My Dad worked in a Loblaws warehouse when I was just a kidlet. I’m not sure how many of them are still running, This one in Gloversville on Fulton St sure isn’t. Looks like a great zombie headquarters. G-Ville has been a fertile environment for my kind of photography, so there is more to come from this area.

This is a tone-mapped digital HDR photo with some lens distortion correction done in Lightroom. I really love the Sigma 12-24mm lens.

(Listen while lookin’: Colour – “Over the Moon” from their posthumous release Anthology)

A few weeks ago I went out with some friends walking around Downtown L.A. on a Thursday night. I brought the Canonet with a flash on an off-camera cord. I flashed random people on the street I thought looked interesting. I got a lot of photos , but the more I look at them, the more I lose perspective. I’ve already posted my favorites, but are any of these rejected nighttime street photos worth also posting to my Flickr stream? Hmm. I had high hopes for the wrestler, too. You see some strange things walking around in L.A.

Couple years ago I took some pics at Harvelle’s of a man named Leroy Powell.  He’s a great performer, and I was lucky to see him in a small place where I could take photos.

Leroy chatted with me afterwards, and I sent him my photos which he liked. He still likes them — one of them just got used to make a sharp poster for one of his gigs.

I hope I’m getting creative karma from this. I just found the poster by accident — or was it a mystic occurrence? I wish he’d told me. Oh well.

And now for your foot-stompin’ pleasure, here’s some Leroy Powell gettin’ down:

[blipfm 25440788]

1. lone surfer on return, 2. level the playing field, 3. we’re not the only ones with problems, 4. fender, the gods, 5. Sinkhole!, 6. reflexive negation (happy birthday, henri), 7. Bicycle-Mounted Ringlight? [31/52], 8. Rocket Car,

9. Eye R Flickr [27/52], 10. MyNmIs, 11. Rubber Meets Road II (Anarchy), 12. can i bum a smoke?, 13. indecision, echoes, 14. precariovs, 15. Skooby’s Hot Dogs in Hollywood, CA, 16. Los Angeles, from Chavez Ravine,

17. Untitled, 18. so many birds, they never agree, 19. les nombreux visages de montréal, 20. spin cycle, 21. Harry Fleenor, Rollei Wizard, 22. M.I.A.’s Neon Swagger @ Coachella 2009, 23. t.v. dinner, 24. Untitled,

25. places i’m not, 26. feel like dancing, 27. Untitled, 28. Untitled, 29. school’s out for ever, 30. why do celebrities only date other celebrities?, 31. we break easy, 32. future bright,

33. put down roots (skylark in a tree), 34. bridge to better days, 35. coming and going, 36. printer paper ain’t opaque (the goggles do nothing!), 37. Peri/Dogpark, 38. Photophlow Drinking Game, 39. only the dog nose, 40. i don’t think i’m gonna go to l.a. anymore,

41. you could walk it, take some five six hours, 42. the forgotten, 43. SMC Punk, 44. a place to sleep, 45. not you again, 46. Untitled, 47. what’s down there?, 48. shall.we.dance?,

49. Dodger Fans Tried To Rally Their Team, But the Clouds Turned Philadelphia Crimson and Foretold the Outcome as the Phillies Were Ultimately Victorious, 50. Dunny Strobist Mischief!, 51. Meet Me Here, 52. The Last Pier On Earth, 53. She Delivers, 54. you_in_or_out?, 55. Chinbeard Gambit, 56. Street Media,

57. On the Other Hand, 58. Robert Plays to the Sea, 59. Farewell, My Friend, 60. Love Dem Big Choons!, 61. Huge Fan of the Grunion, 62. Your Last $50 Is Riding On This, 63. Santa Monica Pier, 64. Moving Electrons,

65. So, I Was Hanging Out By the Tree of Knowledge…, 66. At My Fingertips, 67. There Stood a Legend, 68. My New Kicks, 69. Sunset Snack at Coachella 2008, 70. Fatboy Slim 2 @ Coachella 2008, 71. Dan Deacon @ Coachella 2008, 72. I Claim Your DIY Strip Light For Vega!, 73. Oh, Fork Me, 74. One Against Many, 75. Maturity, 76. Sayce is Guitar 04, 77. RTFM, 78. What’s Pink and Hides a Chihuahua?, 79. Moleskine 2008 Decoupage, 80. Colbie Caillat 2 @ Yahoo! Music,

