miscClick

  This is a near-full rewrite of an article that was originally shared on Casual Photophile in August 2024. In addition to tweaking some content, I also wanted to correct a technical error and address some formatting issues that arose during publication. All photos in this article were taken by me, and were exported as JPEGs 2000px on the long axis. In 2016, I bought a camera, two lenses, and a bag full of accessories that completely changed my relationship with photography. At the time, I was on a rangefinder kick (via the Leica M6 TTL and Minolta CLE) and had also been dabbling with medium format (using a Mamiya 645, Bronica SQ-A, and a motley assortment of others) on the side. Within a year, everything else was gone. In the near-decade since, I’ve occasionally tried to get back into “regular” 3:2 shooting through various compacts, but none of them had any staying power. I liked some of them conceptually, sure, but… …I was too hooked on the Fujifilm TX-1, a 35m...

"Quiet Corner" was shot in 2017 on Kodak Gold 400, a personal favorite film for me.  At the time, I was using a Contax G2 and the associated 28mm f/2.8 lens, a stellar performer let down here by my uncalibrated (at the time) scanner.  The film was self-developed using one of the C-41 kits available at the time (potentially one by Rollei, although I do not recall).  I snapped this photo while walking through Times Square on a particularly bright day upon seeing the distinctive L-shaped light illuminating this man. Composition sketch, showing the strong set of intersecting lines framing the man using his phone While there's a lot of bright regions and colors throughout the frame, the strong contrast of the L-shaped "reverse shadow" and the lines of the building and sidewalk around the man at (33%, 33%) keeps the eye rooted around the subject. The purplish hue to the shadows may have been an artifact of improper processing.  I was not, and still am not the most fon...

"Parallel" may well be the best photo I have ever taken (dating back to 2017).  It would be a gross lie to claim that this shot was planned from top-to-bottom; there was a considerable level of serendipity involved in that both people crossing the street were at the same point in their walk cycle when I hit the shutter release.  This photo was taken with the Fujifilm TX-1 and the 45mm f/4, using Kodak Tri-X 400 at ISO 1600 (developed with HC-110). Composition sketch, showing foreground/background parallels and relative offset of the two walkers. As the title implies, this photo makes extensive use of both horizontal and vertical parallel lines.  There is an implicit horizontal line where the foreground crosswalk would be (partially made explicit by the pattern of the churned snow) that pairs with the background crosswalk, with the two walkers at first- and third-quarter marks along their relative paths. Falling and fallen snow adds texture to the shot, and the exaggerated...