey thank you that was uh that was a wonderful that was a wonderful hangout so.
(12:56):
Uh what else has been going on oh shoot i just wanted to talk photography with
you there's like two two guys that we haven't talked a bunch of things i didn't
really have a specific subject I just want to sort of bounce around a little bit, but oh, so,
one of the things oh so i've been teaching a lot right so i've been doing a lot of classes,
the classes have been getting better i think i told
(13:18):
you guys that i was teaching a lightroom class at brick yeah it was a two-parter
and i think i finally found my the equilibrium with the class like i know how
i say this i had a class monday and then last week monday so this This is today.
We're on Tuesday. So I had a class yesterday and then last week.
(13:39):
And the problem with me and with these classes is that, no, I say a problem.
It's just it because I'm showing a program and I'm teaching the software.
It's a lot different than my other classes where I'm talking about photography
and I'm getting up and showing slides for other photographers and like that. This is like how to.
Yeah. And I, I've just not been, I've not really been digging it somehow.
(14:01):
And I think it's because I've been doing it the way of like sitting in front
from the computer and showing the slides and then doing a demo and I was like, this is not me.
And so last week when I started the class, I think I remember I was talking
to, but I realized that I was doing things.
I wasn't looking forward to this class, even though I made up the class.
(14:22):
And I was like, this is what, if I wanted to do it differently,
I could have made it differently.
But I didn't. I was doing it because that's kind of the standard.
I decided to not, I was even going against my own curriculum in a way.
Not totally against it, because people are there to learn Lightroom and understand things.
(14:42):
But instead of sitting behind my computer, I used my Macintosh. I used my own slideshow.
I stood up and I also talked about Lightroom within the context of photography.
Cool. So it wasn't just like, well, this is what you do and this is why you do this.
And I thought I could interject at least some of my personality and how I,
(15:04):
a little bit about like how I do other classes.
So a little editorializing and a little soapbox standing and stuff like that.
But like at appropriate points.
Night and day difference, by the way. And the class was engaged.
Like, not only were they, like, you know, opening up the files that I gave them,
(15:25):
because I would give them all SD cards.
They'd open them up, you know, import the pictures. They're all importing my
pictures. I was using my photos.
And, but they were engaged in, like, asking questions about photography in general
or things like, you know.
And I followed up this week. And what was great was that everybody from the
first class showed up for the second class.
(15:47):
Nice. No, I don't. Yeah, I've only run this class three times.
So this is so six sessions, but the other two sessions and I don't know for what reasons.
And but some people would not show up for the second session.
And it was not a big deal. I don't really take it serious, you know,
and I don't know. This is such a small data set.
I don't know if this has anything to do with me changing the way I work,
(16:08):
but because I engage them better about like, again, this program isn't just
something that sits there.
It's part of a context of something else.
And I think.
Certainly helped. And I did the same thing in the second part where everybody
showed up and, and, and we did it.
Actually, I ran longer in the class. The class is only two hours.
(16:30):
And so I ran longer, but everybody stayed for the extra 20 minutes.
Cause I think I was supposed to end at four and I ended up at four 20 and they
all stayed. Cause some people get up and leave, right? Cause I got to go,
but nobody, nobody left. Everybody stayed.
Yeah. So I thought I'd share that with you guys.
And you, as a, as an interesting thing from a point of view of the,
of like me as an instructor, and trying to teach Lightroom in four hours or anything is.
(17:00):
Almost impossible. That's a stretch. Really, I can only touch on little things.
I can touch here, I can touch there. And the computers that they have at Brick
are not powerful enough to run the generative AI retouching.
Which, you know, I was talking about a little bit of the morals of AI.
(17:21):
A little bit trying not to get too crazy about it but it was a saying like you
know for retouching and stuff like this this thing is really great so i got
to show them all that stuff,
on my computer because my computer is much faster so it was pretty exciting
anyway anyway i thought i'd share that because it's fresh it was a fresh experience
and uh something kind of new in a way and i think it was also just me deciding
(17:44):
to be more myself right you know.
And and doing that and realizing like it works in my other classes and therefore
you know it should work in this so good congrats i'm god i'm glad it's getting some traction,
i am too yeah i'm also trying to sorry i'm saying i'm monopolizing this discussion
(18:06):
a little bit but now you got me right i also had a the photo journaling class
at the library in fact it was the same day no this was last week last week i
had a photo journaling class that
was really interesting. Not really interesting. It was good to do that.
And there was no photographers in the group, which was a little, it was okay.
It was people who were interested in journaling, but it was like really trying
(18:26):
to get photographers in there to do it. But that was a really good class.
Everybody liked that and they found it therapeutic and all these great words
came out and trying to figure out a little bit more to that class,
like how to make it maybe a little bit more appealing to people who are taking
pictures and not just people who are journaling.
You know what I mean? right yeah so yeah so yeah it's been a busy couple of
(18:49):
weeks with classes i've been doing a lot of classes and and uh had some a lot
of freelance video shoots as well and so anyway that's been my that's been my
couple of weeks but what was i going to say i was oh so i.
I was thinking about something and maybe you have some thoughts about this,
(19:10):
okay uh i sometimes have thoughts sometimes
you have thoughts sometimes i have thoughts too thoughts are
there yeah they come up now and then and i
don't know how to so you might need to help me figure this out and so i'm actually
this is live thinking the brain is maybe not working so well anyway one of the
(19:31):
things that sort of come up in my thinking these days and it's been the the
past couple of weeks, especially with students is,
yeah, you know, I, I, I tend to tell, I tend, I tell them, excuse me,
that if they want to look at good photography and.
You know do all these things go to galleries go to this go
to that and don't think that you're going to find necessarily good
(19:53):
photography on instagram i'm not saying there's bad like i'm not
saying there isn't good photography on instagram but i think
it's always good to find some place where it's sort of concentrated and it's not
being thrown at you and in multiple directions and
you know so but that
got me thinking to you know
social media and stuff like that and i really in my classes
(20:15):
i'm really trying to spend time getting them getting
maybe one or two people to just think slightly
differently to think maybe in addition to thumbing through you know a social
media feed that there are other ways to absorb and engage in photography right
what i realize is that right now a lot of people are engaging it by.
(20:39):
Giving thumbs up or hearts or whatever and then moving on and
what i do is i ask them i said like so all those thumbs up and hearts that
you give do you ever remember the pictures like do
you ever go back and look at them like right and and
i've never seen anybody shake you know nod their head and say
yes everybody shakes their head and i was like okay that's
interesting and that's where i sort of lead them into saying talking about you know
photo journaling i see photo journaling is this nice space to then
(21:03):
you know reflect on a picture your own
picture someone else's pictures and whatever like the idea of
a personal museum anyway this is a
long intro i'm trying to get sorry i
can't wait for my answer whatever it is i can't wait for my answer it's gonna
be you're gonna have like a one word answer you'll be like yes yes yes to all
(21:23):
of the above and then we're gonna move on to something else sorry it occurred
to me i received an email from somebody and i I won't say who at the moment, just out of whatever.
I'm just going to leave it at that. Who looked through my zines that I made,
the 1-1-2-1-8 plus zines, and gave me some interesting observations about the images.
(21:46):
It was really kind of cool to hear somebody else talk about my pictures and
see things in it that maybe I didn't initially consciously see.
And I know like on social media, that happens rarely. Like people often say,
like, if you're going to comment on a picture, you can say, that's really great.
I love this. I love the way the light does this, you know, X, Y, and Z.
(22:07):
But often, and again, I'm, I might be just generalizing. I'm sure I am.
But I, at least in the, in the conversations I've seen, there's less of that
kind of talk like how, oh, your picture that you photographed last week. Yeah.
Resembles this one in sort of this you know you know like making those connections making
(22:27):
connections and stuff yeah maybe that's it and
and how that is missing from this forward moving process of whatever it is social
media pictures you know whether and i'll throw in not in just instagram but
like vero or anything where photography is this endless stream of stuff
(22:48):
right and and what i thought about is
that you know in our collective lately like we were talking
to dave about a project he's working
on i won't go into the project because it's up to him to talk about but yeah
but that engagement and and making
connections between things is is what
i see that's missing and i'm i'm putting
(23:10):
this out to you a little bit i don't know what you have to say about it but i
i really want to incorporate more of this into my teaching somehow
make it kind of less dry and maybe a faster intro to it in some way but i i
what do you think about this like where do you think i'm going with this like
what what's what you know you know if we're sitting having a beer and talking
(23:31):
about this i would like to know what you think well look i'll just,
go on a little parallel stream here and let's see if we can put these two subject matter.
Together okay when i'm talking with people about photography
they're around in my sphere they're not
photographers they want to get into photography right and then the question
(23:52):
for me is what kind of photography do you like well i i don't know and then
you start to go into well let's just say you know make something up and like
i was when i'm trying to come up with a project for myself
you know i don't have any ideas and you'd have
to start somewhere so like well my son when
he was getting started he liked to take pictures of garbage in the street he's
(24:15):
really passionate about it so i have this anthony hernandez picture or anthony
hernandez book of of you know pictures of chain link fences and places where
unhoused people live and that sort of thing not with people.
But the, the artifacts and the marks that they left on the walls and all that
(24:37):
kind of stuff of, of, and the detritus of a big city, like here's an example
of an artist who does sort of what you're interested in.
And then, you know, he just went pouring through it and he was eating it all
up. Like he was like, it inspired him.
And now he's, it's been years now, I don't know, four or five years now,
he's been taking these pictures of tipped over barrels in the street.
(25:00):
And, you know, that sort of thing. And he has this passion about it.
And, you know, if you're a street photographer, if you're interested in shooting
street, what kind of street do you want to just take pictures of buildings?
You want to take pictures of people and you want something a little left to center.
I might show someone a Winogrand work on the web or in a book or something.
(25:21):
Get them, get them so that they have an idea of what the convention is of the
direction that they're going.
Not that they have to follow it blindly, but that here's the prior art of what we're talking about.
And sometimes it turns people off but usually it's sort of like oh this is very
interesting oh i had no idea that this subject was so deep and wide and it's
(25:43):
like that with just about every,
genre of photography you know you can find you
can find a lot of stuff that is interesting and inspiring that may tickle the
creative aspect in yourself if for no other reason if you don't go out and shoot
and most of the people that i talk to don't they want to talk about photography
(26:03):
but But they're not really interested in going out on a,
you know, a lunch hour on a Tuesday to take pictures,
you know, to walk up and down the street of, in streets where they know it so
well, they think there's nothing to photograph, right?
Which is part of the seeing aspect of shooting that, you know,
like Gino said in our last show,
(26:27):
you know, trying to get pictures of the thing and not the photograph,
right? Right, right, right.
So I think, you know, trying to tap into an inspiration, I guess,
is what I'm trying to say here.
And I don't know if that mates with what you're, what you've just posed.
