Word-for-word: A custom tailored shirt

The latest in a series of articles I’ve written for 35mmc; the original can be found here.

Style wasn’t always my thing, and spending a lot of money on a custom-tailored shirt wasn’t something I’d always wanted to do but in this case it was inevitable, I suppose.  Since 2017 I’ve been working on a photo project documenting my job driving Jeep tours around Colorado Springs, and part of that job is dressing up like a cowboy.  In the last two years I’ve been taking greater interest in my appearance, developed a bit of a clothing obsession, and gotten a reputation at work for it now.  While still studying I was encouraged to really delve into the culture as far as I could, and reading a book called Confederates in the Attic helped as well.  The book is about one guy’s journey taking part in American Civil War reenactments, how much of a lifestyle it became for him and the people surrounding him who would obsess over minute details of their appearance in the pursuit of authenticity.  The resulting application of this in my photo project work so far is the amount of money I’ve invested in my personal wardrobe (and right now I’m hearing a song by the Drive-by Truckers in the back of my head…don’t call what you’re wearing an outfit). And really, shooting film is as much a part of pursuing authenticity as anything else I do.

When your local haberdashery Rutledge’s sends you a $100 off coupon for anything in the store (valid only through December), and your boss gives you a $100 gift certificate to the same place at the work Christmas party, well then: some things are just meant to happen, I guess. I’m a sucker for a good deal, and what better way to take advantage of the opportunity presented than to make a work shirt that absolutely no one else will have? Colorado’s historic place at the forefront of Western American clothing style makes something like cowboy business casual pretty usual here, and without knowing it I was channeling the spirit of a certain country singer as well.
I have one shirt that when worn, often elicits compliments on my appearance from random women I pass in my travels, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want more of that. I don’t know if it’s the colors or the patterns (or a combination perhaps?) but I also like the way it’s cut so I used that shirt as an initial template. The defining traits of a Western shirt are that it has snap buttons and a fancy shoulder yoke. I wanted two fabrics so that the yoke would stand out: what’s the point otherwise? As Rutledge’s customer base is going to be mainly businessmen wanting suits most of the fabrics weren’t too interesting or noticeable but I worked with what was available and came up with some nice complimentary but contrasting patterns. I discovered while writing this that John Denver wore an eerily similar shirt to mine on the cover of TV Showtime magazine back in 1975, so I’d say I’m in good company. It’s one of those little coincidences but as soon as I saw the flower pattern I was thinking of the guy and it’s possible I’d seen that photo long ago.
Final price of the shirt is determined by what fabric(s) are chosen but also I was informed that the Western-style with the added shoulder yoke would cost extra, so I knew that I wasn’t getting out of the store without denting my wallet a bit. But as the saying goes, “If you have to ask how much it costs then you can’t afford it,” so I was determined to keep my mouth shut, and the final price didn’t have me running away screaming. The actual tailoring process was nearly painless as it mostly involved standing still while my regular sales associate John took measurements.

Of course I carry a camera with me nearly everywhere I go and on that day it happened to be an unmetered Nikon F2 and a roll of Kodak Tri-X. While I’m pretty good at Sunny-16 outdoors, indoors can involve a bit more guesswork, especially with the sunshine coming through the windows at 10:15AM. I believe these were taken between f/5.6 and f/2 at 1/60th, and I’m fairly confident in my ability now so shooting meterless doesn’t faze me. It took a few months between taking body measurements and receiving the shirt, and unfortunately the company that does the cutting/sewing hadn’t quite followed instructions: the wrong fabric was used for half the shoulder yoke and it had to be sent back to be redone, taking another few weeks but we got it right in the end.
I was at least able to try on the shirt and see that it fit well, which was the most important thing. So now I’m ready for another year of pretending to be a cowboy and looking halfway decent while I do it, I hope. Not that I usually go in for style shots but I wouldn’t want to leave you all without a picture of the shirt in glorious color:

Lab-developed.  Scanned/finished by myself using the Pakon F335 and Affinity Photo.
You can find my work at The Resurrected Camera or for all-cowboy all the time, my Instagram: @thefamouspdog.

I have two bonuses for my blog readers:

The shirt I was referring to, one of John Denver’s originals which I unknowingly followed pretty closely, is on the left.  On the right is a shirt I actually bought from Rockmount Ranch Wear (from their John Denver collection) and regret returning, but I’d have to slim down far too much to make a size S work for me and it was the last shirt left; I’m very bummed I couldn’t find a size M anywhere but I came late to the party so I had to make my own.

