The Frame That Time Forgot

When I photograph, what I'm really doing is seeking answers to things.

If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff. Music.

Hey welcome to the street shots photography podcast this is antonio and this is ward and he's already laughing i don't know i'm no no i'm just like it's episode 219 for the middle of november area code for area code for say it northwest indiana and gary and hammond and maryville and some other cities out there michigan city oh yeah shout out to griffith and highland and portage ogden dunes yeah yeah lake village couts or coots yes we've we've done we've done the area code thing

is stuck because i want to thank our listener justin jones for buying us a coffee and saying quote my favorite photography podcast is now also my favorite area code podcast hashtag keep the area code talk so we're going with it just thanks a lot yeah well.

It was a joke now we're getting paid for it maybe this is how you get in the business right oh right just yeah we came up with a thing but does that mean now every episode we're gonna have to figure out is there an area like are all of our episode numbers are going to be area codes i mean i can't imagine that I'm waiting for the exotic ones like 808 like that's oh if we make it to 808 episode 808 we're gonna be like you know. Doing it from very old. Very old.

Be like 2001. We'll be these like, you know, reborn, you know, flying fetuses. It'll be the AI that we're all so concerned about photography. We're going to be AI photography podcast hosts. Yeah. Which is actually not because, you know, we have played with Notebook LM in Google. And it's provided some pretty interesting content.

So. Yeah. once they start you know we're going to just that's going to be our podcast in the future we're just going to feed it and stuff and let uh what were the names that we were giving them the the dave had given him names oh david given them names yeah you know the but you know now they're calling it a deep dive for these these the ai talks about stuff like i feed a lot of stuff into and then they we're going to do a deep dive on this and like welcome to

this deep dive so they're actually beginning to have a name for themselves but i like how they call your name on it sort of like and photographer for antonio photographer ward rosin i'm like oh i'm famous right because someone said it out loud not me you know has some a certain artificial gravitas it makes you feel good yeah yeah i like it actually i was thinking like how dave was giving us some ideas of how to incorporate some parts of that into this and so i'm interested about it because

you know i fed in susan sontag's on photography into the, cause you can upload PDFs and I did it into notebook LM and it was really an interesting conversation that the AI came back with. And I thought it was a really, I mean, that book to me is still very dense and like, it was nice to hear it parsed from, in that point of view, like, like just, you know.

What's the word i can't come up with the word but reduced into into this summarized, summarized or yeah or distilled distilled that's what i was trying to get distilled yes this is a good word mark write that down it's a good word oh oh oh excuse me.

Excuse me for the s word my pen just leaked all over me oh no look at that looks like it looks like my hands are are like i've just murdered a bird opie yeah so i'm gonna put opie down excuse me go down go go i got a cat on my thing and i'm just gonna pat my hands dry sorry for that for that word i might have to bleep it or can i could leave it in we said one little cursory get the uh the explicit tag the only photography podcast on explicit tag yeah oh well i might take it out i Anyway,

I fidget with, you know, do not, here, this is a PSA for everybody, do not fidget with a fountain pen, okay? That's not a good thing. Fountain pen is not a toy. It's like a lightsaber. It wields a lot of power. Yes. And don't play with it. Don't play with it, lest you want to look like Hannibal Lecter with your hands here. It's a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time. Civilized age, yes.

Anyway that being said when else what's what's up with you my wife just got back from japan visiting our daughter and she's all full of pictures and and samples of candy and odd she's scouting for you she's scouting not really she's the sightseer so she went all over the country and, visited the sites with my daughter and i'm just going to be like walking around the seedy streets of Tokyo mostly. Yeah. That's what I'm looking forward to.

And getting lost in the train stations and that sort of thing. That's what I plan to be doing. All right, cool. So it's good. So I have weird candy and different foods and little toys. I did get a, with the 16 days that she was there, I did get one gift. It was a key fob. Oh, really? From an oil manufacturer.

Manufacturer um because the closest they could get to an underground car meet i guess i don't know oh so is this purple key fob so i think i can do better when i go i'll get some souvenirs are you gonna are you gonna look for any photography things there to purchase and bring back or is it just gonna be yeah i'm thinking about small film cameras maybe like canon half frame that little half frame from the mid 60s that they had a beautiful little thing Are you researching

where you can find those? Yes, I am. Maybe an Olympus XA in mint condition with a flash. I think I have one of those. My daughter has an Olympus Infinity stylus, and we did get a rollback from her... Before she moved to Japan, and those pictures turned out great. The Stylus is one of the best little cameras that ever was made, I think. That's the one that has the slidey front. The slidey front, and before they put the zoom in it, I think. It's a 35mm, 3.5, sharp, huge rear element on that thing.

Focus as fast as I remember. Yeah, focus as fast and didn't miss that much. I mean, judging by my daughter's pictures, they were fine.

And she had it go ahead I was going to say it took a beating too that camera yeah this one was my wife's and we gave it to her before she went on her Australian adventure actually before she finished university, and she's got the tail end of her university years and her trip to Australia her living in Australia so that is cool and yeah so I'm looking forward to having an Olympus camera of that you know previous ilk i think it was late 70s wasn't

it the xa the original first xa and you can adjust the it's an aperture priority and you can adjust the aperture manually so. Oh but i'm sorry i'm thinking of the stylus i'm thinking the stylus is the is the one my daughter has the xa was the first generation yeah i still i still have an xa somewhere somewhere over my shoulder on the right side with a flash too as well i've had a couple of those Those were really nice cameras. They look so cool, too.

Yeah, that's part of the—and then I don't know how much I really use them because I'm—we have this big infatuation with twin lenses in this house right now, so I might have to work that out of my system. It was nice to have, but that little metal Canon—I forget what it's called, the half-frame—. Want to call it EE-17, something like that, I think it's called. Didn't know that one. So it's just a pretty little. Olympus Pen was a half frame, yeah?

