Hasselblad 500c, 50mm F/4 and 80mm F/2.8 respectively. Hp5.

The print? Nah, it’s just okay. A little too flat in my opinion. No, the motion behind it is what is good. For the first time in over 4 months I poured chemicals into trays and did something. It was about time. I haven’t touched a camera in months. The break is over.

I’m not bummed I failed this. No, I have learned quite a bit from it. I have learned that coming up with an idea drawing from nothing is a bad idea. That does nothing for me except leaves me frustrated. However, I’m more than happy to shoot an idea that someone has for me. What was really necessary here was people calling shots for me, but that’s a lot to ask. I don’t think I’d struggle with an assignment at all. It’s just the whole come up with an idea on your own with restrictions and a deadline just isn’t working for me. It’s a pick two out of the three type deal. That I can work with.

Hopefully, the ending of this project will mean more blog updates. All new work I shoot (and I have SO much to catch up with) will end up here. So check back every few weeks and you’ll get a glimpse of what I’ve been up to recently. At the end of the year, I’ll throw those images into the portfolio and then move on. It should work out for the better. I’m psyched to not have restrictions for the first time in over a year and a half. Although I didn’t achieve what I wanted with this project, I achieved other things that I didn’t even know I wanted. It helped to further inform me of how I work and how I shoot. Which I can’t complain about.

The call for this week was “Slow Day at the Beach.” The idea was that I would shoot some large format at the beach when my film came. The variables came together as the box from UPS arrived about 5 minutes before we were scheduled to leave. The “slow” part of this call is referencing the painfully slow process of setting up and shooting 4×5.

Call for next week is “Dependable.”

Call for this week was “Assassins.”

I’m currently playing Assassins at our school. Interesting game.

Basic gist of it:

People sign up in teams of two, whoever runs it assigns a team another team as their target. They are also someone elses target, however they do not know who that is. The team has to shoot both of their targets with squirt guns before a certain date (usually 4 days). If you’re shot, you’re out of the game. If you don’t hit your target in the allotted time, you’re out of the game. If you do get your target and don’t get shot, you advance to the next round and everyone else that was shot or didn’t get their target is eliminated. This lasts about 4 or 5 rounds until it’s left to two teams, and whoever gets the other first are out. The catch is entry is $10 that all goes into a pool of the kids participating, close to 40 teams, and the winner gets it ALL.

Some more misc stuff:

Houses are off limits to enter without a family members consent (pretty common to see kids paying off brothers/sisters to let them in).

5 minute grace period to allow people to get to their cars after school. 5 minute grace period to get into school in the morning.

Stakeouts are common, where people will wait outside for people to leave their houses in the morning for hours just to get the kill.

My sister’s school was last week and I dressed up as a Jehovah’s Witness to get the kid to come to the door so they could jump out and shoot him. It was SO elaborate, I preached about God for a good 5 minutes.

So I just finished a Ghille suit kit I got as a gift years ago and got so close to finishing and never did. And my Dad has a thing called a “Spot” he uses when flying that sends a GPS signal every 10 minutes on your location in case anything happens in the air. Basically, we throw that in the targets car and get a streaming location of where they are. It plots it on a google map like thing that you can watch from online or get lat/long coords sent to your phone.

Basically, it’s a huge deal. No one thinks anything is funny (and the Jehovah’s witness thing was hilarious, I’ll attempt to upload the video) and it’s all anyone does and thinks about for these next few weeks.

Friday we got our first target out.

With a bunch of tip offs we ended up finding out she was sleeping over at my friends house. We snuck up in full camo and the ghille suit I have. Found an open window and figured out they were inside watching a movie. Staked out that window for awhile hoping she would come close enough but never did. So I started texting her saying that I was at a friends house that she lives near and I’m coming to see her for a bit. I got her to tell me to come through the back porch where we have been waiting this whole time. I take off the ghille, gab a water gun, and go in. I tell them that I haven’t left with the gun all day because of being scared. Target is sitting on the couch. They ask me who my assignment is and I say “I have some bad news… It’s actually Paige” Everyone goes dead silent and she just let’s out a “WHAT?!” while Joey busts in the door with the ghille suit and sprays her inches from her face. Could not have gone any better.

We got our second target out yesterday with total luck.