Outside

Partiers, thankfully not too raucous: standard St. Paddy’s celebrations I suppose.  I met a couple fun people at the photographers’ open house that invited me out afterward, and I was going to meet up with them at a particular Irish pub.  They offered to share a cab with me but I wanted to put all my excess stuff in my truck instead of carrying it around with me, so I went there first and walked to the place.  Of course they never showed up and I can’t blame them because there was no way we were getting in.  I got what I wanted out of the experience, which was plenty of crowd shots.

Actually as soon as I got there I remembered why I hate the bar scene and shied away from it.  And you don’t find true Celtic culture in a gaggle of slobby drunken Americans that just want a themed party with green Budweiser.  Why do what everyone else already wants to do?  I don’t mind being in crowds but I have to remember that I’ve never benefited from being a part of them.  At the same time, staying home every night watching movies isn’t really much of a life; I just don’t know how to really strike that balance yet.

I never could sit still
I never was too hip
I never caught the ride
-Oingo Boingo

Word for word: What my first portfolio review was like

I like 35mmc’s format quite a lot, whatever theme they have does kind of present better than here: it might be time for me to improve things.  Well maybe tomorrow.  For now read the original here.

In a nutshell: it was like a boxing match between me and the world, or perhaps between me and my ego. I’m unsure at this point which, because I’ve now taken so many blows to the head that I’m surprised it’s still attached.
What was I even supposed to get out of it? I probably went in with the wrong hopes and expectations, and that definitely got me taken down a peg. I was sorely mistaken if I thought that everyone would see my brilliance and that the world would open up for me immediately, as well as ashamed that I dared to have such high hopes in the first place. But to carry the boxing metaphor farther, you shouldn’t step into the ring with a great fighter expecting to win, but because he will show you were your heart is.

So let’s start out with some confessions: I was underprepared. I didn’t know who I really wanted to have look at my work, just signed up for eight timeslots and then went down the list of people who sounded interesting. And then I signed up for an extra one while I was there! I didn’t really delve into what work they did or found interesting as much as just went off of suggestions from others as to whom I might want to talk to. Because these people that were reviewing our work, I don’t know if I should think of them as gatekeepers to the art world, or people who struggled up from the same place we’re currently at, or gods delivering judgement on whom was worthy of bestowing Their wisdom. I keep thinking of it as us vs. them, and naming them as “portfolio reviewers” seems to keep them on a level that makes them simultaneously more and less than Human.
I also acknowledge that I may have been asking the wrong questions.  Then again do I know what the right questions are?  I was hoping to be told by these subhuman gods just where to go to have my work accepted.  Instead, they were more interested in telling me what direction to take my project to have it accepted by them.  Every reviewer had their own things that they liked and didn’t like, and hearing so many conflicting opinions was of course aggravating.  But despite what they might have told me about my work, I hardly ever got the sense that I was hearing what they really, truthfully thought of it.
After a while though I was able to stop listening to the individual words coming out of their stone-faced visages and hear a buildup of consensus and that is what helped me get Direction.  The thing is that I was hoping find this photo project’s ending point and move onto different things; instead I consistently heard “you need to keep going.”  And while I initially found the upbeat encouragement flattering, there’s ultimately something soul-sucking about having so many people react so enthusiastically to your work while simultaneously making you feel like nothing you do will ever be good enough for them.  But I didn’t come to that conclusion until sometime on my second day.
In the interim we photographers had a public showcase of our portfolios which was nice as a way to gauge the reaction of regular people. That’s what all these black & white photos have been because I was far too busy during actual portfolio reviews to make photos for an article on this website. Thinking about the experience afterward, the work I really wanted to show publicly to everyone at the showcase was in a little 5×7 box. Instead I spread out everything I had over more than my share of table space and ended up giving everyone information overload. It would have been bolder to display the box all by itself but I can only see that in hindsight.