Yep. The original one, yeah. Yeah. Wow, I actually remember that. Olympus Pen, and then around the same time, the Olympus Trip 35, which I have that too. Actually, my friend Mark has, I lent it to him kind of indefinitely. Keep it for as long as he wants. But that's a full frame, and it's kind of cute too, because you can adjust zone focus. Yeah. Oh. And yeah, it's a 40 millimeter lens. Great lens. So if you pick up these cameras there, are you going to buy film and try it out there too?

I don't know if I'll, well, I'll bring film home with me. I don't know that I'll be shooting film because my plan is very ambitious. I want to create multiple zines out of this trip. Right, right, right. So I got to put my head down and I'll, I'll, I mean, I know I'm going to be obsessive. If New York taught me one thing, it's when you're there, carpe diem. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to do my best to just shoot, use my Fuji gear and just hammer away and get as much as I can.

Remind us when you're going again? Going at the end of March, 2025. Oh, okay. So it will be hopefully the Cherry Blossom Festival. The Sakura Festival.

We'll have to stack up in a couple of episodes before you take off so yeah okay by the time you hear this i will right i will come back we have to do like what what they do on the fuji cast you know yeah they seem to do that anyway well awesome all right cool what was i about to say i forgot it was gonna i was gonna make a link of when you were talking about film but i'll bring that up later i was going to talk about the lost roles but segue

into that a little later yeah what's going on here good question sorry no that's all right no because i'm like i got a bunch of things to say and i'm like should i say that or not but. Yeah, why not? This is a personal podcast. I actually have a girlfriend now. Get out of town. No, I'm not. We met online in April, and we've been corresponding doing pen pal back and forth. And one thing led to another. And she's at a distance, and so we've been having a long-distance relationship.

Ship, but she's going to be coming to town in a week from tomorrow and spending my birthday with me. And we're going to go around, I'm going to lend her my, uh, XT 20 and probably 1855. She, she, she knows photography. She had a photography business at some point. Yeah. So we're going to do the tourist thing in New York city for my birthday.

We're going to go around the, we're going to take a cruise around the city on what's called the circle line which is something i've never ever done in like i've lived in new york all my life and i watch this boat go around in circles and i'm like oh that's cool i'm gonna do that one day it's 60 years later yes 60 years later it's like finally gonna do that so well you said you were you were you were looking up at the web of you know things to do

around new york yeah i was gonna and i suggested for the jaded new yorker yeah and that's literally a thing to do around new york we're gonna we're gonna it's around new york so anyway i wanted to mention that because i know people are following you know they've been following me throughout a whole bunch of time you know and following my trajectory and stuff like that through the death of my wife and stuff and just this whole thing and it's fun to come back with some good news or i wouldn't

say good news but just you know just a positive energy and i've like really shifted how i feel in my life so and that affects everything i mean that affects my photography that affects my teaching, speaking of teaching i've i've had i had a bunch of classes last week i did a double header. That was a little hard. It's like, I can't remember what the class was. It was just basically intro to digital photography, but I've been, I've been like filling up the classes, which is really kind of fun.

Yeah. And I'm, I am working on, I said this before, but I'm hoping that we get a track of classes so that people can come and do like, you know, there might be like people who apply to the classes and we do a portfolio and, you know, or an interview with them and then pick, you know a handful and then run a series of classes and at the end certify them you know certified photographer you know i get to certify them and i'm hoping that is something that can happen budget budget allowing we'll

see at at the place brick but in the meantime i i did three classes and what's interesting about i'm doing the intro to digital photography which is really i want to say it's my baby but it's like next to the street photography this is also my baby and i've chosen how to approach teaching people like i i i now have i want to say my spiel because it is kind of a spiel but and what was really cool is that both classes one was at brick and one was at the library

oh and the one at the library filled up i've never had a class this filled before there was i mean it sounds like that's not a lot of people i had 14 people show up i mean usually i get like six or eight, which is fine. I mean, that's a decent side class. This filled up so much that I was running out of seats and I was a little worried that the library there would fill up. But anyway, both of the, they were both the same class. And at the end of each class, the, the students applauded.

And I was like, I mean, it's not an ego thing for me, although I can't say that it's not entirely, it's really kind of humbling when somebody, you know, when a group of people, Like I'm just teaching and I'm not expecting people to applaud. And, you know, it's just like, okay, thanks. Goodbye. But they applauded. And I was, what it made me realize is that first of all, I know what I want to do. Like I really enjoy instruction and teaching.

And the second part of that is like, I know who I am when I'm doing this.

Like I, I realized that I'm presenting the information in a way that a is, is comfortable for me and b for the for the people listening they are enjoying it it's becoming it's like if i can turn them on to photography with the style of teaching that i do or get them even just a bit more interested and you know they come up to me at the end a few always like what are the classes you're teaching what are the classes you're teaching

and like that means a lot to me and it also means that i've sparked if i can spark a little bit more interest in photography is just rather than just being this thing that they do with their cameras right yeah. It means the world to me, you know? So again, it's, it's not a pat myself on the back, although there's a part of it we're saying, like, it, there's an affirmation that I know the way I'm doing this is the right way.

Like, you know, I get a, I get, I get a curriculum sheet from the, you know, from the place that I'm working at, not the library, because it's my own, but from brick. And it says, you know, you know, for 20 minutes, you know, 10 minutes introduction.

20 minutes you know talk about photography two hours go out and photograph right and i take the thing and i'm like why are you giving this to me and i crumble it up i throw it out i'm like i'm not doing that i'm doing this my way because the whole point of this is to teach them something new right and get really excited by it so anyway i i just want to put that out there because it's a real it makes me feel really good and and the affirmation is good and i just i i i know that i'm going

in the direction that i want to go in like you know if i'm going to do anything. Teaching is just the best thing and i know people are going to say you know those who can't do teach or whatever that's a load of sorry that's the second word that's the second.