(26:48):
But I mean, if the whole idea of what we're, what we're trying to do is inspire people.
And the wonderful thing about photography is it's one frame. It's one JPEG.
It's one, one at a time. You can look at these things and you can cover a lot of ground.
Now that's, now we're starting to get, lean towards Instagram.
And like you said, that's not where we're going.
(27:10):
We're going to, you know, resources that, where the folks kind of all agree
that this is meaningful work.
That this is meaningful creativity and work from there.
Anyway, I think that answered your question. No, that's fine. It's interesting.
As you're talking, my recent class was a Lightroom class, right?
(27:30):
Right. So it wasn't about the history of photography.
It wasn't street photography. Right. It was a technical class and I decided
to interject some stuff in it.
But but everybody was in that class because they're interested in the program.
Actually, the six people were there. The majority of them seemed to be interested
in like the organizational aspects of Lightroom and taking care of their work.
(27:55):
Like I think that was part of what made the class so interesting for them is
like they wanted to be there I don't think they were just curious about it. Yeah and.
That offered this opportunity to say, like, you know, I was sort of doing an audible, right?
I was looking at the audience and sensing, like, you know, here's an opportunity for you with Lightroom.
(28:17):
You know, like if you don't have a day where you're going to go out and photograph
that you've got this whole, you know, cache of imagery that's sitting there
on your computer that you can go back and look at.
And you can say, hey, I did this yesterday, but look what I did two weeks ago
and look how they connect to each other.
(28:39):
That's how you can use the program. The program is not just for processing and organizing.
It's like, I think I was describing this in terms of, you know, making collections.
So it's one of the powers of Lightroom or any program like that where you can
have multiple pictures in different locations, which you couldn't do in the
days of slides and files.
(29:00):
You know, you had to put one picture in one place and that's where it lived.
And so you would never be open to looking at, say, a cloud picture,
then maybe thinking, oh, but that also looks like a dinosaur,
you know, and like putting it into the, you know, personification of nature file.
You couldn't do that. Like where would, where, maybe it would,
maybe if the, if the picture was more valuable that way, but you know what I mean?
(29:21):
It could be in a cloud bucket and a personification of nature and highly rated
and like all these different tags we can put on images so that they appear in more than one place.
And not only do they appear in one place, more than one place,
but you have access to them when you want to.
And so, you know, I, I tried to balance them out with, look,
(29:43):
you know, it's, you have to go take lots of pictures, take lots of pictures,
but those days where you don't feel like taking pictures you've got
a wealth of stuff that's sitting there and you can
look through it and you can reflect on
it you can write about it you can make connections with you
can print these two pictures together you can do all this sorts of stuff everything
but just moving forward and and moving forward sounds like it's that's what
(30:07):
you're supposed to we're all supposed to move forward about things and i was
like well yeah okay but there's something about looking back and there's something
about making connections and stuff.
And doing that- And you haven't exhausted the current yet, right?
Right, no. And when you feel like you need to move on.
Music.
(30:36):
Oh, so, oh, I know we're kidding. I'm getting with this. Sorry.
Oh, my God. I'm so funny to myself sometimes. Your arms are flailing.
I know my arms are flailing.
Yeah, I know. It's just, by the way, audience, this is happening live.
My brain is starting to fire up now.
It's starting to work live. This is how it works sometimes.
So today, this morning, I decided, I don't, here's what I do.
(31:00):
I tell my students, you know, you got to clean off your card, put it on your computer.
This is i do in most of my classes you know back everything
up make sure you have a couple of backups before you erase your card yada yada
yada all right and i also say do as i say not as
i do right because i do something different a little bit but this
is kind of how i want you guys to do it anyway i've
got four cameras sort of lying around and i thought i had some time today and
(31:23):
i thought okay well now it's time for me to dump the cards onto my computer
so sitting there sticking the cards in and dumping them out and one of my cameras
it was the anyway one of my of cameras had about 1600 shots on it that I had,
which means they had been like,
I have not taken the card out of the camera for a while.
(31:43):
So I stuck it in there and I was, you know, and then I'm looking through the,
as, as they're coming in and the edit, I'm looking through the pictures and
like, I did a lot, did a lot of different things. I did some street photography. I did some of this.
And it was really interesting going through those pictures. Like I was actually
did a whole bunch of stuff on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was like a couple of weeks ago.
(32:06):
I just walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and it was, you know,
it was great because I was using my...
16 millimeter lens so that's a what 24
on my camera and so it's getting and
i'm shooting in black and white and so it reminded me of you for
some reason there was just some i love that 16 and i
shoot black and white yeah yeah this is like so i but
i didn't look at the pictures i haven't looked at any
(32:28):
of these pictures on the camera for a
while like i literally have been shooting and then putting the camera down and
shooting putting the camera down so today is the first time i was looking at
these and first of all it reminded me of the days when we shot film right so
you shot film and how many rolls of film did you have sitting there until you
had to develop them and then you develop them and you start making contact sheets
and you start going back and saying,
(32:50):
oh look what i did like four weeks ago you know like i haven't looked i didn't i didn't immediately.
Pop those pictures into like onto my phone into light room and start processing
them and then stick them up on social media right away in fact i think i might
have done it for a few of these
pictures that were on here but like the vast majority of them i i don't even
(33:12):
remember taking some of them i mean i remember it but i was like oh i took i
said wow i was like look at this picture you know and i did some cropping on
it like some people on the brooklyn bridge and i was flagging them and i was
like this is really interesting having spent a good amount of time.
Away from the pictures and and even though i i like to tell the students like
get the pictures off your card i actually i'm trying to do that so that they
(33:34):
don't because a lot of them managed their files like on their car,
like all their pictures are just stored on their card, you know?
Yeah. I want to get them out of that habit. Like, yeah, don't do that. Get them off.
No, where are your pictures? Well, they're all on here. You've got to be kidding me.
Yeah. But you know, so this is not quite the same thing, but this was just me
(33:55):
being that lazy, just like, just, I haven't had the time to dump the pictures
often, but it was really, really, really fun. And,
to look at stuff that I shot. I think this one camera I haven't dumped in like two months.
And so I've had stuff for like two months and I go back and I was like,
Oh, look at this picture. Look at this picture, you know?
And, and so essentially they're new shots, but not in terms of time,
(34:18):
you know, they're months old at this point.
So anyway, that was, it was, it was a learning experience in some way about,
and that we may have talked about this a lot, you know, maybe not.
Well, you're more like this, right? I mean, you're, you're, I mean,
you're both right you will put pictures up right away but sometimes and then
you will you sit on them for a long time yeah depends if the subject matter
(34:41):
is particularly emotional or.
Or i'm not sure that i got the intention
of it changes so if i look
at them once i can i import them all right away like i
get them up and get them on my nas as soon as possible as soon
as i get home from wherever so i do
that so there are projects like my
(35:03):
community project which i started in 2017 which is still on a very slow burn
right now i will i will go back to that and i kept track of what neighborhoods
in town that i've covered and which ones i still have to go to and so on and
that'll that'll happen it's gonna take its sweet time but i don't look
too closely at those images with the mind to editing in them,
(35:27):
editing them and putting them out there.
And what was I going to say after that? Something important.
Well, so, oh yeah, no, the ones that, the ones that are really long-term projects
or that somehow or other disappointed me or the tack of them changed,
like the meaning of them changed in the act of shooting them.
(35:48):
I will put those away and not deal with, and I'll look at them later.
That could be weeks or months down the road.
When I'm doing these, you know, and I'm doing rodeo and I'm doing the street
work, that That, the street stuff I want to do right away because that was a
pattern when Mark Ryerson and I used to go out, you know, during the lunch hours.
(36:08):
You know, I couldn't wait to go home and after dinner I'd, you know,
put in the card and I'd import it and post to social media.
That was a, that was like a skill set I was trying to develop.
So I have a habit of, particularly with street stuff, to get it up, get it on and get it up.
So that there's a closest relationship from when I'm shooting to when I'm not
(36:31):
necessarily posting, but when I'm doing post processing so that what did I do right in this one?
What did I do wrong in this one? And try and build a skill up.
And that's what I was, what I've been trying to do with street.
And so it's all up in my head. I mean, when I was in New York,
right, I was, I was uploading every day and going through them and trying to put them up.
And like, okay, here's, is this the direction I want to go? And I mean,
(36:54):
I think I told you when I was changing my, my, my point of view a little bit,
um, as the day, as the days were going by.
So that, that's important to me as a street photographer to try and evolve because
you can, you know, it's easy to get lazy when you're shooting street, I think.
(37:14):
And it's hard because, well, I think that's one of the hardest genres to do
because you don't have really control over anything except your camera and where you point it.
So, yeah, so it's, I'm of two minds, right? I, you know, the stuff that I do
every day that I would like to put up and look at, evaluate, edit,
and then stuff where, okay, I don't, I'm too far away from this or I'm too close
(37:37):
to this and, and I'll get back to it. So that's where I am. That's where I am with that.
You're making these, you're making these decisions deliberately though. though
like you're i'm making this is like well there it's deliberate
but it's not like the like
the pictures of the women that i shot last summer
i still haven't really touched them yeah like they're
gonna sit there until i'm compelled to go look at them
(38:00):
and start to edit them yeah maybe there are a couple of pictures
that were fluffy that i posted but not yeah
not get the emotional core of what i was doing and
and i my point a little bit is i mean
you're you're you're very aware of what you're it just
sounds like you're aware of what you're doing and like this case first of all
i was really surprised that i had 1600 shots and they're you know they're raw
(38:22):
plus jpeg so there's twice as many files on there as actually when i put the
card in there's 128 gigabyte card and i looked at it and said you know 18 or
20 gigabytes left i was like what.
And and i was like i wonder if i shot any movies on it because it's like that's
a lot of yeah that's a lot of card right and i looked at it and i popped it
(38:43):
in and lightroom said 1699,
oh by the way i hit 1.1 million files on
on your it doesn't include the jpegs it doesn't actually include all the files
like this anyway but that was like 1.1 million i've got now anyway i was surprised
at the amount of pictures and when i looked at the dates i i was like wow i haven't i I really,
(39:06):
I caught myself by surprise. Did I take 1,600 pictures?
My other cameras had, what was that, my GFX, I had like 80.
My X100, I had about a couple hundred, because I've been bringing that a lot
more and doing some street shots.
And then my X-Pro, I had probably about another 150.
So, like, those all felt right. And also, when I looked at my monthly totals
(39:28):
in Lightroom, you know, because of the adding for the, I have my stuff by month,
it didn't show that many pictures.
I was, like, surprised. eyes that like I thought I was shooting over time yeah
so and this was on this camera was my xh2 so it's the you know the 40 megapixel
40 megapixel thing which I carry I do a lot of street photography with that
(39:51):
too it's kind of it's kind of fun.
To carry and look at the bent screen and stuff like that. But anyway.
I was just, I was surprised.
