Contact Sheet
ROLL #1 — NOTES ON MILD FAILURE AND COASTAL OBSERVATION
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Contact Sheet
ROLL #1 — NOTES ON MILD FAILURE AND COASTAL OBSERVATION
APRIL 14
11/36
There’s a roll of film sitting in my camera. Has been for a while. Eleven frames shot, twenty-five to go.
The plan: a bike ride tomorrow morning, shoot through the rest of the roll, bring it to the lab, review the contact sheet, see what comes of the thirty-six attempts. Whether any of them are worth a second look is, supposedly, the fun part.
I’ve never consciously made shooting through a roll of film the goal before, typically I approach it one image at a time. The added pressure of needing at least one interesting image is legitimately daunting, though I should note I’m the one who applied the pressure. A preemptive warning, these images may not turn out.
APRIL 15
11/36 (oops)
Went for a run instead.
APRIL 16
23/36
I have a cool bike. My brother, dad, and wife make fun of me for it. This is jealousy and I won’t be engaging with it further.
The ride started well. Slowed almost immediately, a lifeguard stand getting absolutely hammered by hard morning light. Framed it up. Could be a bold image.
Heading toward the Redondo Beach pier, something started nagging at me. If you know anything about the South Bay, that narrow coastal corridor between Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes, you know it’s genuinely great. Remarkable, even. I’d comfortably put ninety-seven percent of that coastline in the top tier of places to be.
The other three percent is the Redondo Beach pier.
Something happened there. Not recently. Some time ago. The world moved on; the pier didn’t get the message. It’s fully built out, parking structures, retail space, the bones of a place that once believed in itself, but the belief evacuated a long time ago. What remains are fishermen who don’t appear to be enjoying fishing, and everyone else, who appear to be doing nothing. Just blinking. Standing. Physically present in the most minimal possible sense.
I want to be precise here: I’m not talking about homeless people. Homeless people are occupied. I don’t always know with what, but there’s activity. These were housed people who had driven their cars to a pier to perform the act of existing in front of the ocean. It was kind of worrisome, zombie like. I chose to not photograph these people.
I shot the gulls. You can always count on the gulls.
The rest of the ride was a bust, photographically. I’ve lived here long enough that I’ve stopped actually seeing it, which turns out to be a real liability when you’re trying to make pictures of it. Hermosa beach does lend itself to more activity and people so I forced a few frames. They do look forced.
What wasn’t a failure was the ambient human content, which you get for free when strolling around on a bike.
A group of old men in a heated beach volleyball game. I passed just as one of them, in a voice constructed entirely from decades in the sun and worse decisions, yelled: “Too much mustard.” Impeccable delivery.
A small man walking fast and rapping fast, not performing for anyone, just going somewhere, loudly — “I smoke it up I roll it up,” on a loop for five hundred feet. He was committed.
For half the ride I kept leapfrogging two older women on their own bikes, deep in conversation about what could only have been a truly extraordinary audiobook. The energy suggested true crime.
Then a woman power-walking, AirPods in, mid-call: “Well you know that’s a great intersection that a lot of companies are implementing now.” A sentence so perfectly airless it could only have come from a real meeting.
Photographically, a stale ride. People watching, pretty good.
APRIL 20
23/36
The roll is still incomplete. Twenty-three frames down, thirteen to go. This number is daunting. Finding thirteen images that aren’t embarrassing isn’t as easy as it sounds when you live somewhere you’ve stopped looking at.
I’m being too precious about it. I know I’m being too precious about it. That knowledge has not helped.
MAY 15
36/36 (one month later)
[Camera — Leica MP] [Lens — 35mm SummicronFilm] [Kodak T-Max 400] [Completed — May 8] [Processed — May 10] [Scanned — May 13]
The roll is done. Processed. Scanned. I can finally write the notes without speculating.
Out of thirty-six images: two are actually good. Most of the rest are serviceable, which sounds like faint praise but isn’t, entirely. Nearly all of them have some answer to the question of why I pressed the shutter, some reason that holds up under scrutiny. The two good ones have that, plus something interesting happening in the composition, or in the frame itself. That distinction matters.
The first eleven shots open with my mom’s dog in our studio. I actually took two photo’s of him, the second one, is the weaker image. The third image, is actually quite solid, maybe my favorite from the entire roll.
I took it on my drive home. The sky was dramatic. The photograph was not exactly safe to take, I was driving, but I’d set my exposure beforehand, so the execution was faster than it had any right to be. It’s dramatic. It’s interesting. I’ll keep it.
The next seven frames are from the studio. My brother, his space, the textures of how he works. These will be very cool someday, when he is well renowned and and spoken about in serious art circles the globe.
There’s a photo in there, my bike, my brother, my dad. It’s deeper than it looks. What you’re almost certainly witnessing, frozen in celluloid, is someone asking what we’re doing for lunch. That question lands in our studio every single day with the force of an impossible philosophical problem. There is never a right answer. It loops eternally. Someone always looks mildly defeated. This was that moment.
The bike-ride frames came next — referenced above. Some of them are actually decent. The eavesdropped comedy of strangers is harder to photograph than it sounds.
The rest of the roll is studio and home. Still moments. Quiet things. None of them are good exactly, but I wouldn’t say they’re uninteresting either. They are honest, good practice, hopefully I’ll find a way to get more inspired to photograph what’s around me more. I’ve become to accustomed to making images abroad, using all my creative energy for what I don’t know. It’s about time I start summoning something creative from what I do know.
My next roll is loaded up, let’s hope it doesn’t take over a month to shoot.
The very last sentence!! ❤️
excellent