So there we go three strikes and we're out yeah it's like it's a bunch of hooey so folks are able to like review right these courses or how do you mean well to to give some feedback back to the library yes yes yes and so i'm just wondering if people are seeing these are people able to see the reviews on the website and see that this is a popular i don't think i don't think they have the review yeah i don't think they do reviews on either website which is kind of the

library i understand because the library is a bureaucratic mess and stuff like that and so i think it would be hard for them to do that brick that should be something they should do but they have a little bit they're a little slow and catching on to things like that it would require a bit of but yeah you know it'd be great to have reviews because then people would just like for any of the classes too because there's a lot of other good classes there that people

teach and i think they want you know what i should i'm gonna i'm gonna write an email to the guy tomorrow, or maybe maybe thursday because it's a driver that's up it's yeah yeah it's an incentive too and that's one of the things they want is they want to get people they want to get butts in the chairs so so yeah anyway it was it was for me it's like a high it's just you know i come out of i come out of a three-hour class i'm

exhausted sometimes just because i put i put a ton of energy into it and and and it's really well worth worth the worth it so. So, yeah, that's, that's my, you know, that's my photography stuff. It's the, it's, you know, what was I going to say? It was a shoot. What was it? Photographing something else. Darn it. I forgot. I forgot. I haven't been doing, I haven't been doing as much.

I bring my cameras with me sometimes, but I'm doing as much like systematic walking around and photographing as I would like to, but it's been a little slow, but you know, so I'm getting books. I know you've got books, but you, you, you said you, uh, how was There's that book of the Japanese street photographers, the women street photographers. Yeah, the book's called I'm So Happy You Are Here, Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now.

And it is not just portfolios of 15 female Japanese photographers like you might expect. It starts with a history lesson. And it talks about the, they're calling it a restorative history of female photographers in Japan. And these 15 are 15 that they've chosen, but there are no means all there is. It helps shape the way you think about Japanese women photographers.

So there's a lot of talk about, you know, basically patriarchal attitude within the art community as a whole in Japan and the difficulties that women have had breaking into the market and that sort of thing.

So it's a kind of a sobering lesson up front and then then there's the portfolios or the representative works from the different photographers which are great and they have they have a feeling of you know the female point of view and in in in the context of Japanese culture and you know in a way this book reminds me of a another book called what's it called it's it's a South and Central American volume.

It's a huge book. It's a collection of, of photographers from Mexico all the way down to Argentina. And the point of it, the reason why they raised money to create that book is because there aren't very good archives for film in South America and that their media will all eventually be destroyed because of the high humidity and the lack of archive, real good archive facilities.

So they decided to put this book together, and it's this huge volume, and it's in part to preserve that Central and South American legacy. And it's a great idea, and it's also a history lesson. Here are these people from this part of the world. Here's what they've done, male and female. And in the same way, you know, creating this restorative history, as they've coined the term. And this is the same thing. I'm so happy you're here.

It's providing you with this, you know, the sobering lesson and the history of it. And, you know, the struggle is still not over. I mean, there are shows that happen in Japan where, you know, female photographers, the curator says they're going to have female photographers.

In the exhibit and the male photographers want to pull out it's like it's really it's terrible it's terrible what the heck so yeah so that it's they've got to change the attitude there and so there's a part of me that's going to see what when i'm in japan what i can see and what i'm going to seek out and and see if i can find some female photographers out on the street while i'm there. I'd be happy to try and converse with him and that sort of thing.

So yeah, that's the book. And I've just finished it. I haven't gone through the bibliography. It's really exhaustive.

So it is like a university course, basically, this book. So parts of it are quite strident, as I expect it might be when people have gone through these hardships in order to get seen.

But no and then you've got the joy of the actual work itself so nope it was good it was good it took some trouble to get here shipping and all that kind of stuff i had told you guys in our in our discord server that duties and taxes and shipping and extra charges it's not good but i'm glad i have it and i'm glad i've got it in my library oh well cool i might have to take a look at that hopefully the shipping costs won't be such a problem if i decide to

to get it i think i might i wonder if it's available on amazon it is i'm looking at the amazon listing oh it's on okay okay speaking of books i got a couple more that dropped between last show and this show i think i ordered them a while back and one is second volume of matt black you know his i think we talked about it right american geography yeah. And there was a second volume, which I had seen at the, that ICP book fest that I went to earlier this year.

I just didn't pick it up because I ended up spending most of my money on the Trent Park minutes to midnight book. So, but it popped up in a email, the, this Matt black book and from place in the UK. So I purchased this called American artifacts. So I didn't read it yet. And I can't, actually, I can't pick it up now because my hands are all red and the book is pure white, right? His first book is all black, which he signed.

Actually, the first book he signed, I bought it from his website when I first heard about him. And then this is just from the publisher. So I got this, but it's a collection of artifacts, I guess, during his, you know, his trip for the other book.

And it's like pages of like like found work gloves and they're all sort of you know what's the word not silhouetted you know composited all put together they're all composited into like one giant grid yeah of of you know of gloves or one giant grid of you know just found objects that are all the same like like soda bottles or something like that and so it reminds me of some like early Walker Evans work and even, even Irving Penn's work,

like when he was doing the found cigarettes and stuff like that. Although it's not, then it also reminds me of the, of the typologies of the, of the Besshers, you know, this, this collection of stuff. And I really resonate with the collection stuff. I mean, I, I love to talk about, or even for myself using photography as a, as a way to collect things. Yeah. I've got an aside to that. Yeah. In the Japanese book, there's a woman, Tomoko Sawada.

She has a project called ID 400, and it's basically 400 passport pictures of her dressed up in different outfits. And it's all her, and there's 400 pictures of her.

