Photo Sessions Away From Home
Nearly a decade ago now, I went through a phase where I spent ninety percent of my time away from home, traveling up and down the west coast of the United States. It was a period of time in my life when I wasn’t working and living off of saving, I had no responsibilities at home what-so-ever, and had a persistent itch to discover some unknown quality in myself that could not be named then, and certainly can’t be named now. It was both thrilling and exhausting and I did a lot of photo sessions during that time. Every so often I like to revisit the results.
This short series of images where done when I was staying on a farm property in the part of California where I spent my childhood. If you’ve ever been to Gilroy or Morgan Hill California you’ll recognize the landscape. It’s about thirty to forty-five minutes south of San Jose and is predominately an agricultural area. Gilroy is known for garlic. Morgan Hill for mushrooms. Both seem to be dominated by grapes and wineries at this point in time. It is a far more affluent area now than when I was a kid. I’m sure the rise of the internet has a lot to do with that. Seems strange to think now that the internet didn’t even exist when I was twelve and lived in these parts.
I hired a model while I was staying in the area without much of a plan. I had a large piece of property to myself and I was getting a little stir crazy but not yet ready to hit the road again. I’m not going to deny it was nice to do a photo session on a large piece of private property without worry that any strangers would come wandering by. It was a first for me during this session and presented a certain kind of freedom creatively that I didn’t quite know what to do with.
The conditions during this session were not at all ideal. It was the middle of a hot summer and we didn’t get started working until nearly eleven in the morning. As such the light was harsh and oppressive. Worse still, the only film stock I had with me was a large quantity of Ilford HP5 black and white film. I always traveled with Ilford HP5 because it was fairly cheap at the time and it was versatile enough to work in most situations. This situation was definitely pushing those limits.
While HP5 is typically an ISO 400 film, designed for lower light situations, I was measuring these scenes at ISO 200 and making notes to pull the film later in development. This was the only way I could think of to retain some details in the heavy shadows created by the harsh and directly overhead noon time sun.
The last image in this post, of the model feeding a goat, I just developed a week ago, nearly a decade after I exposed the frame on film. Clearly I have a lot of film to catch up on but I don’t consider that a bad thing. Sometimes it can be healthy to pull a roll of film out of the development tank that I exposed a whole other lifetime ago. I look at it now with a much different perspective.
Camera: Hasselblad 500c/m camera with 80mm f/2.8 lens.
Film: Ilford HP5 in medium format. Exposed at ISO 200 and pulled the development in Rodinal.
I support my photography in part with fine art print sales. All prints are limited edition and printed using traditional darkroom techniques on fiber based silver gelatin paper. If you like my work, consider supporting the arts and buying print via my Saatchi Store.
