Photo 2

I was in the B-studios at SMC, hastily reshooting a beauty assignment. Tal, one of my classmates with clear skin and striking bone structure, had agreed to be my model. 

"How are your assignments going for Steve's class?" she asked me. 

I was shooting her for my digital Lighting for People class, but we were in the Photo 2 Film Photography class together. 

"Oh, I'm actually dropping it." I told her. "I'll go tonight because I'm here, but my schedule's too busy, and I figure I can re-enroll later." 

But somehow I didn't drop the class. The lecture that night was amazing, and I realized it was the stuff I was learning in Steve's class that I was thinking about throughout the week. 

Last night, I finished my Photo 2 class. I dropped the other class instead (even though lighting/shooting people/portraits is exactly inline with my interests). But Steve Moulton, our Photo 2 professor, was blowing my mind. Here's some of the stuff he talked about:

DATA PROCESSORS

Steve sees people as data processors. Your photographs should present the world in a way that people don't usually see it. The camera angle shouldn't be at eye level. The focal length should be outside the normal range (not 35 or 50mm), as those mimic the human eye. The depth of field should either be very shallow with the background obliterated or sharp as a tack, where the foreground is in focus and you also can see for miles. The shutter speed should be so fast that it freezes motion that would usually be a blur or slow enough that movement is softened and becomes ghostly and whooshing. If you don't do this, you're giving your audience pictures of the world like they already see it. You're giving them data that they've already processed, and it's easy for them to move on.  You're feeding them chewed up food. 

I think this applies to writing as well (and definitely filmmaking). Present something recognizable in a different way. Stories, relationships, characters, experiences outside the way we usually view them, outside the way we usually understand them. 

SUBJECT MATTER

One of Steve's first lectures included an admonition for us to shoot subjects that were meaningful to us. He gave us assignments that were designed to strengthen our craft, but he didn't want us to shoot anything just to appease the assignment. He asked the class, "What are you passionate about?" Someone said photography, and he said, "No. If you're passionate about photography, you'll become a collector of cameras and gadgets." He said every important photographer cares deeply about the thing on the other side of the camera. If you don't care about your subject, how do you expect your audience to? 

This really blew my mind. I've been a studious collector of skills. It's been important for me to master a discipline. I've wanted for years to become a good writer. I've not thought a great deal about what I want to write about. This is absolutely insane behavior on my part, in retrospect. I feel like my overarching assignment, now, as an artist, as a person, is to figure out what I care about. What I want to spend ages digging into. What I want to show again and again in different ways. 

Our final project was to shoot one subject in as many different ways as possible. Steve listed out 13 shooting variables we control as photographers: camera angle, subject size, subject placement, focal length, shutter speed, aperture, background, light quality, light direction, light ratio, on camera filters, camera type, film type. Each photograph, ideally, implemented different variables. He explained that style is when a photographer uses the same variables over and over. So this was a kind of anti-style assignment. 

Tamara, one of the other students, presented her final last. She photographed her daughter as her subject. She said that her daughter is autistic, which has made it difficult for them to connect, and she thought she'd use the assignment as an opportunity to spend time with her before she left for college. The assignment was to shoot six wildly different photographs. Tamara shot 22 and they were all beautiful. 

OTHER QUOTES

"All the people you've ever heard of are the people who finish their ideas." 

"Keep shooting: you might not have taken your best photograph yet." 

Steve said we were the best Photo 2 class he's ever taught. He's nearing retirement, and he said our class made him energized to teach more Photo 2s. We didn't get a whole class photo, because we thought of it after people had left, but here are a few of us: 

Otherwise You're a Bastard

I've been volunteering occasionally with a group of friends who cooks and distributes how breakfast and lunches in MacArthur Park. Sophia Benoit, who I follow on Twitter, retweeted an event flier for it. I don't know Sophia. I don't know if Sophia personally knows Eva, the contact for the group, but MacArthur Park is near my apartment downtown, and homelessness is a heavy feature of this area. I signed up. 

The group isn't even organized under a name. Eva said they're just a group of friends helping out. Eva does this as her full-time job, getting support on Patreon for her living expenses. She looks young, in her thirties, but she has a teenaged daughter, so she might be older. The group feeds hundreds of people every week, and does special events -- with hair cuts and first aid supplies and the like -- once a month. 

They started by just doing a meal-swap thing amongst themselves. They were really proud of the food they were making and were making it in big quantities. They started to figure, why not just make it in huge quantities? 

Eva told me she grew up in a cult. She didn't elaborate and I didn't ask her to. Although, of course, I'd like to know more. They got out of the cult, and her mom used to take her into town when she was working. She'd buy little bottles of booze and cheap cigarettes and hand them out to the people who couldn't afford them. Her attitude was something like, "They shouldn't have to be poor and miserable." Eva was raised that if you had the capacity to help someone, you had the obligation to help them. Otherwise you're a bastard. She said she's just trying not to be a bastard. 

She also started talking about how the problem wasn't going to be solved in our lifetime. For her, that was the reason to do something, not not to do something. It reminded me of how cities used to build cathedrals that would take multiple generations to finish. The lack of immediate result not being an argument against its execution. There's an anti-hope to it. An anti-optimism. You do it because it is the thing to do. Nothing guaranteed. 

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