81. See me. Heel me., 82. Lunar Eclipse, Aug 28, 2007, 83. Chrisette Michele (27) @ Yahoo! Music, 84. The Clientele #2 @ Yahoo! Music, 85. Feist 4 @ Yahoo! Music, 86. Amy Winehouse: Coachella 07, 87. Testify! Rage Against The Machine @ Coachella 07, 88. Coachella 07: An Unearthly Visitor,

89. Coachella 07: The Saharan Sea, 90. Johnny Marr Guitar Pedals, 91. The Shins @ Yahoo! Music, 92. Shiny Toy Guns @ Yahoo! Music, 93. Shiny Toy Guns @ Yahoo! Music, 94. RBD @ Yahoo! Music, 95. Stefy 3 @ Yahoo! Music, 96. Sigur Rós (JonThor) at Coachella Festival 2006,

97. Peeping Tom @ Lollapalooza: Mike Patton, 98. Warning, 99. Back To The Future, 100. Microphone

Thanks to BigHugeLabs: http://bighugelabs.com/scout.php

I picked the early nineties to really dive into baseball cards. You know, the biggest explosion of overproduction in the hobby’s long history? Nothing from those days is worth anything monetarily, but I have a lot of great memories of collecting, from mammoth card shows to card shops on every other block to stopping at every K-Mart on road trips. I didn’t own a camera at the time, and never dreamed I’d become interested in photography, but the allure of sports cards is all about that timely image on the front, sometimes capturing some amazing moment or an iconic visage in a timeless photo. The ninety-three Upper Deck set featured an insert set of cards of special images by Walter Iooss, Jr., and that was my introduction to the name. Knowing the photographer for the image in the card was unheard of in the hobby, but for this small set of twenty-seven cards, I could see why. His imagery was a cut above. It wasn’t the best card in the set, but I keep his beat-up portrait (seen above) of Phillies great Darren Daulton handy to this day.

Iooss made his name in sports, principally for Sports Illustrated, but he’s done more. Here’s a small, but must-see gallery of his work for SI — complete with commentary from the man. (I love the shot of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in sixty-seven. Dig the cigarettes on the table!) And yes, he got to shoot some swimsuit models along the way. He’s even photographed Hendrix! And he’s still going strong today at age sixty-six.

Walter Iooss, Jr. is going to be featured at the Annenberg Space for Photography next month along with Neil Leifer. I’ll be there. I also want to check out his book of Classic Baseball Photographs sometime.

Bonus video link: Charlie Rose interviews Iooss in 1999. I love what he says about how he would shoot sporting events and not know the score because he was so zeroed in on images. I know what he means from my own concert shoots. Sometimes I don’t even hear the music. I was awestruck at Iooss’ Michael Jordan anecdote, too.

From tineye.com :

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.

I tried it with a small thumbnail of my most popular Flickr photo.

And it found some (4) posts in RBD message boards that had used the image without notifying me. Big deal. I suspect there are more. I really am fine with that.

I searched for this image, too:

And there were no results — even though we can see that The New Yorker is using it in their blogs. (With proper credit this time)

So, it ain’t perfect. But for people who are paranoid about their images getting used in blogs, TinEye eventually could provide hours of vengeful fun.

This intersection of chance, luck, fortune and funk arose from me riding my bike in the neighborhood. I came across this cool car. I parked and whipped out the Lubitel — a plastic low-fi twin-lens-reflex camera. The camera is made for one-twenty medium-format sized film. But, I’d loaded it with thirty-five millimeter drugstore film. Thing is, I never sealed the red window that normally shows the film counter. So light poured in the window, and exposed the film from the back.

Everything else on the frame is ‘real’ too. The scratches are on the negative. The sprocket holes are real. The rough edged border comes from the cardboard negative holder I made myself to scan the negative.

It is Rocket Car.

Bonus: See it large to note the Mesa sticker in the window

A photographic negative is a powerful artifact. It carries a magic more than it’s small size and thin aspect would suggest.

It seems crazy that I’ve only been shooting film for about a year. It feels like a lifetime already. It’s been even less that I’ve been doing my own developing, and this far I’ve been just keeping my negatives in pages on a shelf. But, they’re getting up there so it was time to start putting them into binders.