And there's in the book is this grid you know this 20 by 20 grid these tiny pictures of her different hairstyles different clothing it was interesting it was interesting collection of product of that actually process and and view it's very cool hearing that reminds me of that walker evan shot of the picture of the photo studio and it's just a studio on it and it's And it's got, you know what, it's a grid of like 100,

200 people in different, you know, like little thumbnail shots or something like that. But this is, you're talking, of course, it's her. So that's, you know, making self-portraits like that. That's really interesting. The other book I got was, what's his name? Harry, pronounce him for me. I want to say Grey Art. Grey Art? Yeah. Grey Art. And I forgot the name of it already. I just can't touch it. Hang on. Shoot.

I got to use, hang on, I got to use, I can pick it up. it is called put your gloves on homeland homeland yeah so it's a collection of color and black and white stuff i don't i think i might have one of his other books but you know his work is sort of a deep dive i haven't looked through either one of those books in full yet but i'm looking forward to it it's nice to have these again you know my book collection now i blame on you in terms of

like it's nice now it's like i got a nice i got a nice collection now so. I'm very happy with that. It's going to get bigger. Yeah. There we go. Motorcycles.

Anyway, the other thing I wanted to say, tomorrow I'm doing this thing at Photoville. If anybody knows what Photoville is, it's like an organization that, how do I summarize Photoville? They organize, they're an international organization, actually, that sets up exhibits in free public spaces all around the world. Thank you. They come here. They're usually here in February. They have a huge canvas that wraps around a whole city block of images.

Call it the fence, right? The fence, yeah. The fence, yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, no. I'd like to submit one year. I'd like to submit some of my work for consideration there. I've had stuff on the fence a couple times, so it's kind of fun. It's a nice experience because they print them really large, and they put them in different parts of the city here. And in the summer, Photoville will have a big photo festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

And the cool thing about it is that all the galleries and spaces in this outdoor park are inside of shipping containers. And so it becomes like this little village that you can, like a photo village. It's really kind of fun. I didn't go this year, unfortunately. I'd probably go next year if I can.

But anyway, they're doing a photo. they're doing an education lab tomorrow and i'll just mention it quickly because it led me to something else it's just called catalyst of change and i'll just read what it is is photoville in partnership with photo wings and saint anne's warehouse invites educators to explore the topic of civic education and visual media literacy with an emphasis on visual arts and photography.

So it sounded like a nice all day kind of session on, they're going to be talking about visual media literacy and critical thinking and media analysis and just a bunch of stuff that I think I can, I can tuck away for my, for future education opportunities, especially with, we could certainly use the visual literacy part.

That's yeah. That's the one I'm really kind of leaning towards because it's missing in a lot of places, at least the, the, the circles that I walk around, And, you know, especially in, you know, that's what I'm doing with my classes. I've sort of taken pains to include visual literacy in, in a, like a little bit of it in a, in a digital photography class, because again, it's not just about taking pictures, right? It's got to be able to read what you're looking at.

So anyway, that led me, when I was looking through the website, it led me through, I wanted to mention, I don't know if anybody knows about this, but led me to a website it in a sort of a project called lost roles america and lost roles america is it is let me just go to the about i'm just going to read it quickly hang on a second like a gigabit gigabit internet and it actually takes time to load up here so uh i'll just

read it because instead of trying to you know so the lost roles america project opens the magical re-encounter with the past to anyone who possesses unprocessed film roles. Contributors provide one roll of film, which is developed and scanned free of charge by Fujifilm North America Corporation and made available back to them.

Participants then choose one image and in a small write-up, explore the meaning of the photo and the significance of reviewing a piece of their personal, sometimes lost past. So it's essentially you, you, if you have an old roll of film that like was in a drawer someplace, you know, you could send it to Lost Roles America and they will process it, scan it, you pick a picture and, and then they will send you a questionnaire, which you can then write about that photograph.

And this whole project was started by photographer, photojournalist, who was on the show, by the way, with me and Tom, Ron Haviv. Back in the day. Yeah. Yeah, and the project stems from, it's, you know, I'll just say this, the inspiration for this national grown, this national project grows from a book by award-winning photojournalist Ron Haviv, who processed over 200 rolls of his own undeveloped analog film that had been put aside and forgotten over the years.

Those images some dating back over two decades were collected in his book the lost roles which feature moments from haviv's professional career like political events and historical crises as well as personal figures from the photographer's own life the photographs bear evidence of light leaks pooling dye mold and other vagaries of time and taken together present a mesmerizing visual display of haviv's once lost past so i'll put the link in the show notes it's lost roles america.com and

you know you can participate there and they have an archive there of this just this great selection of pictures all sorts of different quality and subject matter and and you click on it and the questionnaire is asking who took the picture what did you think about it when you when you saw it processed was it what you were expecting you know this is a whole bit of stuff that people can dive into their old shots and i was just looking at this you know thinking.

Thinking about actually maybe participating because there's some film someplace in a in a drawer someplace that anyway i wanted i wanted to share this with everybody because i thought i don't know if you knew about it and this is i'm guessing this is not like an original project i I mean, I've heard about something similar in Europe and the UK somewhere where somebody found some 35-millimeter film in the ground in some World War II battlefield or something.

And it was processed. And they were looking around the country to see if they could identify the military unit that was associated with it and who the photographer might have been.

And that was that's what i when you had mentioned it to me before that's what i was thinking i see yeah but yeah this this ron haviv project is something else yeah yeah and then it also reminded me of another project and i'm gonna i'm not remembering it entirely well but it has something to do with lost film or like photos that just don't have owners anymore like found found pictures it like.

You know, yard sales and, and stuff. And so it's got that kind of anonymous, although this is not anonymous, you know, the people are posting, you know, their own pictures. So you know who they are, but it kind of has that feel to it. This collection of, you know, in this case, I'm not sure if it's Americana, but it's just like people's, you know, memories and history and what it means to them. And the fact that they didn't know what was on the rules of film sometimes or,

or, or something. And I thought there was something really cool about that bit of discovery, even with your own, you know, with your own pictures and stuff. So anyway, I wanted to make sure that I shared this. Well, there's the Anonymous Project. That's what I'm thinking of. The Anonymous Project. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah. And that was the, they had a book that came out a few years ago. It was called Mid-Century Memories. Yeah, exactly. Yes. And who wrote that? Or who compiled it?