I was surprised at how many shots I had there. And it was, which meant I haven't,
I really just literally put the camera on the shelf and every once in a while
I'll take it and I put it back down, which is unusual for me because I like
to sometimes go through it and, you know, sitting in the coffee shop.
(40:14):
I might, I've been doing different things in my coffee shop now.
So my brain has shifted a little bit.
So, you know, not that photography is taking a side note.
I've been doing more writing, but but you know it's just got
1600 pictures and looking at the back of the camera going through those
pictures after a while it's like like she's this is kind of
going back it was swiping and stuff like forget it i'm not gonna
(40:36):
do that so anyway i was just it was it was something
that i wasn't aware of and and and and the surprise of it the surprise of the
amount of different subjects that i that i caught was was kind of fun and again
it just it just had this this little
bit of like memory of like when photography was first new to me and,
(40:58):
or even that idea of waiting and seeing what did the pictures turn out like,
you know, send the chromes to send the code of Chrome to fair lawn and you waited
a week and got that yellow box back or usually get a, I usually get a FedEx
box that was full of yellow boxes.
And I was like, Ooh, you know, I got like 150 boxes in there or something like
(41:20):
that. And I have to go through each one of them on a light table.
And I was like, You know, it was like a pig in poop, like, oh,
this is great. Taking a loop and looking at all the pictures.
So it had that, it evoked that feeling in me. And how to...
To sort of find that balance between what you're talking about and what I'm
talking about for somebody who's new and want to inspired.
(41:40):
And, and, you know, it's not just about slowing down,
although there's that in there, it's, it's how to,
uh, get, let's say people who are new at this to say, look, you know,
stop going through pictures every day, start going through your own stuff,
start, you know, when the winter comes and you're bored and it's too cold to go out,
(42:03):
go in your Lightroom catalog and find you know what you did last year and the
year before or whatever and like how to how to get that to be the norm but make that is like a viable,
option and activities yeah so well anyway I don't know I don't know if I can
solve this or I throw this out in the world but I like when something like this
(42:24):
comes up for me right away because it feels like it's relevant to,
it sounds like a project actually because I have I have three bodies now,
and I can just have one body be the one that I don't process and leave the card
in it. I mean, that's something I could certainly do.
Is that something you would do? I'm always looking for a project.
(42:46):
I'm looking for a kernel of, because I can sit here and go, I can't think of
anything to do. dude, I have a whole bunch of these, a whole bunch,
maybe a half a dozen long-term projects in my whatever, in my consciousness.
This could be another one. Like, yeah, I could just, I don't use my black body
very much. I'll just use, I'll just use it, put a lens on it.
(43:10):
Would you actually take it out and shoot it and then really sit it down? I mean, yeah.
Well, if that's what I'm supposed to do, that's what I'll do. Right.
I mean, I just, what's the workflow going to be like with this camera,
with this card in it. Okay, well, we're just going to shoot. We're not going to,
You know, we're not going to chimp. We're not going to, you know,
whatever. We're not going to dump the card.
(43:31):
I mean, we are taking a little bit of a risk in some way. Yeah,
but that's part of the fun of the project. I mean. Yeah, yeah.
Used to people complain that these cameras only have a single memory card slot. Oh, my goodness.
How could we, you know.
How many times have you opened the back of a film camera? Right,
where did that come from?
(43:51):
That drives me crazy. crazy i mean i like as
a you know if i'm using a professional camera and the fact that someone i don't
know which manufacturer decided to give us two card slots at some point and
then everybody else followed them it was a genius idea for a professional it's
like great we've got this shooting weddings whatever you have a backup copy
or you have jpegs over here and wrong yeah.
(44:13):
It's the smartest thing it was the smartest thing that they could do
and and and it was something that we never had with film because
yes you open up the back of the film and then you
close it really fast like oh damn it i've
got film in there or you know you're taking pictures
and and your your film counter says 34
you take a shot and it says 35 and then you take a shot this is 36 and then
(44:35):
you take another shot and it says 36 and you take another shot you take 36 you're
like oh that's not good right there's two things either happened one the film
did not spool up on the other side the leader didn't grab the leader didn't
grab so you've been photographing 36 Luckily,
it was only 36 pictures, but you photograph 36 pictures of nothing,
or something went wrong with your camera and it ripped the sprockets of the
(44:59):
film, and the same result happened, like you didn't get any shots.
But yeah, we only had that one opportunity, and now that we've got cards,
which are, you know, they're as reliable as they can be, I mean, for crying out loud.
So yeah, you know, there is that risk. I would say just to that particular issue.
You so i had pentax cameras growing up right
(45:21):
yeah when you push the release the
the whatever the drive release it had
a little on the bottom spot on the bottom and when you rebound
it it would you could see it spin so it
could be like okay actually it's actually there's film on the take up side oh
you're talking about with the winder with the power with the wind no no not
(45:41):
with the power winder the actual button to release the film so you could rewind
it it had a little black It had a little black divot on it, so you could watch it rewind.
And on the newer Pentaxes, like the LX, it actually counted backwards on the
counter. So you could do multiple exposure.
I just knew that when you were rolling the film back, you could feel it.
(46:04):
You could feel the tension.
You know, you could feel, and you could hear all of a sudden.
Well, it's nice to have a visual cue that it's actually happening.
Yeah. Well, with my Nikon F3...
Actually, all my film icons, but with the power winders on them.
When you were finished rolling, you hit rewind on the power winder,
then the rewind dial would spin around.
Oh, it would spin, yeah. It would spin because it was spinning the film.
(46:26):
So you would know that your film was going back into the cassette and stuff.
So, yeah, I don't know how we got on that.
We were just talking about the dual card slots.
On this entry level, I can't recommend this entry level camera because it doesn't have dual card slots.
Lots that's a bunch of when you're at
your five-year-old's birthday party and yeah and
(46:49):
you know you're taking the pictures and oh my goodness
the you know one in every you know
20 000 hours that your memory stick could fail it's failed and we've lost these
images well that's the one thing i do is with the students i tell them try not
to do too much picture management on your camera because the more you do that
(47:09):
the more chances are that you're going to get a corruption and And,
you know, reformat the card on the camera and stuff like that.
Like, do these best practices and then you get, you won't have to worry about
losing your stuff so much. But, yeah.
I don't know if this is, I don't know if we got time to go talk about other
things we wanted to talk about.
But, you know, in terms of our timing here. But.
(47:33):
We're not talking about other stuff? I don't know. Yeah. I think,
I think, oh, and, I don't know. No, I think, I think I'm talked out. Okay.
I don't want to, I don't want to drag onto this new subject because we,
we had these other subjects that we want to talk about, but I think we can put
those into a future show because I wouldn't want to get too deep down the,
(47:53):
you know, our last show, we spoke a lot with, with Gino and that was a really good discussion.
But I do want to say, what was I going to say?
Oh, darn it. Shoot. Well, it doesn't matter. It was more of a hardware thing.
How's your camera working out? How's the, how's the, uh, yeah.
(48:15):
Success 20 or whatever you want to call it. Success 20. Yeah.
I like, I like calling it that.
Yeah. I think it, it's got a good balance. It works really well with that 16.
I haven't shot very much with it.
I like the, the autofocus is so much better.
Using it using it at the shooting
street in zone focus it
(48:37):
does a great job oh really you got okay you
look at some of the pictures i took even in in manhattan
there with uh with xc3 it's actually
made me those were single point those were all
single focus so i would prime the
shutter you know prime the focus point and then
recompose even though i'm shooting from the hip i
(48:58):
have an idea where i'm pointing it yeah yeah so even with
those cameras now instead of doing that i've gone back to zone focus
and i'm having better luck with my older cameras even using using the sort of
narrow area focus you know nine whatever you want to call it and then having
it move wherever on the frame tends to pick whatever's closest which is fine do you think do you think.
(49:22):
Zone focusing is something worth teaching beginners
or is that something a little bit further further down
the line you think if what you're going
to be shooting requires it so they can see
it being used i mean there's we could talk about theory all the
time but depending on what if you're going out to
shoot street or something you know
(49:43):
if you're shooting people here's some things to keep track
of and you know i've been following not that i'm going to get one
but rico have these gr3 cameras
now right right kind of one for every day of the week there's a
there's one for wide
angle there's one for the 40 millimeter there's
a journal version which is like a silver pewter color
(50:06):
they have what's called snap focus which is a range it's sort of like reminds
me of when you said a range on the bigger telephotos and telephoto zooms oh
right so you can only go so only go from three meters to six meters or whatever
from five feet to 20 feet,
just so that the camera has an easier time focusing and knows that it doesn't
(50:27):
need to go to infinity, come to the background.
So features like that, I think, are interesting for the specific contexts that are going to be used.
But unless it's more of a theory class and it is a practical class,
I don't know that I would share all of those details. If someone asks.
I mean, one of the things I do is I put a slide up.
You know says learn how to use manual you know
(50:50):
i don't have time in a three-hour street photography class i don't have time to teach
the manual stuff but i do say you
know if you can learn manual on your camera learn it because
it just helps you figure out why your camera is doing some stuff in automatic
and you have a lot more controls and then on the bottom of that i go and google
zone focusing i don't want to talk to you about it but like i i'm always wondering
(51:11):
if i'm doing them a disservice by not going into it a little bit more but i think it would just
sort of muddy the waters a little bit for somebody who's brand new rather than
like maybe having them investigate it on their own or something.
And so, I mean, I like, I, you know, I'll bring in my, my, my Fuji X 100 F to
the class to show them as a, you know, here's an option for a small camera and
(51:35):
look, listen to the shutter.
Can you hear it? And I always take a picture of them and they can never hear the shutter.
And I'd never be able to get someone asking me a question about the camera.
Camera and and in terms
of like how do you shoot with it and i
say you know i know i rarely if ever use automatic focus
on and i'm always setting you know my aperture
(51:58):
to a certain number and my shutter speed just certain numbers so
essentially i'm shooting in manual but i also turn the auto focus off and
and just focus that way and they all sort of
look you know oh really it's like yeah because
you know rarely does auto focus work fast enough
for you to do anything if you're doing in street photography it's just sometimes
it does depend on the camera you have but but you know
(52:19):
just google zone focusing you'll understand a little bit but
i doubt any of them do that and i don't see anybody writing that
note down or something like that so i just wondered if you thought it was something
that would be worth going after and i can't remember when i first learned it
but we you know when we were doing film and hyper focal distances it was kind
of all part of you know part and parcel with that you sort of had to right well
(52:40):
it's part of the theory of the lens too too, that has things like hyperfocal distance.
Right, right. Yeah. You know, it's different for different focal lengths, of course.
Yeah. How did you learn about zone focusing?
I mean, you didn't go to school for it. Did you just... Well,
no, I got it from my team cameras.
So I had... Uh-huh. Actually, Mark's got my Olympus Trip 35, right? And it's got...