Collecting all my negatives into one collection is a powerful experience. There is something so visceral, so magical, and so humbling about an image on a piece of film. All the information about a moment of time is recorded there without ones and zeroes, but with chemical compounds frozen in place. Just to think about how it was created, light bounced off a subject, through a lens to hit a small piece of plastic with chemicals on it. Then the plastic was put in more chemicals so that the area that light hit would fog up in a certain way. Everything that affected the scene is recorded in the way the chemistry reacted – including the information about how the film was developed.

And, each negative is unique. Unlike a binary file, the negative can not be perfectly duplicated. In the entire universe, there can be no exact copy of it. Even the Bible can be theoretically transcribed more exactly than a tiny thirty-five millimeter negative.

Music permeates North Hollywood Arts District on the first Thursday of every month with Hear NoHo, a nascent showcase of local musicians performing in community venues spanning the community. I’d written about the series debut a few months ago. I even took photos then. My work makes up the bottom banner at HearNoHo.com. But, I hadn’t been back until July’s summery set. This time out, organizers decided to focus on women in local music. I decided to focus on them with some black and white film. I wanted to try the Rollei in a musical setting. It has a slow f/3.5 lens, but I had a roll of medium-format Ilford Delta 3200 in the fridge. If there was ever a time to use ASA 3200, this was it. I also brought along the M2 with some Arista Premium 400 that I’d push to 1600.

Taking pictures with film is a much different than taking pictures with a digital camera. But, taking pictures of people in action with film, especially older non-motorized manual focus cameras, is yet another level of difficulty entirely.

In concert photography the keys are light, eyes, mikes, movement, and backgrounds. The photographer must keep all of these in mind, and in sight. But, when you shoot one frame at a time with no instant review, you need to have a strong reservoir of faith. And, practice helps so I was going for it.

Results? I struggled with the roll in the Rollei. Even at 3200, with the 3.5 lens there was not enough light to get what I wanted. I struggled to see the images that were there for me.
But, with the Leica, it was a happier story. I found a couple images I am really proud of, and the 50mm Serenar f/1.8 lens helped me get them.

The first Hear NoHo was free. But, the organizers were upfront about the inability to keep it that way. This time around it was a ten-dollar wristband. Access to ten artists at five venues, a couple NoHo Commons lofts, the Cella art gallery, the NoHo Arts Center theater, and even the loading dock for How’s Grocery Store.

I went in expecting a mixed bag of music, but everyone I saw put on a good show. Happily, my favorite artist of the night also gave me my best photo of the night. Adjoa Skinner (above) played to about twelve people in a loft. She kicked off her sandals and walked around while playing her guitar and singing, she was such a comfortable player.

I saw the names “Frank and Derol” on the schedule of a female-only lineup and thought: “Oh God, probably a lesbian folk act!” But, when I got to the theater it was a trio of perky young girls with a backing band playing brisk, sunny indie pop. They, too, impressed me. Billy Ray Cyrus’ daughter – no, not Miley. A different one – is in this unsigned band. I saw Beck’s sister, too: Alyssa Suede is her name and she captivated the crowd at Cella Gallery. Paris Carney packed the Arts Center: It was standing room only for that show! So, no good photos for that set. So much for needing to keep it free. I underestimated the support of the local community.

In developing the 3200, the book calls for fourteen and a half minutes when using HC-110. It’s a warm summer, so I probably should have backed off a few minutes. The fact that the film actually expired six years ago, though, caused me to go the full time. I figured it would just even out. The resulting grain was huge. Probably a mix of high ASA mixed with overdeveloping with an industrial developer. Nothing really came out impressive, but it was fun. I should try it with a smoother developer.

 

Pushing the brand new Arista Premium to 1600 was much more effective. The book on that is sixteen minutes with HC-110, but since I was developing at roughly twenty-five degrees, I backed it down to thirteen. I was very, very pleased with how Frank and Derol came out.

I resolve to go to more Hear NoHo events. It’s a fertile ground for my photographic adventures. And, the music isn’t bad either.

Bonus: Here’s an Adjoa Skinner video clip:

Your humble photographer got some love from LAist.com writer Jeremy Oberstein when in his review of Wilco he referred to me as “the inimitable Michael Orlosky.” Clearly this was just an example if the publication’s ebullient tone run amok, but it’s nice to see.

Jeremy’s review of the show at the Wiltern even tied in the imagery with some colorful copy:

Visually, the show was gorgeous. Deep red lights bathed the aggressive Bull Black Nova, from the new album and during the beautiful Reservations, from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, elegant blues showered Tweedy and Co. with great effect.

I like that.

Here’s a shot that didn’t make LAist, because I was late in processing it.