Some Portraits.

In case you havent noticed, there is something about the single subject that i like alot. I find myself going through rolls of film and seeing that a majority of the scenes i shoot highlight one subject. I don’t know why this is. I was never sad and lonely as a child, wasn’t an only child, am not shy of groups or social situations…although i often shoot frames of single subjects. I call photos of these single subjects “Portraits” not “Snapshots”. A semantic distinction, yes but it also has to do with my shooting style.

When I make these portraits that i post on the blog, i dont usually feel for anything in particular. Whether it be photographs made on the street or photographs made in my home, I do not enter the situation looking to excavate a single emotion or a particular look on someones face. I think my photographs DO infact say something about the subjects in them, but that is nothing preconceived on my part. I tell my subjects nothing, give them no concrete direction and I wait for the moments that they’re guard drops. What is interesting…the process of deciding when to click the shutter is now becoming more of a reflex. I dont think about it very much anymore, and before i know it, its over. I used to constantly say to myself ‘that would have been a great shot’. that is subsiding now. Also i think im going to invest in a leicavit sometime in the future so i dont have to take the camera from my face to advance the film. I often times wish that i could immediately shoot the next frame but since i have to take the camera away, i lose frames.

anyway here we go…

thanks,

Julius

Wathcing: “Heat” I dare anyone to find a better shoot out scene, ever.

Hello family. I have been dormant here for the last few weeks but that is only because I have been busy, still shooting of course. Funny that I wrote that because if anyone knows me they know that i don’t really ever stop shooting. I have the camera with me 90% of the time and the other ten percent is when im out at bars or on the streets at night. I find that when im out at night i dont really shoot much so i keep it home. But any trip to the store, to grab lunch, dentist office, bla bla bla, its strapped around my shoulder.

Life in Los Angeles has been pretty much gravy this summer. I have had an awesome internship and just a general great time rolling around. I got some film back to last about 5-6 posts so ill start now with a couple of images. Since i’m in an LA mood here are some scenes from my dayz around the city stuff that i see when im cruzin around…i love LA.

She keeps passin me byyyyyyyy….

Awful day outside…

On the ground in the hallway of one of those $150 a month transient hotels in Downtown…

These next few photographs are of “Zulena”. I dont surely know what he was doing but I can take a guess. I was driving in hollywood and saw him walking down the street with his cape in tow, i drove around the corner, got out of the car and did the whole conversation/can i photograph you thing. With not much hesitation Zulena let me photograph him.  He said he was from Spain, i believed him because he had a strong “esspaneeth” accent and his voiced lacked bass like ALL European men who wear capes in Los Angeles. I left the situation with the hunch that he was trying to be disguised as a woman, a woman superhero with stilettos and earrings on at 6pm in July. He had no purse and kept batting his eyelashes at me. I felt like he was flirting at me, not with me. “With” implies i was flirting back. You tell that to the 30 or so people who drove by and saw him strutting his stuff for the camera. It looked much worse than it was, especially when someone looked up just as i was walking away from Zulena, that looked horrible. Real bad. Gauranteed, that person did not think “oh hey that must be a photographer making images of that lady with an adams apple just for the hell of it”. No absolutely not. That person saw my parked car, and me walking around the corner away from an alley and a man dressed as a woman in a cape. Just as i came to open the door to my car there was a whole line of cars waiting to pass at the stop sign and just like the 2pac record i looked up and saw all eyez on me…

would not have been the same in black and white.

peace out for now.

here are some more images that i made over the course of a month or so. I threw in some Tri-x for old times sake. The color images are on fuji astia. i was told it held warmer tones than velvia and was not as neutral as provia.  I guess i was hoping that it was something like ektachrome  but i was mistaken.  Anyway thats it for now, my life is pretty standard, no great news and no bad news. I need to put together a portfolio like rob did. i dont know how to go about it, should i have a “portraits” portfolio and a “streets” portfolio or should i integrate them? right now i think that i want to make a portrait portfolio. I think i have enough right now to fill 15-20 pages. on with the viewing….

This was one of those “i gotta shoot that” moments…Los Angeles is a very colorful city.

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, at Western Los Angeles, CA. i was driving.