(53:05):
A picture of one person a picture of
three people a picture of a mountain that's where
you set that's where you set for you know
you guesstimate uh-huh how to focus a camera now the the lens is a 40 40 millimeter
it's a 35 millimeter camera so and and has it's a 2.8 like it's got it's got
(53:30):
a fairly wide aperture but the minimum focusing distance sounds like five or six feet so.
You're good in terms of, you know, kind of guesstimating where things, where things go.
And then when I got my Pentax is, they have the markings for,
for your, the depth of field markings on the lenses and, and Pentax and Nikon were,
(53:54):
you know, they, they were every, every one of their typical lenses,
even their zoom lenses had the markings and they'd have those, those lines,
you know, know those kind of vortex looking lines on
the zooms when you racked them out right right oh right
those vortex oh yeah yeah i remember those on those
yeah the pull zooms yeah you could
(54:16):
you could tell from there and then you just put or i just put infinity on the
furthest distance and then i tried not to focus if i was at f8 or whatever i
would yeah typically didn't stop down less than that with the film that i was
using in those days yeah 5.6 or 8 and just have
infinity on that or in the rain, whatever the range was, I thought I'd be doing the shooting for.
(54:39):
Yeah. I remember having to learn it. I mean, in high school we were learning
photography on four by five cameras.
So that wasn't really showing up in that, you know, although we were learning
all the, the motions of the camera to get better focus.
What is it? The slime fog rule principle.
(54:59):
Um,
So I was learning that. I don't, there was no real reason to do hyperfocal distance
stuff on four by five cameras.
I can't remember if we were learning 35 stuff, but I certainly remember doing
that in college or something like that or having to figure that out.
But some, actually maybe somewhere along the line, I learned that like,
oh, you know, the colors of the markings on the lens were the same colors,
(55:23):
the different colors on the aperture ring.
And so each aperture number had a different color. and
when you had that little hyperfocal range like if
you stared at it long enough you can kind of figure out like oh there's this
there's this distance that you can
do but when i first learned about hyperfocal distance where you could actually
you know you set it to this number and then you can move your you can throw
(55:45):
your lens kind of literally out of focus in a way by by filling having the the
focus fill that range between the um aperture numbers and i remember being blown away by that.
Like, whoa, really? You can do this? Yeah. So, anyway. Your circles of confusion
are getting smaller, my friend.
(56:07):
That's going to... I do photography jokes all night.
That's the name of this episode, by the way. Circles of Confusion.
All right. Oh, I like it. Okay.
Yeah, I'll do that. All right. It sounded pretty confused anyway.
So, yeah, let's wrap and we'll come back to the other stuff on another show.
We got plenty of stuff to talk about. out. So it was great. Yeah.
(56:27):
I figured I, uh, I haven't spoken to you about just photography in a while and
I know people like to hear us.
Talking about photography you know in our
way so that's what was great so
where um where are
you uh these days uh which is probably the same
as always but let's let people know where you can be found now
(56:48):
on vero and x formerly twitter i'm
at w rosin photo on instagram i'm ward rosin fine art on facebook i'm ward rosin
photo i have my little website for my fine art stuff and where where I did sell
the book once upon a time at rosin.ca, R-O-S-I-N.C-A.
(57:09):
And our unofficial sponsor. Unofficial sponsor. And always.
And always, yes. Is Ornis Photo, O-R-N-I-S.photo, where I sell lens adapters
and 7-hour designs lenses.
And I'm talking with the Viltrox lady. I'm talking with the Viltrox lady.
You are talking to Viltrox people, yeah. I'm talking to her,
yeah. I'm talking to Hannah at Viltrox, and we're trying to put something together.
(57:30):
What's new in the Viltrox? What is the, there's something new on there that
we can, we want to get. I can't remember now.
Well, actually she's trying to sell me a led light panels.
Oh, light panels. Okay. I'll have to talk to you about that offline.
I think portable light panels.
I think I'm, cause I'm thinking about going into that and just light panels
and maybe triggers and things like that.
(57:52):
I might get into that. So cool.
Yeah. So that's where I'm from and what I do. So what about you, Antonio? What I do?
Yeah. I'm on Vero and Flickr at amrosario.
Instagram for those occasional times I post pictures at amrosariofoto.
(58:14):
My website is amrosario.com. I post a lot on my Facebook account.
So come to facebook.com slash rosario photo.
And subscribe to our Substack newsletter.
I know, I know, I know. I'm behind. I've got the itchy trigger finger.
So I know we have one of your stories I want to put up there.
(58:35):
So we've passed our 100 subscribers on Substack. So that's great.
But I know everybody's waiting for a newsletter.
Yay. Yay, streetshots.substack.com.
And leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash streetshots.
If you've got questions or ideas for what the two of us should be talking about,
it would be great to hear your voice. So do that.
(58:59):
And if you want to support the show, one way to do it is you can buy us a coffee
at buymeacoffee.com slash Antonio Rosario.
So that would be great. and yeah so
that's it we've we've uh
we still have the rest of the summer to go that's right
(59:19):
lots of it where it's hours until we're yanked out
of it like i said exactly exactly so still the sun
is not setting early we still got plenty of night nice
sunsets and so go have
at it all right anyway thank you ward for uh hanging out with me tonight i know
that uh you know they say always a pleasure my friend yeah and uh then to the
(59:41):
rest of you we will see you at the end of august so all you have a great night
and uh see you later we'll see you.
Music.
And then go into the pen store and i've already done that and that's that's
(01:00:02):
bad news so i've done I did that the other day.
It wasn't a pen store. It was actually any new dungarees or shoes.
Dungarees, that's a word I haven't heard. I haven't heard dungarees in a long time.
Me neither. It's from those health films. But dungarees. Dungarees sounds like
some sort of band from the 50s or something.
(01:00:24):
It's those pants the girls can't wear. The girls can't wear them to school.
They have to wear skirts. Now it's completely the other way around.
Dungarees. Dungarees. It sounds Australian.
For me, vision is an intelligent form of thought.
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
Music.
(00:28):
Hey welcome to the street shots
photography podcast this is
antonio and this is ward and this
is episode 213 213 for the
middle of august 2024 in
the august 213 is the area code for los angeles that's
(00:48):
yeah do you know you know how they came up
with the area codes right it had the middle digit had
to be either zero or a one to begin with that's one
thing i well but you know like new york is 21 new
york is 212 yeah yeah and los angeles
213 right because the old
dials now this is this is for anybody who's anybody who's
(01:10):
20 rotary telephone rotary telephone used
to have a dial on it and you dial the numbers but the 212
were faster to dial because they were closer
to the end of the dial to the beginning of the dial so so anything that was
really close that's where they had the like i think i'm gonna not get this exact
so anybody who's listening to this who knows you can let me know but the gist
(01:31):
of it is my guess is that there were more telephones or more calls being made
between New York and Los Angeles or anybody who had a,
an area code that was close to the beginning of the dial.
So two and two, he goes zip, zip, zip to one, three was zip, zip, zip.
Interesting. Washington is two zero two. So that's, you know,
it's quick and then slow and then quick.
(01:53):
And I don't know other others area codes.
So that has nothing to do with photography. I thought, yeah, it has to. Yeah.
So yeah, middle of August, this is the, you know, I'm hearing people already
say, you know, summer is almost over and almost in September and you know, yeah, sure.
Okay, fine. It perhaps if we're
counting the days like that and I was in a, I was doing a shoot at the.
(02:18):
Prospect park the celebrate brooklyn shoots and so
we were talking about stuff like this and for some reason i had this
really kind of sort of
time travel experience feeling of like when i was a kid again and i remember
middle of august didn't feel like you know two or three weeks of summer left
it still felt like i was in the middle of summer right yeah so i was like yeah
(02:40):
it's just like try to capture that get yanked out of it exactly right it's summer until like yeah Yeah.
And even, you know, even in September. Canadian speaking here.
Like, you know, it's warm.
It's like in the 80s today. We beautiful, warm, one of the warmer summers we've had here.
And in three weeks, there's going to be frost. I know. You know.
(03:02):
Really? Just how it goes. In three weeks for you? Well, September.
September? Sometime in September, yeah. Wow. Okay. Wow. That really.
Yeah. Do your transitions in seasons happen pretty quickly?
Well, they happen, I would say, in fits and starts. So you'll have some freezing
and then there'll be an Indian summer.
(03:22):
Indian summer can be between two days or two weeks and then it kind of like settles down.
Yeah. All right. That's interesting. But the leaves haven't started turning
or anything like that yet. Started turning. Yeah. That's weird.
I mean, I like the fall. I've always liked the fall and I don't mind it in any way.
But yeah, we're in the middle of August. The show is in the middle of August.
(03:43):
And welcome, everybody. buddies you get to hear welcome to this show we're two
codes and weather reports that's what we're in baby boomer slash generation
x people were the i'm i think up at the cusp of that we talk and banter about
photography you know which is so.
Last, our last episode was really great talking to Gino.
(04:05):
It was, yeah, it was, it was great fun and just getting on the same wavelength
and sharing our observations of things and very good.
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I, I realized we can have him on the show more often.
I think he really likes to talk with us and, and I know I talk to him all the
(04:25):
time, you know, once a week, but his,
and what's interesting is, you know, kind of
neither of us are commercial photographers anymore
and we'll do jobs here and there but you know he's doing his teaching and he's
living in new mexico and he's doing his own work and
i'm doing my stuff and and yet you know for him i think now he's he's his camera
(04:47):
stays in the shelf a little bit longer because he's dealing with you know having
moved in the renovation and stuff like that i understand i haven't had renovation
but i can imagine i know that takes up all your a lot
of energy so the the few times he can get out and shoot is really great didn't
worry yeah and then money and it was like everything you know and trying to
keep keep tabs on that and so but the fact that even with all that going on
(05:13):
he can still like he taps into the sort of.
I'm not going to say this right. I mean, I'm going to say the,
I'm going to say the zeitgeist of photography or something like he,
it's still part of his, it's part of his being, part of his being, you know, and,
and that's kind of what I think like for me and even for you and maybe a lot
(05:37):
of people that we know is that, yeah, we're not necessarily commercial photographers
and we may be doing it every day just as a, I want to say a hobby,
but we can still, we can still just
sort of put ourselves into that pool and and
talk about it in in in hopefully
a deep and meaningful way you know and so you know
(05:57):
it means that if you if you do put your camera up on the
shelf for a little while or something like that but there's still many ways of
still being involved and loving photography so that's
what i really love about him is like you could just you know and
we could go from talking about you know refrigerators and
our cats to like suddenly talking about you know gustav legray
or something which we did we did
(06:18):
talk about him right yeah so that was that was that was a wonderful conversation
it'd be great to get him and somebody else on so it would be like like a foursome
and like how to how to weave that conversation i wouldn't know who the fourth
person should be maybe he might know somebody,
and and we can have a texas scramble whoever hits the furthest gets the shot.
