Free Smells

This photo was taken downtown after IU lost game in the NCAA in ‘02 (Jon Stewart’s take). I didn’t much care for basketball at the time, nor do I know, but I found it rather funny that all of those people downtown did. In fact, they cared so much they all sacrificed their lungs for a few brief seconds before running away from the tear gas.

It’s interesting to me that this is the only time I’ve run from police in my life, and subsequently been tear gassed, all over a basketball game. People are dying in in third world countries and even on the streets of the richest cities in America and yet, all us college kids could do was moan over a lost basketball game.

This was one of the only photos that turned out that night, as it was dark and I was slightly afraid for my life. At one point, before we crossed the street to get the shot above, I was able to capture a bit of the people hanging from the power lines that cross over Kirkwood. Well, not really.

Kirkwood

I was on a quest sometime ago to find the perfect neg holder to create this border around my images– this was of course, before the digital age. I was still printing and developing my own 35mm in my own darkroom back then. I bought an extra regular holder and started sanding away at it, trying to create these edges, but that was really a waste of my time. I’m none too good with a sander. Finally, I came across this one on Ebay and I snatched it up, and it’s worked ever since. Of course, now I can recreate almost the same effect with PS3 and my DSLR, but it’s really just not the same.

My problem with black and white now is that I don’t necessarily like how it looks when I create the same image digitally. This was of course with film and I think the contrast is to die for- I’ve always liked really contrast-y photos with clear black, whites, and grays (who doesn’t) but I can’t seem to recreate this effect digitally. Whenever I manipulate a colour image to black and white using PS it always ends up looking washed out. I even up the anty with adjusting the levels and doing all the white balance jazz, but it’s not really worth it to me. I’d much rather sit (stand) in my (unused) darkroom than sit in front of a computer screen pushing buttons to try and get the same effect. Somehow stressing in the darkroom over test strips is much less heinous than fussing with PS over monochrome levels.