It was put together by Lee Shulman, Rell Golden, and Richard Woodward. Okay. Okay. And that book came out in 2019. I've wanted to buy it, and I keep not getting it. It's not there, and then it's there, and then it's $40 more expensive than it was. Oh, really? Okay. And it is, let's see, who publishes it? I want to say it's either Aperture or Tashin. Maybe it's Tashin. I think it's Tashin, actually. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's what I think I was thinking of when I saw this.

So it's a nice, it's a nice, Haviv's project here. There's a nice twist on it, too, because it's there's I want to say there's some anonymousness to it in a way that like you don't know what's going on in the pictures and you may not remember who who the people are in the pictures.

But anyway, it's kind of cool. Music. I dove into, remember last time we talked about GBT giving us some ideas? Yeah. Yeah, I used it again. And it's interesting because it's almost like having that, you know, that assistant who can bounce ideas off of. And you and I are running sort of different lives inside, so we have a hard time always communicating. So, you know, when it comes time to do a show sometimes, it's sometimes fun

to throw in to the GBT soup and say, you know, help me. Help me figure some stuff out. So what I did was I threw in a bunch of our shows, show notes into it. And I said, you know, here's what we've been doing. What are we missing? And with some, with some prompting and stuff like that, they came up with some really good ideas.

So I like it. So I, you know, for full disclosure, like if we were, we were taking pictures and we were using AI and it would say, you know, this, this shot was manipulated by AI.

And I liked your idea of, you know, full disclosure, like, you know, this, this part of the show the the idea came up with the help of chat gbt but i really liked it i really like the the concepts i came up with so how do we start this well let's just why don't we just uh read the title that the the language model gave us go ahead yeah passion or plateau how to keep photography fresh without burning out yeah and i like that a lot because i think what resonated Well,

because I think you and I both experienced it.

You know, you work on the street and you have a shtick and then it gets comfortable. You're like, well, one of my pictures always looked the same. Right. What can I do to shake out of it? And I think it's something if you do it long enough over a period of years, you kind of lose, you know, if you're the person who tends to go out.

Without you know ralph gibson's point of departure you're going out you're doing the same thing you did before uh you're going to get the same thing you got right for right right it was you know i was thinking actually as you're saying that i was remembering did we talk about stephen shore's transformation from the 8x10 to the to the to the drone photography oh yeah last episode yeah you know that's you said you were because you'd seen so much drone material before

you were like you're wondering if it was yeah yeah but not in this not relation to that i was just wondering if like for him there was a burnout as well you know and we decide that we're going to try something new whether it's with a new piece of equipment or a new lens or or something that's going to pull us into some other way of seeing the world and to try to avoid burning out you know right so that we can because burning out for me could be just putting the camera on

the shelf and i've done that before you know yeah i used to do it with with with my when i was doing stock and stuff like that i think i think stock really burned me out in photography in general because i ended up only thinking about photography in terms of how could i use it to make money and there was nothing fulfilling in that and you know yeah traveling to different places was a lot of fun but it wasn't.

There wasn't anything fulfilling about it and that can really burn i think at that time it burned me out that's why i was so happy when i ended up finding street photography because it became this new thing that was totally the opposite of of any kind of commercial work you know yeah it's really hard it is really hard and i've been known i've like in a sense of most burned out on that a little bit too you know for for multiple reasons well what else was it

that resonated in this sense for you for well and aside to that too i mean i mean i there are gaps in my in my practice right i mean the winter time i am really not photographing much at all and so there's well you have some harsh layers right now so i have this kind of enforced layoff and i think and i read my books and i like this winter i'll be planning my trip to japan and making notes and doing some stuff alongside of the actual act of shooting, right?

It's maybe it's like a pre-production on a movie, you know, like you do all this leg work and then when you're out shooting, you're, you're as, as efficient as you can be. And I love that. I like the idea of, of doing all this planning ahead so that you do that often, don't you? Yeah, I do. Cause you, yeah.

But you're, you're, how do I say this? I mean, you pre-planned in some way when you're coming to New York, you pre-planned when you go to the stampede you're pre-planning for japan you did it for mexico. Do you do that all the time for any time of shooting or? Pretty much. It doesn't make sense. Really? Okay. Yeah. Or even when I go to Hand Hills Lake, that small town rodeo that I go to all the time. Yeah. Okay.

It's like, where's the sun going to be? When do the events start? Maybe I should be here.

Maybe if I go, like one thing I did this last year was on the Friday, which is called Slack, which is the day that the crowd is not quite there and it's for the competitors who have to be elsewhere on the weekend and if they they have to go to some other rodeo so they come early so they can get their competition in and then they can take off well there was no one there was no bull riding or anything so i could go behind the chutes

and shoot towards where where the animals are coming out of the chutes at the other end and it was great and i never done that before and 20 years of shooting there and like you you find these things and if you don't plan, you you're just shooting the same thing so yeah well but you know coming back to this subject a little bit like if you're not planning then you're also going to be trying something that you haven't tried before right and there's a bit

of an excitement or um experimentalness in in that in itself and that also could be of help if one is experiencing some sort of creative. You know for lack of a better phrase is burnout like you know go into something brand new rather than like what happens what would happen if you didn't plan you know yeah i mean that's your that's your thing but is that your repetitive is that your repetitive thing is that an old pattern is Well, I could, yeah, I could end up having my pictures look,

my Tokyo pictures look exactly my Calgary pictures. That would be sad. I'm doing the same, like, uh, it's just, uh, you know, you can't, you can't have that. So what do you, well, I mean, I could tell you what I do. I sometimes try. So I can't remember if I mentioned this.

