Racker

I'm beginning to put together gallery of shots that I like that are guaranteed 100% unsellable. This is one of them.

Accordian Book

I took a run down to A. I. Friedman this morning and finally bought a bunch of bookmaking supplies so that I can hand make a Japanese Accordian style book. Prints will simply be glued to mat board pages. Essentially - black 2-ply museum board gets hinged with black linen tape - and then a cover is made from bookboard and covered with linen. I haven't decided yet whether I'll bind it in such a way that it doesn't open up into the accordian or not. But everywhere I go, when I talk to people in various shops - they are excited to see someone making a handmade object and are very helpful. If nothing else, it should be a good prototype for Matt who wants to do a much larger version using this technique. The mat board pages are hinged on front and back with linen tape. The benefit of this technique is that the book lies flat, and is very sturdy. The downside is that it is handmade and fairly time consuming to produce.

Then stopped at Adorama. At first I couldn't even find the chemicals. They keep moving further and further towards the back of the store. The shelves where the fixer, developer etc. used to be are now filled with inkjet paper and other modern sundries. I joked with the cashier that soon there won't be any room left in the store for darkroom supplies at all.

e-mail folder

E-mail that came in during this week:

Several requests to know which was the best camera to begin with when shooting black and white film. (I'm at a loss with these types of questions).

2 requests asking whether I would develop film for people (one Arizona, one New York)

3 requests offering to redo my site so that it would be more profitable (for who I'm not sure)

Several e-mails saying that my link would be removed unless I linked back to them. But I never requested their link to me in the first place. This is the new search engine game: have programs that write e-mail requests as if they were a person trying to get reciprocal links to jump up in Google. They analyze the higher links in the search engine and then try to get you to link back to them.

2 requests from people that wanted to intern with me. I really couldn't figure out how that would work. My schedule is so haphazard. I might just be scanning negatives for a week. Or I might be out shooting. Would the intern just wait around for me to find something for them to do?

About 10 e-mails from people saying how much they enjoyed my photographs.

1 request to do a model portfolio. I can't do that without setting up some studio space. Not with an M3.

1 request to use a photo for a garage band CD cover (no money) and I stopped doing things for free unless it's some charity that I can support.

2 questions about printing black and white with K3 inks (one about the 2400, one about the 4800)

Birds, Central Park

Reflected Railing

That should be that for the stroll down memory lane. I have (I hope) most of the important shots filed away.

East River

That Day

It's hard to go through this film filing project without looking at shots from that day.
(From the 59th Street Bridge).

Swinging Snowstorm

You have to be about 15 or 16 to go out in the blizzard and get on the swings. (Schurz Park)

Faces, Subway

Situation Negative

So - how do you file your negatives? In order to answer this you need to have at least 10,000 negatives. My own system is giving me headaches. I pull anything that is for sale (at least I usually do) - and put that 35mm strip in an sleeve. I label the sleeve with the title. I have little folders that I slip these strips into alphabetically, i.e. all the "A" title strips are in their own holder.

Everything else goes into boxes of 6 x 6 sheets by year. I know - right there I have a problem. What does the year really tell me when I'm looking for something? Also, sometimes there are two images on a strip - so I file those in a catchall folder called "More Than One Image"

Then there is another box that has things in it that I need to look at or scan. And still another box with Bronx shots. Another box with things I did for theater. Another box with shots from Paris... oh it goes on. But generally there's no rhyme or reason to what is on a particular roll of film. In other words, they put the words: Assignment on the holder but I don't have an assignment.

It may be that my system is fine and that I'm flawed. For example - yesterday I had an order for a print of "Steps of Met." This is an old neg. that has been filed away under "S" forever. But when I went to look for it this morning - it was missing. I could remember that it was in one of the older glassine type envelopes. The reason that I was looking for it was that I had never done a good scan of it. So now I'm stumped. I won't make a long story of it but eventually it was found in the "negatives to scan" box. Which in a way is where it should have been.

Well anyway - maybe you have some ideas that could help me as well as the rest of the miniscule number of people shooting film.

This is one area where I guess that digital capture has it all over film.

I'm off now to join my local Filing Anonymous.

Church goods

Reporter, FX

From my upcoming book, "Commuted Sentence" which will be available in very limited editions around the time the 2nd avenue subway is completed. When FX opened their studios I ran into this guy every morning for about a week. "Fee-gah-row, fee-gah-row!"