A little handful.

I never went to photography school. Maybe it shows? I don't know. One thing that I learnt pretty early though is that there is less importance on good or bad than just being different. I see myself improving constantly. I also see myself making mistakes. I learn, I try again. I never had someone sit down and teach me the basics of exposure, composition, posing, the business side, and everything else that goes with it. I did however spend an enormous amount of time teaching myself. I watched days worth of tutorials, read .pdf's and books on possibly every subject related to cameras and lights I could think of, I read blogs, surfed websites. I listened to other photographers. I read books that weren't even vaguely related to photography, but got inspiration to shoot something by transcribing the feeling. One of my weak sides at the moment is my post-production. I just started learning Photoshop CS6 a few months ago. Holy shit. Its another world. It really gets 4 dimensional when you start playing in layers and compositing things in. I still have a long way to go in terms of being slick at it. But I'm getting there. One click at a time.

Recently since I've hit my shitty "Norwegian weather is the end of me" period again, I've been exploring other sides of what I can do with a camera. Stripped it down in a way. Im trying to avoid the annoyingly overused cliche of "back to basics" here. Essentially though, this is the actual happenings of all the wizardry that all of you see. I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from art, music, textures, tones, composition experimentation, people and the energy of living the amazing life that I have been given. Quick side note here, I have been listening to ALOT of Sigur Ros lately. I have this one song thats 10 minutes long as a favourite. I listened to it on repeat one night while chilling at home. The next day was a disaster, I was anxious, I was rude to someone for no reason, my internet cut out for a day and a half, my fingers were sore from climbing, basically everything went fucking pear shaped. I isolated myself, put on Sigur Ros and sat down on my fluffy carpet to just zone out for a bit. I just broke down and balled my eyes out for a solid 20 minutes. The music just to added to the melancholiness of it all. What a moment. Instead of feeling weak and pathetic for basically acting like a pregnant woman, I felt strong and empowered. I am in such awe of music that has an effect on people. I wish that my pictures could assimilate this kind of energy. Not necessarily to make people cry, but just to have an effect. To evoke a though, the create a drive. There is so much inspiration out there just waiting to be seen and heard. If you have not seen or heard the beauty that is Sigur Ros yet, I highly suggest you check them out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VvB_UmmIzk

Where was I? Ah yes. So my interpretation of this minimalistic approach is based around a thing. A physical, tangible object. It just so happens to be a camera lens. A while ago I bought some old gear off the net, namely two Mamiya/Sekor 35mm film cameras and some lenses in the 28, 50 and 135mm focal range. The first thing I love about this stuff was the simplicity of everything. Ok, its a given that the technology in the 60's was nearly as sophisticated as the toys we have today. Another thing is that all the lenses I got were primes. (Prime lenses are fixed focal length, which means you cannot zoom in or out, your feet do this part. In turn this also means the optical quality of the lens is superior to an equivalent zoom lens as there are far fewer moving components.) Primes lenses make everything more exciting. Really. I love my wide angles, so the 28mm ƒ2.8 was my new best friend. The other great and some what frustrating thing with this trifecta of goodies is that they are all manual focus and you set the aperture on the actual lens. I cannot for the life of me be bothered to explain how aperture and ƒ-stops work right now, but the manual focus part is fairly self explanatory. The one problem that exists is that the mount for the Mamiya is a M42 screw mount, obviously the newer Canon 5D Mk2 is not. This created a massive problem. Like trying to put diesel in a petrol car, It just wont work. Ever. I then spent a fair deal of time on E-Bay and various other websites and forums, I gave up for a while, but then I found out I was not the only one looking for such a device that would "Frankenstein" my two babies together. I found an adapter with focus confirm and one without. Focus confirm was a must because I had and still do have no idea how to back focus a manual lens.  I will now stop with the technical bullshit and get to the point here.

The result is something quite special. It has a unique feel. The whole experience is different. My usual first choice or go to lens is my Canon EF 35mm ƒ1.4, being a 12000NOK/ R14000, this lens is really in a class of its own. But with the Mamiya 28mm, which is worth not much except the sentimental value, things are gritty, raw, unrefined, almost elementary. With the lens on the camera, it feels like a camera should. The great thing this combination has taught me is to wait. To anticipate the action. The manual focus really forces you to take your time and get everything right before you fire the shutter. The whole thing is very similar to shooting film. Shooting film to me is like eating a box of Côte d'or chocolates, you take every waking moment to savour the taste, you don't just gobble the box up in one go like a greedy little piggy. Just like you don't blaze through a roll of film just to be done with it. Overall the lens is in "decent" condition, there are some scratches on the front element, the paint is tarnished,  and the focus ring glitches a little. Does it produce crystal clear super sharp images? Definitely not! Far from it actually. The contrast is terrible. Really terrible. It makes blue streaks randomly appear on skin, at ƒ2.8 it is softer than a care bear in a bowl of custard. And at ƒ9 the CA (Chromatic Aberration) is appalling. So appalling that it makes everything look like its rusting. Would you like your face to look like its rusting? No. Me neither. So essentially it only "works" in half of its actual aperture range. The manual focus is also an issue some times. It took me a while to calibrate ad get used to it. Aside from the fact that most other photographers would deem it as a fancy paperweight, I love it. I absolutely love it. Shooting this lens over the last couple weeks has brought me the utmost of joy. I have learned more about composition, and waiting for the shot more in the last six weeks than the last 6 months. I posted a little while ago that my camera was somewhat like a fictitious girlfriend, I need to correct that a bit, the camera with this lens is my lover. #fixed.

I guess what it comes down to is the quintessential simplicity of it all. The real beauty of photography, and part of my personal photographic philosophy. Being different, doing things that are generally steered cleared of. Given, I can produce BETTER images, is it as fun? Is at as rewarding? Does it matter? No. Not really.

The following pictures are of some of the people that make me laugh, people that are close to me, people that helped me move in, people that I party with, people that helped me assemble shit until 2AM, people I have had as dinner guests, people that are consistent, people that have inspired me to change, people that are friends. I take pictures of people. Seemed most sensible I stuck to doing that. Be different, but above all, take it easy. N.

PS: I know my grammar and spelling is not perfect, fuck off. Wheres your blog?