So forgive me everybody but when the auroras were going crazy even down here in new york, i told you right people are showing me pictures on their phone and it's like holy crap so i run up to the roof i barely see anything but i get i get a shot but i'm up on the roof and it's dark up there and i'm like what am i going to do up here right you know i'm sitting up here i've got a camera on a tripod and i was like well you know what what

if i just try some light painting which I haven't done in a zillion years. And so I turned the camera around to the roof and I set up, I was wearing black anyway, with like a black jacket on and stuff like that. So I, and a hoodie, so I put the hoodie up and I've got my phone with the flat, with the light and I turn it on and I do like a 40 second, 50 second exposure. And I walk around the roof painting all the little, you know, vents and stuff like that.

And, you know, of course, because it's digital, I can see immediately how it worked out, which is such a great, great thing. I remember doing this with film. no idea how the light painting came out until the film came back yeah so i i started to get a little ambitious with that i you know as i as i started seeing the results of of this i pushed it a little further and a little further and of course during this whole process of saying i'm not.

Sure why i'm not doing this more often like why am i not taking the camera to some place safe quote unquote you know it's just in the dark and setting it well there's a lot there aren't a lot of very dark places in new york city but but still like like there's so much satisfaction so what i ended up doing as well was i i set up the exposure for a long period and i went out.

With my light and i spelled my girlfriend's name backwards you know i mean i did it backwards as i was facing the camera yeah and then when i got the results i you could read her name in it it was a little jumbly but yeah but you could read it and i and i thought and i and i so i emailed it to her and she was just she was like it was she was so happy about that and i realized like this is this was a lot of fun like i've never ever done something oh that's not never not true but i remember

one time a while back in our group and we were we were kind of i can't remember what the context was but i don't know if you remember i started doing light painting in my in my in my kitchen on my dining table i think it was something that dave sort of i don't know if he sparked it but like there was some discussion and so i set up my camera on my table and and turn all the lights off and i just found objects in my house and i used also my my iphone as

the light source and i painted these objects on like a still life shot and you know totally not anything i've ever done before although i used to do still life but i never did kind of light painting before and. And again it was this you know I guess it was an experiment maybe not a full.

Like kind of crazy experiment it's just it's so much different than street photography and yet it was really satisfying so you know but those little bursts I don't know for you but those little bursts don't seem to stick for me, No, but they do shake it up. Like you do, like last year, or the year before now, when I was photographing those women, right?

My mother and my aunt who died and my friend, who I've known for many years, they were, I had to put my brain in a different context, a different headspace to shoot portraits. And the one who was very poignant, my aunt who was dying and her care room. So I'm shooting around her environment, right? That's very different than trying to get grab shots of people on the street. So I'm working different muscles and it did kind of wear me out.

And I have these pictures which I haven't shown anybody that are going to come out at some point.

But I go, I want to know what I'm going to do with them in a dignified way that's going to be good for them before i before i put them out there so that was a great shake-up i thought because how does that how does that filter into your coming back and doing street photography like well because it's like it's kind of a detour but it doesn't does it affect your well it's a reminder that the medium can be very powerful and and and affecting and so i

can be less less flippant about what i'm shooting it goes to the economy of what i shoot waiting for there to be an actual i mean i know i really i think i noticed that at the calgary stampede midway this year i think i caught deeper human moments. I was not afraid to be closer than I was. I wasn't afraid to wait until there was that gesture where I tend to like, oh, these people in the right place. Oh, I'll take a picture. It was more, okay, we wait.

Oh, look, there's, you know, they're interacting or they're both looking at me all at that moment. Okay, now I'll get the picture. Yeah, just the stakes are higher. Make the stakes higher. Make it harder. How would you, let me think about this question here. So how would you decide to do to shake up your, okay, let me go back to this. So you feel like you're burning out. You're doing the same thing over and over again.

How do you pick something else to do to shake yourself up? Now you had this idea for this project of photographing these women. So that was already in your, in your, your bag as it were. But if you didn't have that and you were finding yourself, okay, I'm wandering I'm taking the same shot, you know, that I've shot day after day, month after month. It's just with different people in different situations. How do you figure out how to stir things up? It's like, I mean,

in a way you don't know what you don't know, right? I don't know. Like, am I just going to like open up a photography book and point to a subject and say, I'm going to try this. I mean, I don't want to do that because I may not like that.

What it i mean of course there's something to be said for photographing you know to work in a in a genre that you don't like because that would press well yeah i'm talking i'm talking about something more realistic you know yeah like you're not going to open up the book and suddenly you know you put your finger on boudoir photography and like oh shoot yes that would be a jumping off point like so it's you know if you can't think of anything think of

something is what i would always say and what's right you know i don't know what i want to take pictures of okay what do you like just ask some basic questions you know i like trees okay oh it's fall well it's past fall a little past fall here yeah yeah but okay i i don't have very many pictures of trees i'm just going to go out take pictures of trees and leaves and see if i can make you know i can work some abstract. Nature shots. See what I can do there.

It's one day of investment, maybe an hour, maybe a couple of hours. Oh, that doesn't work. Okay. Maybe there's something you saw when you're in that walk that interests you more. Oh, cars. Okay. Well, let's walk around or, I don't know, find a car show or, you know what I mean? Like, just do something. Like I did, like this summer, I took pictures of those cars. I had the twin lens.

I wanted to run a roll of film through it. I didn't know when i was going to shoot oh there's this car show i like cars enough to shoot them and they'd be interesting the detail in them would be interesting in medium format i think be different than shooting them in in digital so why don't i why don't i try that and i love those pictures they're great and they're very still at the same time as being dynamic as you know techno sculpture the cars are yeah

you know you just you find something you know you know what you like, just try it and like you say what if you don't know so i hear i'm like sound like i'm interviewing you about this but i'm also like this is the kind of thing i get stuck with as well because like you know someone might say what is it that you really like and i'm like i really have no idea like i don't know you know i where did i see this someplace some some prompt someplace about what would be your, what would be your,

um, your ideal assignment? What would be your ideal like photo project that you would like to do? And strangely enough for me, I don't know where this comes from. I would, I would have loved or loved to get on an aircraft carrier and photograph the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Oh, that's a pretty good. It's yeah. And it pretty much an impossible thing to do. Yeah. In a way, but, but like, you'd have to be a Navy photographer to do that. Yeah. I know.

