Here we are, the economy is slipping away in our arms like Gwen in The Amazing Spiderman 2. Due to the harsh inflation of the analog community, I decided to do a digital shoot. Kodak may not have personally attacked me, but they might as well have with these god-forsaken Portra prices.
It's a crispy Sunday morning, anxiety is in the air. I groan as I roll over and see the fifteenth alarm of the day: 9:03 A.M.
"Why did I book this shoot?" I ask myself, grabbing a sock that somehow flew off my feet in the midst of the night. My feet are chilly, I haven't acclimated to the midwestern breeze.
This isn't like me, I swear. I'm an artist. The warmth of my Hasselblad 500c should be warming my toes, yet instead the piglets feel the cool steel (magnesium alloy, they claim) of Nikon's Z6.
I do my Sunday ritual: Shower, brush my teeth, clean my apartment, cry, eat breakfast, drink a latte, scream, pack my camera bag, and wipe the tears away with my lens wipe (I don't actually cry but let's pretend I do).
I'm ready. I'm ready like SpongeBob on a youthful evening shift at the Krabby Patty.
Annabel is not. Annabel is late. Annabel had some sort of mix up with clothing tape (or something like that, I don't know, I'm a photographer).
She gets to my apartment and we take the ever-trustworthy CTA Line-124 to downtown Chicago. We walk, we talk, and we stop outside the Chicago Opera. At this moment I had a vintage Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 on my camera, with a deep red filter threaded upon the tip.
There was no going back, it was black and white as the prophets foretold. You cannot remove the red cast of a filter, so unless I wanted a portfolio-destroyer, black and white it was. I snapped some photos and we walked towards West Loop.
As we progressed through the day, we stopped at key points to swap lenses and take differing photos. I tried the 14-30mm f/4 S-Line lens, built for the Z-series.
I later swapped to my trusty 50mm f/1.8 S-Line, filter-less, like a middle schooler who just learned how to be edgy. My favorite pieces from the set strain from the latter. But I digress, for I am but a messenger of the sensory technologies within my cold digital camera.
I would say the set overall turned out well. I was personally going for a Peter-Lindbergh inspired look, however I seem to be clinging onto a clean style rather than expose myself to the raw conditions of his style.
Annabel liked them, which is swell, for if she didn't, I may have lost a friend (again). Her agency posted two as well, so hey, I must have done something right.
Anyways, get out there and shoot, so you too can experience the thrill of shooting photos in a recession.
-nicho