(06:41):
Takes a scramble what is that oh that's
where you a team of golfers play and you play best shot
oh so everyone shoots off the
tee and the best shot takes the takes where that ball lands is where everyone
plays from on the next shot and so on it's a way to get really bad players to
say a little bit faster i never heard of that yeah oh that's interesting so
(07:04):
so what have you What have you been up to besides working,
walking the dog, taking pictures of clouds?
We've got cloud pictures. Not too much of us. I get this. Yeah, it threatens.
We've had a few thunderstorms roll right by us, not over us, right by us.
And we did have, we're getting into the weather report section again, but.
(07:27):
Yeah. Bad hailstorm, lots of damage, other parts of the city here,
it skipped us, so that's good.
Yeah. But, you know, I do like, I do like the dramatic clouds this time of year.
Clouds are, I have to say, they're very addictive. I had some really nice ones yesterday.
And again, I face east, so I'm seeing the clouds being lit by the sunset.
(07:48):
So not the, so they're front lit, not back lit. But there were some really nice ones.
And, you know, I mean, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago or whatever.
But, like, instead of pulling out the Fuji cameras and stuff like that,
and I sort of have them scattered around the house.
But, like, none of them have the lens that I want on it. I was like,
you know what? The hell with it. I reach in my pocket. I pull out my phone.
(08:10):
I turn it on to raw. So it's a raw capture.
Because I just know that we had those, you know, really kind of puffy cumulus
clouds that are lit brightly by the sun.
And then the really dark ones and so i just know that jpeg is
going to really mess those up although actually iphone does a pretty
good job of on the regular on the yeah i'm
sure it even has a really good time or has an easier time dealing with jpegs
(08:34):
yeah though you can't with open sky you can get a banding thing but yeah yeah
but i i shot the raw and and there were the 48 megapixel raw file so there's
a lot of a lot of space with that picture and and i just processed i haven't
i I haven't uploaded them yet.
I'd probably put them on the neighborhood Facebook page or something like that
because they were just really nice.
(08:55):
But, yeah, I mean, it was just easier to go and get the phone.
And clouds are like one of those things, like, even when I was shooting film, I would shoot clouds.
Actually, clouds were a really good stock subject.
We had a cloud file at the Image Bank that was insanely large,
physically insanely large.
(09:17):
It's so funny that I didn't even think about this for a while. clouds
these are slides are there slides they were slides because
everybody shot clouds and then once they heard once the photographer
heard that you know some other photographer made a
fortune on a cloud shot they would start submitting clouds and
there'd be clouds from tahiti and low barrier
to entry yeah exactly yeah i mean i actually made
(09:37):
a pretty good sale once on a cloud shot and again people
are going to say cloud shot how did you make so much money and that was just because
that was the way things were built they build based on
the usage so if it was like a worldwide usage you'd
get paid a lot of money no matter what the subject was which was
a little kind of weird because you know a
cloud shot would be equal to someone who in terms of that kind of usage then
(10:00):
you know a shot of someone who had climbed the top of mount everest and caught
you know the summit there yeah and that's a much harder picture to get yeah
and you know but in terms of usage, anyway, clouds.
So yeah, clouds are low-hanging fruit for me for photography, but it always gets...
(10:21):
People to sort of say, wow, look at that, you know, look at that.
And I like looking out my window and seeing clouds that look like they could
be in the Midwest or the Southwest or something like that.
You know, I was like, no, it's just Brooklyn. So.
It's North America. Everybody gets clouds.
Yeah. Yeah. And they're always something that looks new. Anyway,
so that's our weather report.
(10:45):
Now sports. Yeah. Well, what was I going to say?
Oh, also I wanted to mention that i can't remember exactly when but since the
last time you and i spoke on our own so in a month,
i did meet up with our listener and new friend of the show not new friend he's
(11:05):
a friend of a show jeffrey saldinger in astoria queens so jeffrey you're listening
that was a great we hung out for For like, shoot,
like three or four hours.
And there was this great diner on whatever street we were on.
I think it was Broadway in Astoria.
And, you know, it's just like a diner diner. You know, nice,
(11:26):
nice, good food, big plates. Right.
And they didn't bother us, which was nice.
They let us sit there and talk for a long time. And we went through a whole
bunch of different subjects and talked photography.
And I had his book with me and I had him sign it. so and he was he was actually
worried that he wouldn't be able to sign one for you and i was like well you
(11:47):
know when when you know word comes back to town we'll we'll make sure we get that,
yeah be great it was yeah i was we had a really nice talk and then we walked
around a little it was one of those like pretty miserably hot days and so we
walked around a little and he was showing me some of the places where he photographed
excuse me and and we actually it was really fun
(12:08):
to talk about like look at his
neighborhood from that point of view of like photography
and where things are and the context of
stuff and that that was very
fun to do and we didn't have that much time to hang
out because i had to head back to back home but it was it was really nice to
(12:28):
just do that with another photographer and yeah so it was really great to hang
out with with people who listen to the show if they're in the area so like even
like a meetup or something.
So someday because yeah yeah well jeffrey and i plan to get together at some
other point so jeffrey thank you that was uh that was a wonderful that was a wonderful hangout so.
(12:56):
Uh what else has been going on oh shoot i just wanted to talk photography with
you there's like two two guys that we haven't talked a bunch of things i didn't
really have a specific subject I just want to sort of bounce around a little bit, but oh, so,
one of the things oh so i've been teaching a lot right so i've been doing a lot of classes,
the classes have been getting better i think i told
(13:18):
you guys that i was teaching a lightroom class at brick yeah it was a two-parter
and i think i finally found my the equilibrium with the class like i know how
i say this i had a class monday and then last week monday so this This is today.
We're on Tuesday. So I had a class yesterday and then last week.
(13:39):
And the problem with me and with these classes is that, no, I say a problem.
It's just it because I'm showing a program and I'm teaching the software.
It's a lot different than my other classes where I'm talking about photography
and I'm getting up and showing slides for other photographers and like that. This is like how to.
Yeah. And I, I've just not been, I've not really been digging it somehow.
(14:01):
And I think it's because I've been doing it the way of like sitting in front
from the computer and showing the slides and then doing a demo and I was like, this is not me.
And so last week when I started the class, I think I remember I was talking
to, but I realized that I was doing things.
I wasn't looking forward to this class, even though I made up the class.
(14:22):
And I was like, this is what, if I wanted to do it differently,
I could have made it differently.
But I didn't. I was doing it because that's kind of the standard.
I decided to not, I was even going against my own curriculum in a way.
Not totally against it, because people are there to learn Lightroom and understand things.
(14:42):
But instead of sitting behind my computer, I used my Macintosh. I used my own slideshow.
I stood up and I also talked about Lightroom within the context of photography.
Cool. So it wasn't just like, well, this is what you do and this is why you do this.
And I thought I could interject at least some of my personality and how I,
(15:04):
a little bit about like how I do other classes.
So a little editorializing and a little soapbox standing and stuff like that.
But like at appropriate points.
Night and day difference, by the way. And the class was engaged.
Like, not only were they, like, you know, opening up the files that I gave them,
(15:25):
because I would give them all SD cards.
They'd open them up, you know, import the pictures. They're all importing my
pictures. I was using my photos.
And, but they were engaged in, like, asking questions about photography in general
or things like, you know.
And I followed up this week. And what was great was that everybody from the
first class showed up for the second class.
(15:47):
Nice. No, I don't. Yeah, I've only run this class three times.
So this is so six sessions, but the other two sessions and I don't know for what reasons.
And but some people would not show up for the second session.
And it was not a big deal. I don't really take it serious, you know,
and I don't know. This is such a small data set.
I don't know if this has anything to do with me changing the way I work,
(16:08):
but because I engage them better about like, again, this program isn't just
something that sits there.
It's part of a context of something else.
And I think.
Certainly helped. And I did the same thing in the second part where everybody
showed up and, and, and we did it.
Actually, I ran longer in the class. The class is only two hours.
(16:30):
And so I ran longer, but everybody stayed for the extra 20 minutes.
Cause I think I was supposed to end at four and I ended up at four 20 and they
all stayed. Cause some people get up and leave, right? Cause I got to go,
but nobody, nobody left. Everybody stayed.
Yeah. So I thought I'd share that with you guys.
And you, as a, as an interesting thing from a point of view of the,
of like me as an instructor, and trying to teach Lightroom in four hours or anything is.
(17:00):
Almost impossible. That's a stretch. Really, I can only touch on little things.
I can touch here, I can touch there. And the computers that they have at Brick
are not powerful enough to run the generative AI retouching.
Which, you know, I was talking about a little bit of the morals of AI.
(17:21):
A little bit trying not to get too crazy about it but it was a saying like you
know for retouching and stuff like this this thing is really great so i got
to show them all that stuff,
on my computer because my computer is much faster so it was pretty exciting
anyway anyway i thought i'd share that because it's fresh it was a fresh experience
and uh something kind of new in a way and i think it was also just me deciding
(17:44):
to be more myself right you know.
And and doing that and realizing like it works in my other classes and therefore
you know it should work in this so good congrats i'm god i'm glad it's getting some traction,
i am too yeah i'm also trying to sorry i'm saying i'm monopolizing this discussion
(18:06):
a little bit but now you got me right i also had a the photo journaling class
at the library in fact it was the same day no this was last week last week i
had a photo journaling class that
was really interesting. Not really interesting. It was good to do that.
And there was no photographers in the group, which was a little, it was okay.
It was people who were interested in journaling, but it was like really trying
(18:26):
to get photographers in there to do it. But that was a really good class.
Everybody liked that and they found it therapeutic and all these great words
came out and trying to figure out a little bit more to that class,
like how to make it maybe a little bit more appealing to people who are taking
pictures and not just people who are journaling.
You know what I mean? right yeah so yeah so yeah it's been a busy couple of
(18:49):
weeks with classes i've been doing a lot of classes and and uh had some a lot
of freelance video shoots as well and so anyway that's been my that's been my
couple of weeks but what was i going to say i was oh so i.
I was thinking about something and maybe you have some thoughts about this,
(19:10):
okay uh i sometimes have thoughts sometimes
you have thoughts sometimes i have thoughts too thoughts are
there yeah they come up now and then and i
don't know how to so you might need to help me figure this out and so i'm actually
this is live thinking the brain is maybe not working so well anyway one of the
(19:31):
things that sort of come up in my thinking these days and it's been the the
past couple of weeks, especially with students is,
yeah, you know, I, I, I tend to tell, I tend, I tell them, excuse me,
that if they want to look at good photography and.
You know do all these things go to galleries go to this go
to that and don't think that you're going to find necessarily good
(19:53):
photography on instagram i'm not saying there's bad like i'm not
saying there isn't good photography on instagram but i think
it's always good to find some place where it's sort of concentrated and it's not
being thrown at you and in multiple directions and
you know so but that
got me thinking to you know
social media and stuff like that and i really in my classes
(20:15):
i'm really trying to spend time getting them getting
maybe one or two people to just think slightly
differently to think maybe in addition to thumbing through you know a social
media feed that there are other ways to absorb and engage in photography right
what i realize is that right now a lot of people are engaging it by.