Well, we, we, we have the, we have the opening sequence of Top Gun. That's right. That'll get us through. You know, but you know, I don't like, I don't know what I want. I mean, I'm street photography is there. I do it. It's almost like, it's almost like walking. It's like a, it's a habit. I do bird photography because it's, I did that this weekend because I needed to chill and bird photography fills that, that it's also very hard. It is hard. And I really, I am not even close to being good.

You know, I'm waiting for the birds to land. It's to try to photograph them in flight. Either that or I fight a flight, you know, photograph of a heroin and flight.

Cause they fly so slow and it's like, okay, but i i do that for a particular reason what's really interesting is these are all the same things like you know i'm feeling down or i need to relax i'll put on the 150 to 600 i'll drive over to greenwood and photograph birds you know i won't go to prospect park i won't go to marine park although those would offer opportunities you know maybe a little bit more challenging because i'm not used to those places so that

would that would kind of spark those a little bit because i'm getting so repetitive and used to like oh i know where the birds are in prospect and uh in greenwood cemetery so there's very little challenge there so i know i like that i like you know i've got my little things that i like to do but the part of figuring out like what would be the other thing to do i mean i did make some talk maybe i did it on the show or with you earlier on just after elizabeth died and i

was like thinking about getting back in photography Like portraiture was kind of like ringing around in my head a little bit, like doing portrait sessions, you know, kind of being like my version of Irving Penn. Again, sorry, I bring up Irving Penn a bunch of times today, but I love his portraits.

I love all of his, you know, his studio work and that idea of doing that, not headshots, but like really, like what would it take to dive into a portrait session to really pull out personality of somebody that I'm photographing? That would be really interesting. That's so unlike, well, I guess in some sense it's related to street photography because it's people, but it would be very unlike what I usually do.

Yeah, for me it would be to be Peter Lindbergh, right? Peter Lindbergh, yeah. Street fashion. Street fashion, yeah. So you have the people and then you have the, you know you're going to get those subjects that they're, you know, they're contracted to be there or you hire a model and they're there. And then you just have them walking down the street and then you use your street chops to come up with a pleasing. You were planning to do that. I know, I've been planning for years.

Okay, okay. Was that because of this, because of like to keep you in some way fresh and not doing the same thing all the time or you just had a general passion to want to do that? It's from getting those Vogue Italias from the late 80s and early 90s to the age of the supermodel, right? Yeah. And that's, well, Peter Lindbergh actually coined the term supermodel.

Oh, I didn't know that. It's not about the subject so much. It's about the way, you know, it's fashion, but it's also getting towards art, which I liked. Yeah. And it was not just frivolous fashion. It wasn't runway work and it wasn't just ad for ad's sake. There was a certain Euro art formality to it that's really appealing.

Yeah that i'd like to try and emulate that's sort of like what what willie pulls me in about avadon's work too there's like that fashion art crossover and early lord and parks too yeah yeah yeah we should do a show on these guys because i think that that kind of stuff would be great to talk about in condensed way absolutely i love that that you know when someone says what kind of pictures do you like you know and i go through my books and i pull out a david la chapelle book that's over

the top buddy that's i i've always loved over the top photography i mean there there would be like if i opened up a you know here's the photography i would like to do over the top i wouldn't even know how to begin with that but that would be sort of you know talking about just to get it but to light it to light it yeah you know but then how to incorporate these you know what is the core thing that we do right what is the

core thing that i'm used to doing and how do i incorporate these little diversions if we call them that it may not be fair to call them that because it could be a whole nother way to to do work but you know how do we incorporate any of these things into our core to to push us forward and it sounds like you you're just do the little just do move in that one direction like you don't have to the the. Creating the product that you want to do is hard enough.

I think making decisions, there's nothing at stake until you move in that direction, right? You do this thing. It's an hour. This is boring. This is stupid. I'm stopping. That's fine. You write that off. You learn from it. But keep your eyes open for something that does interest you. I mean, my son discovered just trash in the street, and he gets a huge kick out of it. And he's creating aesthetically interesting work of a subject matter that I just, I couldn't care less about.

But it's like, I'm not going to shoot that. Yeah, I'm glad somebody else is shooting it. Glad somebody is doing it, yeah, yeah. You know, like Anthony Hernandez, the book I have of his, which is, you know, that same kind of color stuff left behind by unhoused people.

Like, it's just, it's very moving. and he's taking that, I'm going to call it unattractive or you know not the kind of subject matter that you would expect and turning it into a human story of you know that has deeper meaning, in that case it's also the stuff we walk by every day but we don't pay attention to we choose not to yeah. Coming into winter I know you sound like you're going to you know, hibernate a little bit, which makes sense.

You know, I like, I like to go out and photograph in the cold, but my winter is not as, maybe not as uncomfortable as yours in terms of that. And this yacht event or something that you go to where you shoot inside or you see something like when, when Mark and I used to go shoot, when we, we used to go out in the wintertime when it wasn't too cold or too slushy to walk around and the sun is so low and at, at. At lunchtime, the light comes barreling down the streets, you know?

That's a favorite. Long shadows, you know? Yeah, that's a favorite of mine, especially like at noon here, the sun's coming down. It's usually from the south, and so the lines are really straight and stuff like that. It's interesting that this topic came up through, you know.