There were however some great little nuggets of Wisdom that The Reviewers imparted to me, to which I can cling. There were a few that took the time and effort to give more of themselves, whether that was to come to the public showcase, or one guy who looked at my work beforehand and brought me some material to look through for inspiration: I really appreciated that. Another guy told me that my work spoke about the relationship between land & people better than most of the other photographers there. That was special and built me up.
But as the second day went on I began to realize just how tired I was, how sick of fighting I’d become. Sick of everything, really, from my work, my own life, to everything in between. And I suppose I bitched about it more and more to my peers. If I can call them that, because nearly everyone I talked to was at least a full decade older than me and they all seemed to have so much experience, wisdom, patience, what have you. I suppose that I didn’t take nearly enough time to get to know them, I was saving as much of my energy for The Fight as I could and might have missed a key element of the process as I was too busy focusing on my own problems. They still helped me out by patching me up between rounds, as it were.
There was plenty of hangout time and I could have stayed in our Green Room looking at colleagues’ work more. Some of my fellow photographers were generous enough to ask to see my work, and I was happy to show them. I did look at some of their work as well of course, but not enough. One of the things I remember learning at college was how to avoid common words/phrases in critiquing my classmates, being encouraged instead to find different ways of imparting reactions to their work. I definitely made use of that when talking to my colleagues.
I suppose that my mood changed quite a lot over the course of the two days, from one of giddy anticipation at the beginning to near total defeat by the end. But I was open to opportunities and willing to accept invitations as they were presented, one of which involved sitting next to a woman whose work I found really fascinating. It involved a little creative rearranging of the table seating chart and was a bold move for me, a bit out of character.
I subconsciously tried to make up for it the next day by paying it forward to another photographer who was told he had a shot at a career as a photojournalist, and needed to get in to see this one particular reviewer. I guess I could have given him my timeslot but instead asked him to buy an open timeslot of another reviewer that I was interested in talking to. And that’s something we remarked upon, kind of treating the portfolio reviewers as no more than baseball cards: I’ll trade you Ken Griffey Jr. for Nolan Ryan!

In retrospect I turned what should have been a free Gift into a Bargain or Agreement. And it was a poor bargain: that timeslot was the absolute last one of the day and I was so exhausted already, that I almost immediately regretted having to wait around for it instead of skipping out early. And the thing is, I already went eight rounds, why didn’t I see that the fight was already over?
By then it was too late and I had to stick it out to the bitter end: the one thing I wasn’t about to do was shy away from one last round, even if I knew in advance that I was going to lose.  I went in and sitting down talking to this woman, I didn’t really want her opinions, I was too tired for it, I just wanted to complain about the whole experience.  At the same time, I wanted to acknowledge the generosity of time that all these wonderful people had put in, their stamina in looking at so many other people’s work for two whole days when I had the opportunity to leave the place for several hours at a time.

But I broke a cardinal rule of gaining acceptance at these things: Don’t go into the review saying that you’re sick of the work.  Because at the end of it all, I still wanted to know if this reviewer had anything different to say, and she did: she told me that if I couldn’t find my motivation anymore then I should drop photography and go back to making music.

And since that day in the middle of March I’ve had a lot of questions in my head: Do I believe that last reviewer taking her at face value, or was it just a Challenge?  What is Truth?  Can I believe anything anyone said now?

The woman whom I signed up for last-minute, who was the most enthusiastic about my work and I thought was willing to help further it along?  The man who asked me to email him a PDF of my portfolio because he sometimes publishes human interest stories?  The woman who said hardly two words to me during my review but was the only one to reply to my Thank You email?

Any little bit of helpful encouragement, little hints from the consensus of the chorus of reviewers saying: “Keep going?”

Am I good enough?  Am I even a photographer anymore?

Am I even still alive?

Is that a bell I just heard?

Technical note: all images were taken with the Nikon F4 and the 35mm f/2 AI-S Nikkor lens (except maybe one or two as I did also have a 50mm f/1.8 with me and I’m too tired to judge which were which right now).  Film used was Cinestill 800T and Kodak T-Max P3200.
Lab developed.  Scanned/finished by myself using the Pakon F335 and Affinity Photo.
You can find my the sum total of my work at The Resurrected Camera or for strictly photo project work, my Instagram: @thefamouspdog.

Filter on/filter off

Ahhhhh, tungsten-balanced film!  I wish there were more of you in the world!


I kind of take it for granted that I’ll have to put in some effort in post making Cinestill films look right but sometimes I hate the extra computer work.  A few months ago I picked up a 52mm Nikon-branded Wratten 85B filter for use shooting Cinestill 800T outdoors, and it works like a charm, much better right out of the scanner.  Though I really do like the look of the unfiltered shot as well, even with early dawn light it was still pretty damn blue.  I really think that if you are planning on using this film in all conditions, it behooves you to get an 85A or 85B filter.  Armed with one of these Cinestill 800T easily becomes the most versatile color film you can buy; I just hope that someday Kodak makes something like a Portra 1600T so I don’t have to deal with the annoying halation effects…

Now that’s what I call style!