(20:39):
Giving thumbs up or hearts or whatever and then moving on and
what i do is i ask them i said like so all those thumbs up and hearts that
you give do you ever remember the pictures like do
you ever go back and look at them like right and and
i've never seen anybody shake you know nod their head and say
yes everybody shakes their head and i was like okay that's
interesting and that's where i sort of lead them into saying talking about you know
photo journaling i see photo journaling is this nice space to then
(21:03):
you know reflect on a picture your own
picture someone else's pictures and whatever like the idea of
a personal museum anyway this is a
long intro i'm trying to get sorry i
can't wait for my answer whatever it is i can't wait for my answer it's gonna
be you're gonna have like a one word answer you'll be like yes yes yes to all
(21:23):
of the above and then we're gonna move on to something else sorry it occurred
to me i received an email from somebody and i I won't say who at the moment, just out of whatever.
I'm just going to leave it at that. Who looked through my zines that I made,
the 1-1-2-1-8 plus zines, and gave me some interesting observations about the images.
(21:46):
It was really kind of cool to hear somebody else talk about my pictures and
see things in it that maybe I didn't initially consciously see.
And I know like on social media, that happens rarely. Like people often say,
like, if you're going to comment on a picture, you can say, that's really great.
I love this. I love the way the light does this, you know, X, Y, and Z.
(22:07):
But often, and again, I'm, I might be just generalizing. I'm sure I am.
But I, at least in the, in the conversations I've seen, there's less of that
kind of talk like how, oh, your picture that you photographed last week. Yeah.
Resembles this one in sort of this you know you know like making those connections making
(22:27):
connections and stuff yeah maybe that's it and
and how that is missing from this forward moving process of whatever it is social
media pictures you know whether and i'll throw in not in just instagram but
like vero or anything where photography is this endless stream of stuff
(22:48):
right and and what i thought about is
that you know in our collective lately like we were talking
to dave about a project he's working
on i won't go into the project because it's up to him to talk about but yeah
but that engagement and and making
connections between things is is what
i see that's missing and i'm i'm putting
(23:10):
this out to you a little bit i don't know what you have to say about it but i
i really want to incorporate more of this into my teaching somehow
make it kind of less dry and maybe a faster intro to it in some way but i i
what do you think about this like where do you think i'm going with this like
what what's what you know you know if we're sitting having a beer and talking
(23:31):
about this i would like to know what you think well look i'll just,
go on a little parallel stream here and let's see if we can put these two subject matter.
Together okay when i'm talking with people about photography
they're around in my sphere they're not
photographers they want to get into photography right and then the question
(23:52):
for me is what kind of photography do you like well i i don't know and then
you start to go into well let's just say you know make something up and like
i was when i'm trying to come up with a project for myself
you know i don't have any ideas and you'd have
to start somewhere so like well my son when
he was getting started he liked to take pictures of garbage in the street he's
(24:15):
really passionate about it so i have this anthony hernandez picture or anthony
hernandez book of of you know pictures of chain link fences and places where
unhoused people live and that sort of thing not with people.
But the, the artifacts and the marks that they left on the walls and all that
(24:37):
kind of stuff of, of, and the detritus of a big city, like here's an example
of an artist who does sort of what you're interested in.
And then, you know, he just went pouring through it and he was eating it all
up. Like he was like, it inspired him.
And now he's, it's been years now, I don't know, four or five years now,
he's been taking these pictures of tipped over barrels in the street.
(25:00):
And, you know, that sort of thing. And he has this passion about it.
And, you know, if you're a street photographer, if you're interested in shooting
street, what kind of street do you want to just take pictures of buildings?
You want to take pictures of people and you want something a little left to center.
I might show someone a Winogrand work on the web or in a book or something.
(25:21):
Get them, get them so that they have an idea of what the convention is of the
direction that they're going.
Not that they have to follow it blindly, but that here's the prior art of what we're talking about.
And sometimes it turns people off but usually it's sort of like oh this is very
interesting oh i had no idea that this subject was so deep and wide and it's
(25:43):
like that with just about every,
genre of photography you know you can find you
can find a lot of stuff that is interesting and inspiring that may tickle the
creative aspect in yourself if for no other reason if you don't go out and shoot
and most of the people that i talk to don't they want to talk about photography
(26:03):
but But they're not really interested in going out on a,
you know, a lunch hour on a Tuesday to take pictures,
you know, to walk up and down the street of, in streets where they know it so
well, they think there's nothing to photograph, right?
Which is part of the seeing aspect of shooting that, you know,
like Gino said in our last show,
(26:27):
you know, trying to get pictures of the thing and not the photograph,
right? Right, right, right.
So I think, you know, trying to tap into an inspiration, I guess,
is what I'm trying to say here.
And I don't know if that mates with what you're, what you've just posed.
(26:48):
But I mean, if the whole idea of what we're, what we're trying to do is inspire people.
And the wonderful thing about photography is it's one frame. It's one JPEG.
It's one, one at a time. You can look at these things and you can cover a lot of ground.
Now that's, now we're starting to get, lean towards Instagram.
And like you said, that's not where we're going.
(27:10):
We're going to, you know, resources that, where the folks kind of all agree
that this is meaningful work.
That this is meaningful creativity and work from there.
Anyway, I think that answered your question. No, that's fine. It's interesting.
As you're talking, my recent class was a Lightroom class, right?
(27:30):
Right. So it wasn't about the history of photography.
It wasn't street photography. Right. It was a technical class and I decided
to interject some stuff in it.
But but everybody was in that class because they're interested in the program.
Actually, the six people were there. The majority of them seemed to be interested
in like the organizational aspects of Lightroom and taking care of their work.
(27:55):
Like I think that was part of what made the class so interesting for them is
like they wanted to be there I don't think they were just curious about it. Yeah and.
That offered this opportunity to say, like, you know, I was sort of doing an audible, right?
I was looking at the audience and sensing, like, you know, here's an opportunity for you with Lightroom.
(28:17):
You know, like if you don't have a day where you're going to go out and photograph
that you've got this whole, you know, cache of imagery that's sitting there
on your computer that you can go back and look at.
And you can say, hey, I did this yesterday, but look what I did two weeks ago
and look how they connect to each other.
(28:39):
That's how you can use the program. The program is not just for processing and organizing.
It's like, I think I was describing this in terms of, you know, making collections.
So it's one of the powers of Lightroom or any program like that where you can
have multiple pictures in different locations, which you couldn't do in the
days of slides and files.
(29:00):
You know, you had to put one picture in one place and that's where it lived.
And so you would never be open to looking at, say, a cloud picture,
then maybe thinking, oh, but that also looks like a dinosaur,
you know, and like putting it into the, you know, personification of nature file.
You couldn't do that. Like where would, where, maybe it would,
maybe if the, if the picture was more valuable that way, but you know what I mean?
(29:21):
It could be in a cloud bucket and a personification of nature and highly rated
and like all these different tags we can put on images so that they appear in more than one place.
And not only do they appear in one place, more than one place,
but you have access to them when you want to.
And so, you know, I, I tried to balance them out with, look,
(29:43):
you know, it's, you have to go take lots of pictures, take lots of pictures,
but those days where you don't feel like taking pictures you've got
a wealth of stuff that's sitting there and you can
look through it and you can reflect on
it you can write about it you can make connections with you
can print these two pictures together you can do all this sorts of stuff everything
but just moving forward and and moving forward sounds like it's that's what
(30:07):
you're supposed to we're all supposed to move forward about things and i was
like well yeah okay but there's something about looking back and there's something
about making connections and stuff.
And doing that- And you haven't exhausted the current yet, right?
Right, no. And when you feel like you need to move on.
Music.
(30:36):
Oh, so, oh, I know we're kidding. I'm getting with this. Sorry.
Oh, my God. I'm so funny to myself sometimes. Your arms are flailing.
I know my arms are flailing.
Yeah, I know. It's just, by the way, audience, this is happening live.
My brain is starting to fire up now.
It's starting to work live. This is how it works sometimes.
So today, this morning, I decided, I don't, here's what I do.
(31:00):
I tell my students, you know, you got to clean off your card, put it on your computer.
This is i do in most of my classes you know back everything
up make sure you have a couple of backups before you erase your card yada yada
yada all right and i also say do as i say not as
i do right because i do something different a little bit but this
is kind of how i want you guys to do it anyway i've
got four cameras sort of lying around and i thought i had some time today and
(31:23):
i thought okay well now it's time for me to dump the cards onto my computer
so sitting there sticking the cards in and dumping them out and one of my cameras
it was the anyway one of my of cameras had about 1600 shots on it that I had,
which means they had been like,
I have not taken the card out of the camera for a while.
(31:43):
So I stuck it in there and I was, you know, and then I'm looking through the,
as, as they're coming in and the edit, I'm looking through the pictures and
like, I did a lot, did a lot of different things. I did some street photography. I did some of this.
And it was really interesting going through those pictures. Like I was actually
did a whole bunch of stuff on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was like a couple of weeks ago.
(32:06):
I just walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and it was, you know,
it was great because I was using my...
16 millimeter lens so that's a what 24
on my camera and so it's getting and
i'm shooting in black and white and so it reminded me of you for
some reason there was just some i love that 16 and i
shoot black and white yeah yeah this is like so i but
i didn't look at the pictures i haven't looked at any
(32:28):
of these pictures on the camera for a
while like i literally have been shooting and then putting the camera down and
shooting putting the camera down so today is the first time i was looking at
these and first of all it reminded me of the days when we shot film right so
you shot film and how many rolls of film did you have sitting there until you
had to develop them and then you develop them and you start making contact sheets
and you start going back and saying,
(32:50):
oh look what i did like four weeks ago you know like i haven't looked i didn't i didn't immediately.
Pop those pictures into like onto my phone into light room and start processing
them and then stick them up on social media right away in fact i think i might
have done it for a few of these
pictures that were on here but like the vast majority of them i i don't even
(33:12):
remember taking some of them i mean i remember it but i was like oh i took i
said wow i was like look at this picture you know and i did some cropping on
it like some people on the brooklyn bridge and i was flagging them and i was
like this is really interesting having spent a good amount of time.
Away from the pictures and and even though i i like to tell the students like
get the pictures off your card i actually i'm trying to do that so that they
(33:34):
don't because a lot of them managed their files like on their car,
like all their pictures are just stored on their card, you know?
Yeah. I want to get them out of that habit. Like, yeah, don't do that. Get them off.
No, where are your pictures? Well, they're all on here. You've got to be kidding me.