Chat GBT and stuff like that because I've been thinking about this for a while because you know i did the i did my project on my neighborhood i did my street like what's next what am i going to do next like what is the next thing i i can keep taking pictures of my neighborhood which i do because why not i do street photography when i see the subject that i want to photograph or is interesting and i do that but like what's next you know what's the next thing and i don't know what that

is and i'm not sure how to find it exactly and i don't want to put my camera on the shelf although sometimes like taking taking time off life changes happening here so i do have yeah and you've got the camera around your neck and you're going to be going around on that boat and you're going to have your x100 on you and you'll shoot and there may be something you see like you know yeah they'll be just trying to trying to be open to it i just don't know

what to be open to but that's maybe i guess if it makes itself evident like i said it'll make itself if you worry about it then you're, You're putting a lot of weight on it and then you're like, for me, I'm just too lazy to put that much energy into worrying. So go this direction, go that direction. I'm going to try not to worry about it because I will be, I will be not distracted, but I will be with, there'll be a new, when my girlfriend comes to town, there'll be a new experience.

And part of that might be also being a tourist in my own town, like walking around New York and looking at it from sort of like when you and I were walking around. I was trying to get you to shut up because I'm trying to take pictures.

And I have a kind of a similar experience of being a tourist in my hometown there was a business, revitalization board part of the city they were offering a restaurant tour of the southeast part of the city and you got on a school bus like on a bus and then they took it from this restaurant to that restaurant and you're wandering around like you're a clueless, tourist and it was amazing it was like oh yeah and then we settled we had this this big meal

from this portuguese this portuguese restaurant and it was like oh man it was so good and i'm like this is the town i this is the city i live in lived here by then i'd lived there you know 30 years and like i don't know about any of this stuff and now i do so it was maybe well that's interesting i was thinking as you were talking about like maybe i'll go buy like a i love new york jacket or something like that and put a you know,

New York Yankees hat on and try to do whatever a tourist would like wear stuff and like really fit the part and then walk around and see like, what is it like to try to walk in the shoes of somebody who's not seen New York before, you know? Anyway, it'll be interesting. I've never, like, because I've never seen the city from the water like that. I mean, occasionally I have, but like not as a systematic thing. I mean, that's just looking at the city.

So you're just, you're going to be pointing at the buildings in that one and this one and that one. But I'm also going to be on the boat too. And I'm thinking about all those kinds of pictures of. If the light is right and whatever, but people sitting inside of a ferry or whatever, like the, the idea of like this enclosed space, that can also, all right, that's an interesting. You can go back and forth. Even too, for me, go back and forth from the phone to the main camera too, which is right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, sometimes that's, that's a little, a little mini shakeup you can do. Yeah. All right. Well, okay. I, then I got a plan. I'll be, I'll be happy to share that when, when, oh, you know, No, we have to think about the timing of the schedule because, well, we'll figure out what the next show is and we'll have some time. Yeah. I'll be allowed to do something. I'm fairly open here. All right. Okay. I think we covered a lot of stuff. I feel like I've just had a big,

long coffee or beer with you. So that's kind of what I wanted. Yeah. All right. What do you think? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think it's good. And I think with the menace that AI might be, I think it provides us with options that, like you say, it's the assistant that we can bounce ideas off of. And in this respect, I think it worked out really well. And just prompting us, too. Like having that outside voice to help us look inwards about what is it about

photography that we find interesting or the challenges of it. I kind of like that. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So thumbs up for thumbs up for AI. But I like I like our disclosure. I'm all for for doing that. So people understand where that's coming from. But none of our voices are not AI as far as I know. Yeah. Not yet. No. Music. All right. All right. So synchrony was just a little bit ill timed there.

Yeah, that is. Yeah. So where where's the world looking for you these days? Where can I be found? I can be found someplace. I can be found. According to the internet, I can be found on Vero and Twitter slash X at, uh, W Roslin photo Instagram, which is where I post most of my stuff in my stream of consciousness, though it's slow, uh, right now because of winter. I am Ward Roslin, fine art Facebook. I am Ward Roslin photo and have my little website, which I still need to shovel

my street pictures into rosin.ca and podcast unofficial sponsor. Unofficial sponsor. Ornis Photo. Ornis, O-R-N-I-S dot photo. Anything new there? Anything? No, still negotiating. I think our country's relationship with China is not helping. I see, I see. Right now. And so, Antonio, where can we find you? Well, you can find me. Let's just look for me on Instagram at amrosariophoto. And my website is amrosariophoto.com.

Facebook, Rosario Photo. And let's see. Oh, go check. We've been getting a lot of Substack subscribers lately. So, yes, and I know I said I had a newsletter to post. I haven't gotten around to it because I've been talking to my girlfriend on the phone for hours and hours and hours. You kids, you teenagers. I know. Yeah. But our Substack is streetshots.substack.com. So please check us out there. I think that's going to be my main social site for the time.

Once I start getting ramped up again, I think that's going to be the place. But anyway, hey, leave us. We haven't gotten any voicemails from you guys. Come on. Give us a call. Just go to speakpipe.com slash street shots. Do it on your phone. You can leave a big 90-second little voicemail. Tell us about the area code that you live in so we can add that. And if you want to support the show, just like Justin did, please go to buymeacoffee.com slash Antonio Rosario.

And buy us a coffee it's really kind of a nice little nice little way to get in touch with and support the show and i really appreciate justin uh being he's a what are we gonna say he's um he's our uh honorary producer for the show today right that's great yeah yeah so awesome so the next show will be after uh after thanksgiving here in the states so i will have gained 20 pounds and. You do what you got to do. I got to do it. You know, we got to, we got to, we got to eat, you know?

So anyway, so everybody, I, we will see you after Thanksgiving in the United States. Have a, have a good holiday and I do, as I say, not as I do, don't eat too much. No. And Ward, thanks for, thanks for hanging out tonight. It was great. It was great. Yeah. And so everybody have a good night and see you in a couple of weeks. See you later. Good night. Music.