Santa Cruz Is Still My Happy Place

It’s no secret that I got my start with photography in and around the Santa Cruz area in California. I think it is fair to say that sometimes a place can have just as much influence on a person’s artistic expression as anything else. Had I been born in New York or Paris or the wilderness of Australia my photography would be an entirely different thing today. The salty sea air and long stretches of highway hugging the Pacific Ocean were back in my youth an early source of inspiration and they very much still are today. Not much has changed there. It is still a place filled with the sound of sea birds and populated by people looking to ride a wave, write poetry in the sand, or just experience some silence while looking at the great expanding sea.

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Photographed with a Sony A7iii.

At the beginning of this past summer I took a trip back to my roots, exploring the coastline up and down California Highway One (California State Highway 1 technically). It felt really good going back there and making images with the eyes I have today, as opposed to the eyes of my much younger self. I definitely see the world much differently now. A little less whimsical, and yet also little more optimistic if that makes any sense at all. I was also very fortunate that one of my favorite collaborators, Vivian Cove, loves the California coast as much as I do. Spending a day hiking among the rocks and cliffs, marching on dry sand, and dodging potential onlookers is a lot more exhausting than one might think.

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Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

I won’t deny I was feeling slightly overwhelmed when these images were made. There is just so much to see and visit there and only so much film I can carry with me. I brought my digital camera with me as well as a backup for when my film stock ran dry but I wanted to capture the bulk of the work I did that day on film. After all, digital cameras didn’t really exist in any sort of quality form back when I was learning the ropes of photography in the California Bay Area studying at UC Santa Cruz and Foothill College. I don’t even think the first DSLR had been produced yet in any sort of form that was affordable to the average person.

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Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

Every so often I contemplate moving back to the Santa Cruz area. It’s a place that has never really left me and continues to influence who I am as a person today. More than likely that will never happen and perhaps that is for the best. After all, it is far healthier to look to the future rather than linger forever in the past. Still, it is fun to visit sometimes and even more fun when I have the opportunity to make photographs while doing so.

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Morning Fog On Film

As I’m typing this I’m relaxing on the couch, a pair of sandy and dusty hiking boots down on the floor, water running in the sink washing off a roll of film, and a record is playing on the turntable in the living room. Nick Cave’s album No More Shall We Part if you must know. I’m feeling rather content. I got up early this morning and did an outdoor photoshoot. It’s my first in quite some time. The weather has been bitter cold here in the Pacific Northwest and on top of that I’ve been feeling exhausted. Work and being an adult sometimes starts to get to me.

The roll of film I’m developing right now is another from the session I’m posting in this blog entry. It was incredibly early in the morning when this image was made. So early in fact that the entire landscape had a blanket of thick fog, making it impossible to see more than about ten feet from where you stood. I honestly wasn’t sure how the Ilford FP4 I had loaded in my Hasselblad was going to render this. Sometimes Ilford FP4 can be a little finicky and even more often I find the contrast can get a bit out of control. So maybe the subdued light in a dim fog was the perfect scenario for the film stock.

I have to say I really appreciate when I work with someone who doesn’t mind getting up at incredibly early hours. I’ve been working with Floofie for quite a number of years now and she has always been extremely reliable, talented, and just one of those people who can get up in the morning. That may sound like an odd thing to praise a person for, but believe me it’s rare. While being awake before dawn can be difficult, the end result is often worth it.

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Staying Focused In The Real World

I’ve been in that frame of mind lately where I want to focus on getting work done in the real world and have a little less concern with updating my portfolio, website, and social media in the virtual world. Honestly, I think that is a healthy place to be in, even if I do feel a little bad when I ignore this blog and don’t update it as much as a should. Rest assured however, I have been incredibly busy doing photo sessions, developing film, and just exploring the world around me with a camera in hand.

I’ve also been doing some work reinventing my home space to make it a little more compatible for working and staying focused without getting distracted by television and the internet. I may share some images of that transformation in another blog post.

In the meantime, enjoy this image! I made this photograph with my trusty Minolta SRT-101 mounted with the 21mm f/2.8. I’ve owned this lens for a couple years now and I’ve really grown to like it quite a bit. It’s incredibly wide without being so wide as to completely distort everything in the frame. I don’t know if this makes sense at all but in my mind it creates a nice looking natural drama, especially when I have a wide open space to work with. This is the time of year when the clouds in the pacific northwest start looking really epic and now that wildfire season is ending and the air quality is back to normal I’m looking forward to some adventures in the coming weeks outside.

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Nude in the Trees on Kodak Tmax 400

There was a time in my photographed career when I didn’t like Kodak Tmax film all that much. Maybe it was the lack of grain, even in the 400 speed version. Maybe it was the fact that I found the film to be too sharp. Maybe it was just simply that I didn’t like the yellow box that it came in. Looking back I honestly can’t say why I had that opinion because these days I’m rather fond of it.

For the past six months or so I’ve been gravitating toward Kodak Tmax 400 in particular. I’m sure that is in part due to the fact that the weather in the Pacific Northwest means a lot of dim lighting and a 400 speed film I can push and pull a little bit is very helpful. Once summer hits in full swing I’ll probably start using a slower speed film.

This particular photograph was made on a very cloudy day out on Sauvie Island north of Portland. The scene was much darker than the final photograph would have you believe. There were thick clouds in the sky and the forest canopy blocked out quite a bit of light. I photographed this hand held at around 1/15th of a second which accounts for some of the softness in the image, but I quite like it.

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Let's All Appreciate The Outdoors

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never again take the outdoors for granted. Of course, I've always appreciated the ability to go outside and breath in the fresh air and enjoy nature a little bit. It is one of the primary reasons I continue to live in the Pacific Northwest after all. That being said, after a few weeks of self isolation I can safely say that I am really craving an afternoon of just strolling through the woods and smelling the flowers.

This photograph was made back toward the beginning of summer while out on a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. It was one of those unmarked sort of trails that aren’t difficult to find out there and a lot of wildflowers were in full bloom. I didn’t have any color film with me which was unfortunate but I do feel like black and white was a good choice in capturing the wispy nature of the clouds that were also racing across the sky.

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