I recently took a trip to the best goddamn custom photo lab in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, Barron Photografix. There, I dropped off 13 rolls of film back stock that I’ve been too broke to have dipped and scanned over the last six months. Needless to say, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time editing negative scans. This one in particular, has a really long story behind it, and if I don’t explain it, I’m going to come off looking like a dickhead.
I pride myself on being a self taught photographer. I’ve never taken a single high school or college class. I learned everything I know about photography from independent research and work experience. I spent a year working for a nationwide “custom” photo lab/camera retailer, which proved to be a wealth of technical knowledge. However, this bullshit corporation we’ll call, TITZ Camera (wink, wink), turned out to be yet another white man trying to keep the brown girl down type scenario that I am all to familiar with. I’ll never encourage you to spend your money or trust your images with a company both morally and literally bankrupt.
Moving on, I’d like to think that one of the most important parts of being a good photographer is in the etiquette. This pertains to always crediting models, technical assistance, anyone who contributed to the photograph; and of course, offering them prints or access to the finished result. It’s important to a photographer’s reputation, and it’s the right thing to do. That said, I have to come clean about Limelight.
I have no fucking idea who any of these people are!
Last Halloween, I met a nice young skate park employee named Callan. He was particularly knowledgeable when it came to photography and hip hop alike, so naturally, I let him take me out a few times. One of those times, he took Ashley Ann and I to the Fallout Lounge in Deep Ellum. Callan was friends with this couple from Dallas, the feminine half of which, was a photographer. She had rented out the bar in the early evening, and was shooting a very detailed editorial. She had invited Callan and whomever he wanted to bring (Ashley and I) to come equipped with cameras, so that she could use us as extras for the shoot. It was a vague invitation, but I had never been to a high production value shoot before, and wouldn’t pass up the opportunity. So I grabbed the Holga 120GN, attached a Holgon flash, and east to Dallas we went.
When I got there, plastic toy camera in hand, I felt instantly ridiculous in the presence of high definition digital SLRs, professional models, stylists, makeup artists, and a lighting system that I’m pretty sure I dreamt about for a few nights afterward (NERD ALERT). Callan’s photographer friend was very talented and friendly, as were her husband and friends. She explained that the shoot was part of her final project for art school, an examination of the concept of the “it girl” (something I find infinitely fascinating as an artist), based on the life of illustrious French muse, Kiki de Montparnasse. I was particularly enthralled with the concept, and found her production and proof shots beautifully executed. When she had asked about the Holga, Callan exaggeratedly praised my quirky little color splash 120 portraits. I just smiled and shrugged, feeling like a technical toddler in comparison.
The model portraying Kiki was a professional, and her male companion, was a bartender friend of theirs whom I’m almost positive is named Robbie (I’ve met him briefly a couple of other times). The shot blocked was for them to be walking through the front door of the bar, fighting their way through a swarm of paparazzi (IE, Callan, I, and other camera toting extras). Before she started to shoot the first walk through, she asked if my camera was loaded, and encouraged me to make a couple negatives, that her lights would drown out my flash. So, I haphazardly (we were at a bar, people) did. After she got her shot and production stopped, we had a couple more drinks and listened to this really good DJ set, a guy named Fishr Pryce.
So, things transpired as they sometimes do, and Callan and I only went out together those few times. He was a nice guy but you know, I’m dating challenged. Seven months go by, I’m going through my raw negative scans, and what do I come across? Kiki de Montparnasse and the best little happy accident I’ve ever captured.
For the past six months or so, I’ve been experimenting heavily with overlapping and double exposing frames. But the technique I’ve always fallen short from executing is the very one I did this tipsy night on a hijacked set. Limelight is two medium format 6 × 4.5 frames shot with a multiple flash, overlapping each other, creating a sort of time lapse within panorama. I’ve wasted many an exposure trying to achieve this effect before, and can’t for the life of me figure out how I did it accidentally (two cocktails deep, no less).
So if you’re the photographer or her husband, or Callan or Robbie and you happen to stumble upon this while you’re surfing the interwebz, please get at me with the names that I’m sure you told me, but I have completely forgotten. Because I am really proud of this photograph, and I don’t want to feel like a dickhead every time I show it to someone.