Yeah. But you know, so this is not quite the same thing, but this was just me
(33:55):
being that lazy, just like, just, I haven't had the time to dump the pictures
often, but it was really, really, really fun. And,
to look at stuff that I shot. I think this one camera I haven't dumped in like two months.
And so I've had stuff for like two months and I go back and I was like,
Oh, look at this picture. Look at this picture, you know?
And, and so essentially they're new shots, but not in terms of time,
(34:18):
you know, they're months old at this point.
So anyway, that was, it was, it was a learning experience in some way about,
and that we may have talked about this a lot, you know, maybe not.
Well, you're more like this, right? I mean, you're, you're, I mean,
you're both right you will put pictures up right away but sometimes and then
you will you sit on them for a long time yeah depends if the subject matter
(34:41):
is particularly emotional or.
Or i'm not sure that i got the intention
of it changes so if i look
at them once i can i import them all right away like i
get them up and get them on my nas as soon as possible as soon
as i get home from wherever so i do
that so there are projects like my
(35:03):
community project which i started in 2017 which is still on a very slow burn
right now i will i will go back to that and i kept track of what neighborhoods
in town that i've covered and which ones i still have to go to and so on and
that'll that'll happen it's gonna take its sweet time but i don't look
too closely at those images with the mind to editing in them,
(35:27):
editing them and putting them out there.
And what was I going to say after that? Something important.
Well, so, oh yeah, no, the ones that, the ones that are really long-term projects
or that somehow or other disappointed me or the tack of them changed,
like the meaning of them changed in the act of shooting them.
(35:48):
I will put those away and not deal with, and I'll look at them later.
That could be weeks or months down the road.
When I'm doing these, you know, and I'm doing rodeo and I'm doing the street
work, that That, the street stuff I want to do right away because that was a
pattern when Mark Ryerson and I used to go out, you know, during the lunch hours.
(36:08):
You know, I couldn't wait to go home and after dinner I'd, you know,
put in the card and I'd import it and post to social media.
That was a, that was like a skill set I was trying to develop.
So I have a habit of, particularly with street stuff, to get it up, get it on and get it up.
So that there's a closest relationship from when I'm shooting to when I'm not
(36:31):
necessarily posting, but when I'm doing post processing so that what did I do right in this one?
What did I do wrong in this one? And try and build a skill up.
And that's what I was, what I've been trying to do with street.
And so it's all up in my head. I mean, when I was in New York,
right, I was, I was uploading every day and going through them and trying to put them up.
And like, okay, here's, is this the direction I want to go? And I mean,
(36:54):
I think I told you when I was changing my, my, my point of view a little bit,
um, as the day, as the days were going by.
So that, that's important to me as a street photographer to try and evolve because
you can, you know, it's easy to get lazy when you're shooting street, I think.
(37:14):
And it's hard because, well, I think that's one of the hardest genres to do
because you don't have really control over anything except your camera and where you point it.
So, yeah, so it's, I'm of two minds, right? I, you know, the stuff that I do
every day that I would like to put up and look at, evaluate, edit,
and then stuff where, okay, I don't, I'm too far away from this or I'm too close
(37:37):
to this and, and I'll get back to it. So that's where I am. That's where I am with that.
You're making these, you're making these decisions deliberately though. though
like you're i'm making this is like well there it's deliberate
but it's not like the like
the pictures of the women that i shot last summer
i still haven't really touched them yeah like they're
gonna sit there until i'm compelled to go look at them
(38:00):
and start to edit them yeah maybe there are a couple of pictures
that were fluffy that i posted but not yeah
not get the emotional core of what i was doing and
and i my point a little bit is i mean
you're you're you're very aware of what you're it just
sounds like you're aware of what you're doing and like this case first of all
i was really surprised that i had 1600 shots and they're you know they're raw
(38:22):
plus jpeg so there's twice as many files on there as actually when i put the
card in there's 128 gigabyte card and i looked at it and said you know 18 or
20 gigabytes left i was like what.
And and i was like i wonder if i shot any movies on it because it's like that's
a lot of yeah that's a lot of card right and i looked at it and i popped it
(38:43):
in and lightroom said 1699,
oh by the way i hit 1.1 million files on
on your it doesn't include the jpegs it doesn't actually include all the files
like this anyway but that was like 1.1 million i've got now anyway i was surprised
at the amount of pictures and when i looked at the dates i i was like wow i haven't i I really,
(39:06):
I caught myself by surprise. Did I take 1,600 pictures?
My other cameras had, what was that, my GFX, I had like 80.
My X100, I had about a couple hundred, because I've been bringing that a lot
more and doing some street shots.
And then my X-Pro, I had probably about another 150.
So, like, those all felt right. And also, when I looked at my monthly totals
(39:28):
in Lightroom, you know, because of the adding for the, I have my stuff by month,
it didn't show that many pictures.
I was, like, surprised. eyes that like I thought I was shooting over time yeah
so and this was on this camera was my xh2 so it's the you know the 40 megapixel
40 megapixel thing which I carry I do a lot of street photography with that
(39:51):
too it's kind of it's kind of fun.
To carry and look at the bent screen and stuff like that. But anyway.
I was just, I was surprised.
I was surprised at how many shots I had there. And it was, which meant I haven't,
I really just literally put the camera on the shelf and every once in a while
I'll take it and I put it back down, which is unusual for me because I like
to sometimes go through it and, you know, sitting in the coffee shop.
(40:14):
I might, I've been doing different things in my coffee shop now.
So my brain has shifted a little bit.
So, you know, not that photography is taking a side note.
I've been doing more writing, but but you know it's just got
1600 pictures and looking at the back of the camera going through those
pictures after a while it's like like she's this is kind of
going back it was swiping and stuff like forget it i'm not gonna
(40:36):
do that so anyway i was just it was it was something
that i wasn't aware of and and and and the surprise of it the surprise of the
amount of different subjects that i that i caught was was kind of fun and again
it just it just had this this little
bit of like memory of like when photography was first new to me and,
(40:58):
or even that idea of waiting and seeing what did the pictures turn out like,
you know, send the chromes to send the code of Chrome to fair lawn and you waited
a week and got that yellow box back or usually get a, I usually get a FedEx
box that was full of yellow boxes.
And I was like, Ooh, you know, I got like 150 boxes in there or something like
(41:20):
that. And I have to go through each one of them on a light table.
And I was like, You know, it was like a pig in poop, like, oh,
this is great. Taking a loop and looking at all the pictures.
So it had that, it evoked that feeling in me. And how to...
To sort of find that balance between what you're talking about and what I'm
talking about for somebody who's new and want to inspired.
(41:40):
And, and, you know, it's not just about slowing down,
although there's that in there, it's, it's how to,
uh, get, let's say people who are new at this to say, look, you know,
stop going through pictures every day, start going through your own stuff,
start, you know, when the winter comes and you're bored and it's too cold to go out,
(42:03):
go in your Lightroom catalog and find you know what you did last year and the
year before or whatever and like how to how to get that to be the norm but make that is like a viable,
option and activities yeah so well anyway I don't know I don't know if I can
solve this or I throw this out in the world but I like when something like this
(42:24):
comes up for me right away because it feels like it's relevant to,
it sounds like a project actually because I have I have three bodies now,
and I can just have one body be the one that I don't process and leave the card
in it. I mean, that's something I could certainly do.
Is that something you would do? I'm always looking for a project.
(42:46):
I'm looking for a kernel of, because I can sit here and go, I can't think of
anything to do. dude, I have a whole bunch of these, a whole bunch,
maybe a half a dozen long-term projects in my whatever, in my consciousness.
This could be another one. Like, yeah, I could just, I don't use my black body
very much. I'll just use, I'll just use it, put a lens on it.
(43:10):
Would you actually take it out and shoot it and then really sit it down? I mean, yeah.
Well, if that's what I'm supposed to do, that's what I'll do. Right.
I mean, I just, what's the workflow going to be like with this camera,
with this card in it. Okay, well, we're just going to shoot. We're not going to,
You know, we're not going to chimp. We're not going to, you know,
whatever. We're not going to dump the card.
(43:31):
I mean, we are taking a little bit of a risk in some way. Yeah,
but that's part of the fun of the project. I mean. Yeah, yeah.
Used to people complain that these cameras only have a single memory card slot. Oh, my goodness.
How could we, you know.
How many times have you opened the back of a film camera? Right,
where did that come from?
(43:51):
That drives me crazy. crazy i mean i like as
a you know if i'm using a professional camera and the fact that someone i don't
know which manufacturer decided to give us two card slots at some point and
then everybody else followed them it was a genius idea for a professional it's
like great we've got this shooting weddings whatever you have a backup copy
or you have jpegs over here and wrong yeah.
(44:13):
It's the smartest thing it was the smartest thing that they could do
and and and it was something that we never had with film because
yes you open up the back of the film and then you
close it really fast like oh damn it i've
got film in there or you know you're taking pictures
and and your your film counter says 34
you take a shot and it says 35 and then you take a shot this is 36 and then
(44:35):
you take another shot and it says 36 and you take another shot you take 36 you're
like oh that's not good right there's two things either happened one the film
did not spool up on the other side the leader didn't grab the leader didn't
grab so you've been photographing 36 Luckily,
it was only 36 pictures, but you photograph 36 pictures of nothing,
or something went wrong with your camera and it ripped the sprockets of the
(44:59):
film, and the same result happened, like you didn't get any shots.
But yeah, we only had that one opportunity, and now that we've got cards,
which are, you know, they're as reliable as they can be, I mean, for crying out loud.
So yeah, you know, there is that risk. I would say just to that particular issue.
You so i had pentax cameras growing up right
(45:21):
yeah when you push the release the
the whatever the drive release it had
a little on the bottom spot on the bottom and when you rebound
it it would you could see it spin so it
could be like okay actually it's actually there's film on the take up side oh
you're talking about with the winder with the power with the wind no no not
(45:41):
with the power winder the actual button to release the film so you could rewind
it it had a little black It had a little black divot on it, so you could watch it rewind.
And on the newer Pentaxes, like the LX, it actually counted backwards on the
counter. So you could do multiple exposure.
I just knew that when you were rolling the film back, you could feel it.
(46:04):
You could feel the tension.
You know, you could feel, and you could hear all of a sudden.
Well, it's nice to have a visual cue that it's actually happening.
Yeah. Well, with my Nikon F3...
Actually, all my film icons, but with the power winders on them.
When you were finished rolling, you hit rewind on the power winder,
then the rewind dial would spin around.
Oh, it would spin, yeah. It would spin because it was spinning the film.
(46:26):
So you would know that your film was going back into the cassette and stuff.
So, yeah, I don't know how we got on that.
We were just talking about the dual card slots.
On this entry level, I can't recommend this entry level camera because it doesn't have dual card slots.
