INTRODUCTION

Before diving into the actual content of this blog, I thought it would be a nice gesture to share some of my previous photographic work with you. As far as medium, I haven't done much of anything serious with digital. I own a DSLR camera but I tend to use it only for things that require immediacy. When it comes to preference, however, I usually prefer working with film. I find something really methodical about developing your own film and cropping an image on an enlarger rather than on a computer. When working with film you have much more invested, which can be a blessing and, at times, a curse.

On this blog I'd like to branch out and try my hand at digital photography, specifically street photography. Since I will be in Paris starting this September, I am unsure of whether or not using a film camera will be convenient enough for this, but I will certainly bring it with me.

This photo is a part of a series of photographs I took while I was away in Northern California this past December. I ended up calling them the "ocean series" because they tended to focus on the waters around San Francisco. This particular one was taken by Sutro Baths on the was side of the city.

I found the city itself to be very excited and different from what I am used to. Philadelphia butts up right onto the Delaware River, but I would hardly call it beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I love my home city, but it was very enlightening for me to visit a city that revolves around the ocean as much as San Francisco does. I took these photographs as an outsider who was focused on the ocean, and they turned out to be some of the photographs I am most proud of.

I took this photograph in Philadelphia's China Town this past Chinese New Year. I went there specifically for a street photography assignment. I was quite nervous about it, as it was the first time I went into the city with the intent to photograph strangers, and I'm not exactly outgoing. It turns out that I found the experience very fulfilling. There's something to be said about the anticipation of it. Waiting for the most opportune moment is quite an interesting thing. It's almost as if your senses are heightened and time slows down. This is my favorite of the several shots I went to print. My work always seems to be very quite and pensive, and you would expect a street photography series to be quite loud and fast, but somehow I found those moments that were silent and seemingly motionless.

This photo is the exception. It's the sole one in the series that is anything but quite, and the one I was most surprised by. It's a great example of how exciting film can be. I took this shot in the midst of a crowd. I could see nothing of what was happening, so I set my focus very roughly and released the shutter with my hand way over my head. Seeing that the figure in the back was perfectly in focus made my jaw drop. And all of the sudden I had a photograph that was extremely dynamic, exciting, and a bit menacing.