If I do say so myself.  Modeling my brand-new shirt, self-designed (kind of) and custom tailored through my local Colorado Springs haberdashery.  They sent me a Christmastime coupon, and my boss gave me a gift certificate as well, which went a long way towards paying for this shirt.  I’ve worn it a couple times already to events where I needed to dress business-casual.

I’ve used Cinestill 800T a few times, usually indoors with very poor lighting, but I recently bought an 85B filter and am starting to use this film in more all-around capacities.  I’m happy to say that the results have been incredibly promising!

Hat: Stetson
Shirt: Rutledge’s
Jeans: Brave Star
Boots: Alden
Truck: Chevrolet
Dirt: Colorado

Also…it occurs to me Katie that I’ve given you crap for the very thing I’ve just done…shoot some good low-light film outside in rather bright conditions.  Sorry.

My mother’s camera: the Minolta XG-A

This is the camera that I grew up using, for as far back as I can remember…considering that it’s older than I am and my dad got it for my mom before they were even married, I suppose that makes sense.  Now, she didn’t use it much, really after 2004 when she got her digital camera; I got her to use it once about 5 years ago and that was it as far as I know.  Just like most people of the earlier generation, they were mystified by the high technology as well as the convenience of DSLRs and never went back to film.  Most of the cameras I use are much older and less complicated/electronic than this one.  Minolta had an entire series of X cameras of which this was the simplified model with aperture priority only; with a full range of manual speeds as well (as the X-700 has) I would find this camera more useful but did bring it out occasionally back when I was shooting the MD mount system back in my early college days.

If you follow my blog regularly you might know that my mother died recently.  For her memorial service and as a tribute to her, I wanted to take pictures and of course take them with her camera.  Also included are some valuable time spent with friends/family before/after the service.

Three rolls of film, in order: Cinestill 800T, Kodak T-Max P3200 (both expired), and Kodak Tri-X pushed to 1600.  There are a lot of photos here that have some technical problems and I don’t know exactly what the problem is because there are too many variables.  I used a 3v lithium battery when I think before it was always alkaline.  Two of the three rolls I shot were expired high speed film that had been in my mom’s freezer for years.  I dropped off the film and expected it to be ready in a week but I guess they ran into staffing problems or something, and had to rush process the film for me, a mistake could have been made there.  And of course it could be that the shutter speeds are off, though usually they tend to get slower with age; of course it could be that the electronics are failing.

What it comes to is that the film all looks underexposed and shadow detail is often lacking, even with overexposing the expired film by one stop.  The better-exposed shots were ones that I took outside or near an open door, which brings up another possibility: that it just doesn’t read dim light correctly.  And of course I’m not sure how much having light sources in the frame might have affected exposure as well. When there is too much light the shutter won’t fire, so there were times I missed shots because of this, going from one part of the church to the other where the light changed too drastically.  After having used shutter priority with the Canon AE-1 I find it much more freeing setting at 1/60 and having the lens stop down as much as needed, it made it easy to set and forget whereas with the aperture priority I was forever worrying about whether the aperture I had it on would make the shutter speed too slow.  It was more an unfounded fear as nearly everything doesn’t show motion blur but I also wanted to give myself as much depth of field as possible because the lens would be focusing in the opposite direction from what I’m used to.  What it boils down to is that I was using a camera that is now unfamiliar to me after having shot Pentax and Nikon for most of the last decade and more.  I don’t know that I will use it much or ever again for that matter but being a family heirloom like my grandfather’s cameras I of course can’t let it go.

Eastman House

I honestly didn’t shoot that much, I was so busy just looking around.  This was one of the places I’d been wanting to check out since I found out the next Blackburn Reunion would be near Rochester.  Just standing in the same rooms that the Great Man stood, walking where he walked, it was special.

Compared to the McMansions that are made today and some of the places I’ve seen Eastman’s house seems modest, even austere in a way.  But one thing that I was aware of is that everything is of top quality.  There were some very nice grounds with flowers and at least one pond, but I enjoyed the grape vines more, at least they’re something useful.  I tasted one too, they’re way too sour.  Besides that the only souvenir I took was an acorn that fell from one of the oak trees in his front yard.  Everything else has a bit of significance too: a long exposure in the camera obscura, a mirror selfie in Eastman’s study, the nitrate archive, and Eastman’s love of music (wouldn’t let me get close enough to the pipe organ).  Probably these pictures aren’t very interesting to anyone but me, that’s ok.  If you’re in Rochester and you love shooting on film, go make your own pictures there.  Just don’t buy a roll of film in their gift shop, it’s outrageously expensive.