I took this @ an f2 through the sunroof of my brothers car. I like it.

Pat can grill. He is also a stud. Big ups to Pat, clap your hands for him

that little speakerbox was blaring mariachi music.

This is an extra who was sleeping on the job during a music video shoot.

cool building.

This guy is a classically trained pianist, i put it on a stack of bibles.

Good ol’ papa. always wonderin something.

Ahhh to the black and whites. This is dave.

This is Jessica. She and I are friends from Boston and were on the same flight out of there. We both had a stop over in Atlanta. I pretty much spent the last month or so in Boston with Jessica and her friends, it was a hell of a lot of fun.

And the lil homie. He is seven now and we are going to make a movie, he is the starring role.

SHIZZAM, i didnt think that this woman knew i was taking a shot of her but now that i see the frame i think she knew.

stuff on the ground…

I want to

post some images but i dont have much to write about. so im going to type everything i hear around me for the next couple of minutes. I will type a conversation between my dad and my brother.

I went to talk to Ran Rugan today, bud gimmie a lil’ ice cream baby, dish me up some, come on bud. i bought an evolution today. you bought a what? a car. how’d you do that? i placed a bid, i bought it online. online? yea it was an auction. the bid started at 17,000 i got it for 25,000. is this too much. no thats good. what movie is this? one of the cohen bro’s first pictures. what, blood simple? how’d you know? the blood. is that francis mcdormand? yes, i think one of em must be married to that chick. we live in such a violent society. uh, oh. you see if i was that chick i’d be running somewhere. I’D BE RUNNING! he did a shitty jo, didn’t he. julius, don’t forget to put your dishes in the dishwasher, bud you do the same ok? get off me. ok come help me put the plants back on the porch. come on help me, come on man. i will stab you with this spoon. cmon man! im going to bed im tired of you. you better wash your socks. awww shit. no come on all of you we are all going to bring the trash cans out. tell him to do it, he doesnt do shit around here, he just goes to boston and gets all this new stuff. tell him to do it.

Here are some images from my lyfe. the 28 is my soul mate.

I really like unintended outcomes. provia? velvia? Ektachrome? definitely 100speed.  This image is ektachrome….

it was windy and orange outside. this was moments before the sun dropped below the horizon.This is Ektachrome.

definitely at a somewhere between a two and a two eight. This is Ektachrome.

Boston airport at like 5am. ROB, i have determined that the blue streaks are flares up in my lens. I dont think its the processing unless the film got flashed when taken out of the canister, but i dunno if thats it. it aint a light leak in my camera because the streaks are not that consistent. Also, im not using a hood because it blocks a quarter of my viewfinder. This is Velvia.

RED! and some wack tags. This is Ektachrome.

good night for now. i work from 10am to 7 or 8pm in the radical music video world. it aint glitz and glam but its cool and creative and i get free lunch.

good nizzle.

-j

Clay

Here are some photos of my friend Clay. In Boston he lived in apt 3 while i was living in 32. I would see him and his roommates all the time up on the roof just hangin out. One afternoon he and I just kicked it for about an hour drinking and talking shit. He’s a real cool kid with alot of skateboard wounds. The last time I saw him i gave him a wiffel ball and bat in exchange for helping me move my box spring out of my apartment at 3:30am. He refused to help me because he said going up and down the stairs a that particular moment in time would have been a risk to his life, let alone helping me move an awkward object. He made a wise decision. It looked like he had just taken a hit of acid and did not need to be carrying oblong furniture down a narrow set of stairs. So I gave him the plastic bat and ball out of the good in my heart because i knew he would use it. Plus i had to get rid of it anyway because i was moving out.

Provia 100 during golden hour.

Be back soon…

-julius

Three a day…

im going to upload three photos a day for the next week or so, or until I run out of photos.

M6 w/ 28mm loaded with Ektachrome.

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I’m in a good mood.