Lots that's a bunch of when you're at
your five-year-old's birthday party and yeah and
(46:49):
you know you're taking the pictures and oh my goodness
the you know one in every you know
20 000 hours that your memory stick could fail it's failed and we've lost these
images well that's the one thing i do is with the students i tell them try not
to do too much picture management on your camera because the more you do that
(47:09):
the more chances are that you're going to get a corruption and And,
you know, reformat the card on the camera and stuff like that.
Like, do these best practices and then you get, you won't have to worry about
losing your stuff so much. But, yeah.
I don't know if this is, I don't know if we got time to go talk about other
things we wanted to talk about.
But, you know, in terms of our timing here. But.
(47:33):
We're not talking about other stuff? I don't know. Yeah. I think,
I think, oh, and, I don't know. No, I think, I think I'm talked out. Okay.
I don't want to, I don't want to drag onto this new subject because we,
we had these other subjects that we want to talk about, but I think we can put
those into a future show because I wouldn't want to get too deep down the,
(47:53):
you know, our last show, we spoke a lot with, with Gino and that was a really good discussion.
But I do want to say, what was I going to say?
Oh, darn it. Shoot. Well, it doesn't matter. It was more of a hardware thing.
How's your camera working out? How's the, how's the, uh, yeah.
(48:15):
Success 20 or whatever you want to call it. Success 20. Yeah.
I like, I like calling it that.
Yeah. I think it, it's got a good balance. It works really well with that 16.
I haven't shot very much with it.
I like the, the autofocus is so much better.
Using it using it at the shooting
street in zone focus it
(48:37):
does a great job oh really you got okay you
look at some of the pictures i took even in in manhattan
there with uh with xc3 it's actually
made me those were single point those were all
single focus so i would prime the
shutter you know prime the focus point and then
recompose even though i'm shooting from the hip i
(48:58):
have an idea where i'm pointing it yeah yeah so even with
those cameras now instead of doing that i've gone back to zone focus
and i'm having better luck with my older cameras even using using the sort of
narrow area focus you know nine whatever you want to call it and then having
it move wherever on the frame tends to pick whatever's closest which is fine do you think do you think.
(49:22):
Zone focusing is something worth teaching beginners
or is that something a little bit further further down
the line you think if what you're going
to be shooting requires it so they can see
it being used i mean there's we could talk about theory all the
time but depending on what if you're going out to
shoot street or something you know
(49:43):
if you're shooting people here's some things to keep track
of and you know i've been following not that i'm going to get one
but rico have these gr3 cameras
now right right kind of one for every day of the week there's a
there's one for wide
angle there's one for the 40 millimeter there's
a journal version which is like a silver pewter color
(50:06):
they have what's called snap focus which is a range it's sort of like reminds
me of when you said a range on the bigger telephotos and telephoto zooms oh
right so you can only go so only go from three meters to six meters or whatever
from five feet to 20 feet,
just so that the camera has an easier time focusing and knows that it doesn't
(50:27):
need to go to infinity, come to the background.
So features like that, I think, are interesting for the specific contexts that are going to be used.
But unless it's more of a theory class and it is a practical class,
I don't know that I would share all of those details. If someone asks.
I mean, one of the things I do is I put a slide up.
You know says learn how to use manual you know
(50:50):
i don't have time in a three-hour street photography class i don't have time to teach
the manual stuff but i do say you
know if you can learn manual on your camera learn it because
it just helps you figure out why your camera is doing some stuff in automatic
and you have a lot more controls and then on the bottom of that i go and google
zone focusing i don't want to talk to you about it but like i i'm always wondering
(51:11):
if i'm doing them a disservice by not going into it a little bit more but i think it would just
sort of muddy the waters a little bit for somebody who's brand new rather than
like maybe having them investigate it on their own or something.
And so, I mean, I like, I, you know, I'll bring in my, my, my Fuji X 100 F to
the class to show them as a, you know, here's an option for a small camera and
(51:35):
look, listen to the shutter.
Can you hear it? And I always take a picture of them and they can never hear the shutter.
And I'd never be able to get someone asking me a question about the camera.
Camera and and in terms
of like how do you shoot with it and i
say you know i know i rarely if ever use automatic focus
on and i'm always setting you know my aperture
(51:58):
to a certain number and my shutter speed just certain numbers so
essentially i'm shooting in manual but i also turn the auto focus off and
and just focus that way and they all sort of
look you know oh really it's like yeah because
you know rarely does auto focus work fast enough
for you to do anything if you're doing in street photography it's just sometimes
it does depend on the camera you have but but you know
(52:19):
just google zone focusing you'll understand a little bit but
i doubt any of them do that and i don't see anybody writing that
note down or something like that so i just wondered if you thought it was something
that would be worth going after and i can't remember when i first learned it
but we you know when we were doing film and hyper focal distances it was kind
of all part of you know part and parcel with that you sort of had to right well
(52:40):
it's part of the theory of the lens too too, that has things like hyperfocal distance.
Right, right. Yeah. You know, it's different for different focal lengths, of course.
Yeah. How did you learn about zone focusing?
I mean, you didn't go to school for it. Did you just... Well,
no, I got it from my team cameras.
So I had... Uh-huh. Actually, Mark's got my Olympus Trip 35, right? And it's got...
(53:05):
A picture of one person a picture of
three people a picture of a mountain that's where
you set that's where you set for you know
you guesstimate uh-huh how to focus a camera now the the lens is a 40 40 millimeter
it's a 35 millimeter camera so and and has it's a 2.8 like it's got it's got
(53:30):
a fairly wide aperture but the minimum focusing distance sounds like five or six feet so.
You're good in terms of, you know, kind of guesstimating where things, where things go.
And then when I got my Pentax is, they have the markings for,
for your, the depth of field markings on the lenses and, and Pentax and Nikon were,
(53:54):
you know, they, they were every, every one of their typical lenses,
even their zoom lenses had the markings and they'd have those, those lines,
you know, know those kind of vortex looking lines on
the zooms when you racked them out right right oh right
those vortex oh yeah yeah i remember those on those
yeah the pull zooms yeah you could
(54:16):
you could tell from there and then you just put or i just put infinity on the
furthest distance and then i tried not to focus if i was at f8 or whatever i
would yeah typically didn't stop down less than that with the film that i was
using in those days yeah 5.6 or 8 and just have
infinity on that or in the rain, whatever the range was, I thought I'd be doing the shooting for.
(54:39):
Yeah. I remember having to learn it. I mean, in high school we were learning
photography on four by five cameras.
So that wasn't really showing up in that, you know, although we were learning
all the, the motions of the camera to get better focus.
What is it? The slime fog rule principle.
(54:59):
Um,
So I was learning that. I don't, there was no real reason to do hyperfocal distance
stuff on four by five cameras.
I can't remember if we were learning 35 stuff, but I certainly remember doing
that in college or something like that or having to figure that out.
But some, actually maybe somewhere along the line, I learned that like,
oh, you know, the colors of the markings on the lens were the same colors,
(55:23):
the different colors on the aperture ring.
And so each aperture number had a different color. and
when you had that little hyperfocal range like if
you stared at it long enough you can kind of figure out like oh there's this
there's this distance that you can
do but when i first learned about hyperfocal distance where you could actually
you know you set it to this number and then you can move your you can throw
(55:45):
your lens kind of literally out of focus in a way by by filling having the the
focus fill that range between the um aperture numbers and i remember being blown away by that.
Like, whoa, really? You can do this? Yeah. So, anyway. Your circles of confusion
are getting smaller, my friend.
(56:07):
That's going to... I do photography jokes all night.
That's the name of this episode, by the way. Circles of Confusion.
All right. Oh, I like it. Okay.
Yeah, I'll do that. All right. It sounded pretty confused anyway.
So, yeah, let's wrap and we'll come back to the other stuff on another show.
We got plenty of stuff to talk about. out. So it was great. Yeah.
(56:27):
I figured I, uh, I haven't spoken to you about just photography in a while and
I know people like to hear us.
Talking about photography you know in our
way so that's what was great so
where um where are
you uh these days uh which is probably the same
as always but let's let people know where you can be found now
(56:48):
on vero and x formerly twitter i'm
at w rosin photo on instagram i'm ward rosin fine art on facebook i'm ward rosin
photo i have my little website for my fine art stuff and where where I did sell
the book once upon a time at rosin.ca, R-O-S-I-N.C-A.
(57:09):
And our unofficial sponsor. Unofficial sponsor. And always.
And always, yes. Is Ornis Photo, O-R-N-I-S.photo, where I sell lens adapters
and 7-hour designs lenses.
And I'm talking with the Viltrox lady. I'm talking with the Viltrox lady.
You are talking to Viltrox people, yeah. I'm talking to her,
yeah. I'm talking to Hannah at Viltrox, and we're trying to put something together.
(57:30):
What's new in the Viltrox? What is the, there's something new on there that
we can, we want to get. I can't remember now.
Well, actually she's trying to sell me a led light panels.
Oh, light panels. Okay. I'll have to talk to you about that offline.
I think portable light panels.
I think I'm, cause I'm thinking about going into that and just light panels
and maybe triggers and things like that.
(57:52):
I might get into that. So cool.
Yeah. So that's where I'm from and what I do. So what about you, Antonio? What I do?
Yeah. I'm on Vero and Flickr at amrosario.
Instagram for those occasional times I post pictures at amrosariofoto.
(58:14):
My website is amrosario.com. I post a lot on my Facebook account.
So come to facebook.com slash rosario photo.
And subscribe to our Substack newsletter.
I know, I know, I know. I'm behind. I've got the itchy trigger finger.
So I know we have one of your stories I want to put up there.
(58:35):
So we've passed our 100 subscribers on Substack. So that's great.
But I know everybody's waiting for a newsletter.
Yay. Yay, streetshots.substack.com.
And leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash streetshots.
If you've got questions or ideas for what the two of us should be talking about,
it would be great to hear your voice. So do that.
(58:59):
And if you want to support the show, one way to do it is you can buy us a coffee
at buymeacoffee.com slash Antonio Rosario.
So that would be great. and yeah so
that's it we've we've uh
we still have the rest of the summer to go that's right
(59:19):
lots of it where it's hours until we're yanked out
of it like i said exactly exactly so still the sun
is not setting early we still got plenty of night nice
sunsets and so go have
at it all right anyway thank you ward for uh hanging out with me tonight i know
that uh you know they say always a pleasure my friend yeah and uh then to the
(59:41):
rest of you we will see you at the end of august so all you have a great night
and uh see you later we'll see you.
Music.
And then go into the pen store and i've already done that and that's that's
(01:00:02):
bad news so i've done I did that the other day.
It wasn't a pen store. It was actually any new dungarees or shoes.
Dungarees, that's a word I haven't heard. I haven't heard dungarees in a long time.
Me neither. It's from those health films. But dungarees. Dungarees sounds like
some sort of band from the 50s or something.
(01:00:24):
It's those pants the girls can't wear. The girls can't wear them to school.
They have to wear skirts. Now it's completely the other way around.
Dungarees. Dungarees. It sounds Australian.
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