Canandaigua Lake

Putting the Weathermatic through its paces once again.  So far all our college reunion trips have included water, so it’s in my camera bag on the majority of my trips.  Actually the first three shots were Cinestill 800T from the SPII but I thought they kept closely enough to the nautical theme.

When I visited the Eastman House, I bought a roll of T-Max 400 at the gift shop just I could shoot it in New York.  It cost me $12 (for a 24 exposure roll), and I won’t be doing that again.

Blackburn Reunion 2018, Pt.I

Every couple of years my college buddies get together around Labor Day Weekend to hang out.  This year we stayed at the house of one of our uncles, on Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York.  I miss this area quite a lot, we spent some time here when I was a boy and it was great to make it back to such a beautiful spot.  There was some hanging around as you can see, board games, lots of meals, generally stuff that we did together when we all lived in Columbus.  Flying into Rochester, NY and staying around the Finger Lakes I of course left all my Fujifilm stocks at home.

The roll of Cinestill 800T was downright ancient, I think I’d had it in my fridge for almost four years and it looks rather grainy.  It’s also the first roll I’d shot in a while and I did shoot it outside now and again, with my orange filter.  That worked better than the first time I tried.  Strangely, I had to work with the indoor shots much more to find an acceptable color temperature (not my strong suit).  I was anticipating some late nights in near-darkness and the T-Max 3200 definitely came through for me there, this is the second roll of the stuff that I’ve shot.  One of my goals was to take a good portrait of each of my friends, though there was some resistance to that.  I got a pretty good shot of most everybody (and they even turned the camera on me once or twice too).  I also tried a cigar for the first time ever and puked my guts out about half an hour later (then it became a true college party); ironic that one of my buddies had mentioned earlier that he never took whisky and cigars together for just that reason, and I had to learn the hard way too…power of suggestion?

The T-Max 3200 was bought last year (in an order from Cinestill).  I think I’m acquiring a bit of a taste for this film: the grain is certainly pronounced (in fact compare it to the last time I pushed Tri-X to 1600), but I love the moodiness that it gives the pictures.  In fact next time we get together I might just keep it all black & white because I’m a bigger fan of that roll of 3200 than anything else I shot.  Then I could roll out the f/1.4 Yellow 50; this time I knew I wanted to shoot some Cinestill 800T so I brought out the 1.8/55 SMC Takumar.

So is the 3200 really any better than pushing Tri-X to 3200?  I honestly don’t know, I’ve only pushed Tri-X to 1600.  I have heard that the results can be a bit unpredictable to go beyond 1600, but then perhaps I should put that to the test myself.  Or maybe look at T-Max 3200 shot at 1600, to compare the grain.  It does look very grainy, more than I would have thought.  Where does the T-grain have its limitations?  The outside night shots here were T-Max 400 shot at 3200; it might not be the most scientific comparison, but I don’t see much difference.

The Read Headed Zombie virus has been eradicated

Bittersweet.  The last Read Headed Zombie show ever was back on Halloween. It’s something that I’ve played sets in, I’ve been part of their art/music contests, and have generally hung out with a lot of these people for years now.  My roommate was one of the performers that night, and he’s one of the first people I met when I moved here from Ohio.  I think he’s singlehandedly responsible for me knowing the people in these pictures.

As this was a special occasion, I broke out my last two rolls of Cinestill 800T and put those through the Spotmatic, plus some more of the expired Tri-X through the Trip 35 (those were mostly so underexposed that they were unusable, even though I tried developing at 3200…the usable ones are the last two shots in the series).  I’m really pleased with the Cinestill, considering I shot it 1200-3000 and didn’t push.  They did start getting pretty grainy, but it didn’t bother me to make some black & white, the grain looks just right, then.  They really turned the lights down low for most of the show, I was shooting wide open at 1/30 and 1/15 almost the whole time, handheld.

 

Here’s to you, guys.  Whatever comes after RHZ, I’m sure it’ll be fantastic.

Just a few posts from the Colorado Springs scene:

Week 3 – Intermediate Photography

Little Canyons

The learning curve with Cinestill 800T