Just got some film back and i couldnt wait to share. All are Provia 400-2 (because im an idiot and didnt change my meter dial when I loaded an 11 dollar roll of film) they are also a bit desaturated when I uploaded them. Rob August, please tell me why so i can fix it for next time. Shout out to Rob, Craig, Bud, Dave, Ronny, Dad, Mom, Grandmas and Grandpas, Peggy, Emily, Hurog, Dylan, Kyle, Blacks, Greens, Whites, Reds, Purples, Asians, Hispanics, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, followers of Confucius, James, Pat, Fabi, Me, Pek, Z, Gays, Morgan, Ryan, Shu, Bones, Will (Im calling you tomorrow) Tim, Fatlip, Kobe,  Provia, Smith, Bryce, Those who drink, smoke or choose to stay sober, pimps and assistant pimps worldwide, and to the G’s with the forties and the chicks with beepers… and big ups to you as well.

Craig on my roof during a great sunset in Boston. He has a really ill jacket.  This shot reminds me of Roy Ayers if you dont know Roy Ayers google him and PURCHASE “everybody loves the sunshine”.

Ronny (lol) as we line up for graduation. we didnt know what to do with that damn tassel, his face pretty much sums it up.  Graduation went pretty well and overall college was good to me, I met a lot of great people (like ronny) and I also had some pretty awesome professors as well. Peace out Emerson (Boston).

My brother in a Boston bar.  I dont know much about developing but what are those two blue stripes? they arent flares because i see them on a couple of my frames and they are constantly blue regardless of whats going on, I kind of hate them but i kind of love them, they remind me of the whole analogue film chemical process, i kind of think of them as a similar deal to sloppy borders or something. but they are right in the middle of my fucking shot. They arent desired but i dig em on this frame.

My, brother after the Boston bar….

At a pizza place somewhere on the east coast between Boston and NYC. outside was the most fierce rain storm ever.

Not part of the fierce rain storm, but i first came across this scene at night without my camera. I told myself that i would come back the day after in the early morning in hopes that it was still there. I got up at about 7am and went straight for it. It was still raining and pretty dark so i opened up all the way to an f2 to get that beautiful vignetting. Im convinced that the 28 summicron is just as crisp at f2 as it is at f16.

The frame made after the frame above…It is particularly difficult to focus on falling raindrops w/ a fully manual rangefinder, there will be more attempts next time it rains and i find a dark background to shoot raindrops against. it is almost June so im guessing my next try may be months away.

Someone left a drink on the ground from the night before…still around 7-7:15a. I know this sounds gross but i was tempted to try it just so i can tell people what kind of drink it was. it looked clean, buuut, that would have been a stupid decision, and a dirty one.

I couldn’t resist. Also at about 7:15am. Right as I made this frame some guy walked by me and mockingly said, “thats a great picture”. Who does that? I wish i knew what he looked like but i didn’t even give him a glance, asshole.

Have a god one guys, Friday I pick up 6 rolls, 3 triX and 3 provia 100F.

Drop a comment or two if you feel like it.

- Julius

Back…

Sorry for the delay, I have been shooting a lot of motion projects and have kind of been neglecting my still work. Also my camera just got back from a four week “vacation”. I have been involved in a lot of projects lately but this outlet is just for the street work, and spontaneous portraits…basically my favorite stuff. All photographs are made with the m6 on tri-x through the 28 summicron and between february 28th and March 31st.

I am graduating in about a month so my time in Boston is winding down and I am looking forward to moving back to Los Angeles. I hope this finds you all well. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, i dont bite.

-Julius

- I forget their names, but what attracted me to them was the cigar hanging from his hat. Downtown Crossing, Boston 2007.

-I had never seen a dog like this before, it looked like it was in a fire. That may be an insensitive thing to say but, it LOOKED like it had been set ablaze. I dont know if this is a specific type of dog or what, but it definitely was not jumping around and playing fetch like the rest of em. Boston Common, 2007.

-Green Line. Boston, 2007

Harvard University, Cambridge 2007.

Boylston and Tremont, Boston 2007.

I was with mr. flannery when this was made, I think we were on the way to Harvard on a really shitty day of weather. Red Line T, Cambridge 2007.

- Boston, 2007.

-This is what I did while I was waiting for Dave to get into providence from California. Providence, 2007.

-Beacon Hill, 2007.

-I love this shot. Cambridge, 2007.

Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening or Good night.

-Julius