My Stereotyped Version of ‘Your Camera Tells Who You Are’

[Gary Ayala]

I'm not at liberty to say Gary. I want to protect my fellow XXX-brand users from this shocking treatment!

OMG! ... you shoot a MFT or (shutter) ... a cameraphone ...?

 

[Chris Bennett]

OMG! ... you shoot a MFT or (shutter) ... a cameraphone ...?

No, keep guessing!

 

[Peter Roberts]

My first gig as a photographers print finisher in the late 1970's was for a great photographer by the name of Bank Langmore...............

Catching up after a few days I see that this thread has grown considerably so apologies Bill for not attending to your comprehensive comment earlier. Thank you for introducing me to the wonderful work showcased in the links you provided, truly inspirational stuff there.

 

[Bill Brown]

Thank you for introducing me to the wonderful work showcased in the links you provided, truly inspirational stuff there.

Peter, I forgot to mention that when John Langmore re-visited his dads cowboy project, shooting with Leica film cameras, he used those same camera holsters Bank had used originally.

When I went to work for Bank one of the first things he tasked me with was re-sleeving his Kodachrome slides from the cowboy project. It's impossible to even express the impact on me as a young upstart getting to look at all his incredible work. Even with the book and exhibitions there is still so much that most people have never seen.

One of the shots that I came across during the re-sleeving process was a shot of Bank on one of the Montana ranches in winter. I asked Bank for permission to have an interneg and b&w print created that I could use as reference for a graphite drawing. Bank obliged my request and I started work on that drawing in 1980. As life often goes it was never completed. My business went off in other directions and the drawing has remained incomplete. It has resided in my flat file all these years but with my career nearing some form of slow down, not retirement, I hope to get back to it and finish it. This is where I am with it.



I kept track of my time on a piece of paper and it shows that the hat took over 50 hours to complete. The difficulty with the hat was all the snow. Each snowflake is the white of the paper so I had to map out each flake before starting to fill in all the black. The black was drawn in two stages. I first put down a harder lead in a sort of swirling pattern that mimicked the texture of a felt hat. This first layer kept the darker lead from penetrating the paper fibers which gave the black a final textured look. You can see that on the original drawing. I probably have another 125-150 hours left to complete the whole image. He's wearing a denim coat and neck scarf with snow all over it. I'm sad I never finished in time for him to see it before his death.