Joey had practice until 5:30 and then the plan was to go and hang out with my friend and her best friend. We didn’t really have any intention of carrying out assassins plans but we brought guns and just in case. He picks us up at 6 and brings us to her house (where I meet her mom for the first time and she drills me with questions… it was a good time) and head down to the basement. She had been telling us all week how she knew who had us and that they were incredible at the game. So we’re in the basement and she’s giving this annoying speech on “ohh what if this is all a setup” and other lines just like it. So Joey and I went to find an escape route just in case it was. We find a bulkhead to the outside and take note of the fastest way to get there just in case we needed to get out fast. We went back to the room and looked in both of their eyes and said “tell me right now if this is all just a set-up.” My friend told me it wasn’t and Paige shook her head, and, unknown to me at the time, winked.

At this point Joey grabs me by the arm and drags me outside and we run to his car. I have no idea what’s going on and he explains to me what she just did. At this point, we’re trying to get Paige in the car to figure out what’s happening. We get her to get in and she explains that two kids are up in my friends room waiting for us to come and was planning on shooting us then.

Now, unknown to me at this point, Joey had called his good friend that has Bridget as an assignment to attempt to set her up. When I heard about this I was annoyed because getting Bridget out did no good except to make her angry at me. But at this point, she had planned to set us up, so I was more than willing to get her out. He runs up to the car (still in the driveway) and we give him a gun and tell him to wait by the corner of the house. He does so and we tell Bridget she’s welcome to come with us in the car but we aren’t staying at her house. So she agrees and comes out, where Chris jumps out from behind the house and shoots her.

So after this, we drive away with Chris following us in his truck. We thought our last target could be working so we went to check her work. With Paige in the back seat, were driving and she says “is that her in the car in front of us?” and we get really close and it turns out that we were right behind her. The one in a million chance it could have worked out this way it did. So I grab the squirt gun, throw myself out of the car at a stop sign, and start sprinting to her car. I try the door and it’s locked so I run around to the other side where I see her window slowly going up. And in this slow motion run shoot thing I manage to soak the entire interior of her car and get her out. I walk back to the car and we head home.

The thing to realize here is that Bridget is texting us and saying how mad she is and how she’s never going to speak to us again, ridiculous considering it’s just a game. But for those who play can sort of get an understanding of how much of people’s lives are devoted to the game. It’s completely stupid. Right now Joey and I are just laying low until Friday afternoon when the next round starts.

Call for next week is “Slow Day at the Beach.”

A Sinar F and 135mm/5.6 now sits on a tripod in my room. For those not familiar with what they are, they’re large format (4×5) cameras. Pretty much my dream camera and I don’t have any film for it. So the call for this week (“Positively Negative”) is a paper negative I shot with it. Cutting a piece of 5×7 photo paper down to 4×5 and exposing it in the film back results in a negative on a piece of photo paper, which you can either enlarge (and see paper grain) or contact print onto another piece of photo paper. I scanned and inverted in photoshop, but there’s nothing particularly good (especially not the exposure) about this photograph so I left it negative. While I wait on film I’ll keep shooting like this.

Call for next week is “Assassins.”

Also, Week 15’s film is finally back. Be sure to take a look at that post.

The call for this week was “Compressed Time.” That blown out strip is the moon reflecting on the water. One hour exposure on Ilford Hp5+ with the Hasselblad.

The call for next week is “Positively negative.” Also, I finally managed to track down that roll from Easter, so expect that VERY soon.

Bigger: http://www.flickr.com/photos/connorroelke/3513016241/sizes/l/

Legitimate darkroom print will replace this soon.

The call for this week was “Bliss.” It’s hard to describe surfing to people who don’t do it. There’s something about paddling out with waves breaking all around you, anxious to catch the first wave and nervous to whether or not you’ll take this next set on the head. You understand the power of the ocean and how big mistakes can be made so easily. You watch as peaks break all around you, feel the impact in the water, watch water fly in every direction. You get caught in front of the cliff somehow, watch as water drains over exposed rocks just feet from you as the next set comes. You get scared out of your mind and then paddle out again the next day. It seems far from bliss to anyone who has never experienced it. But when you do, and you’re sitting out in the water just listening, feeling, seeing exactly what is going on, it’s impossible to think of any place you’d rather be then right there.

Call for next week is “Compressed Time.”

Call for this week was “Distress.”

Call for next week is “Bliss.”