This blog is being made to document our weekly photography driven trips through the Midwest. We'll be visiting different colleges and college towns each weekend to take our photography outside of Chicago and explore what each destination will provide for us in terms of photography and personal experience. We will be posting photographs and other documents from the trips.
We're posting today, close to the end of weekend 1. We're in South Bend, Indiana documenting the town and the colleges of Notre Dame and St. Mary's, we'll have images from the weekend posted as soon as possible.
We left Friday night at around 9 p.m. central time after visiting
Karen Glaser's solo photo exhibit 'Below the Surface' which was awesome. We got here around 11:30 p.m. eastern standard time and passed out immediately after trying to watch Walk the Line. We woke up this morning and my dad cooked eggs, sausage, and toast, it was excellent. At around 11, we headed over to Notre Dame after I took a few portraits of my dad. We were invited to a Notre Dame boxing practice by Conor Douglass, a friend on the team. We were surprised to find how friendly everyone was and the fact that no one seemed to mind our presence at this event. During the 2 hours we were there, I shot 3 rolls of Neopan 1600 at 3200 of the boxers. I think I got some good shots in. It was interesting shooting in a photojournalistic style that we don't get much exposure to very often. Sometimes here and there around friends and parties and stuff, but nothing like this. Once 2:00 came around, after Conor sparred one of the captains, we headed back to his dorm room to hopefully get some shots of some students. We had to trek a total of 2 view cameras, 3 tripods, 3 medium format cameras, 3 35mm cameras, 2 digital cameras, a travel kit of strobes, and an outrageous amount of film across a long stretch of snow because there was nowhere close to park to his dorm. Speaking of driving, my car is about to hit 180,000 miles and it is driving like a champion. Once we got all the equipment up to the "hang out room." Trev and I decided to set up immediately, since we only have two view cameras among the three of us, Rob was out of luck for the time being (this happens often where one of us is out a camera but we do our best to make it fair). I'm doing a film test with pushing HP5+ 400 sheet film to an exposure index of 3200, so my first shot was of a Notre Dame student. It was the first stranger portrait of this project so it was pretty intimidating. I tried to move fast to keep everyone moving along with the parent-weekend activities all while trying to get a decent portrait out of the situation. I have to say that maintaining focus to your idea with parents directing their son on how to look in your portrait can be extremely difficult. So I took the first shot without much intent of actually trying to get a good picture out of it. Once the family thought I was done, I quickly loaded another sheet quick enough to catch him off guard and got my shot. Hopefully the negatives will turn out because of this unpredictable film test. I then set up another in Conor's room and waited for a student to walk by his door to lure in a subject. Again, which caught me off guard all day, these people were unbelievably friendly. A guy named Rob was more than happy to help me out and let me photograph him. He came in, I got the shot off quick because of his cooperation and he headed out, with a more polite style than I've witnessed in quite some time.
Then we headed outside so Rob (Rob Glatfelter) could get some landscapes and architectural shots done and Trev and I could take more portraits of people we didn't know. My first shot outside I think was a failure. I just wasn't feeling it. I was very short with my subjects, didn't introduce myself, took the shot, said thank you. That was it. It may turn out well, who knows, but it didn't feel right. I think I was more worried about what they thought was going on. I was shooting them in front of the "Dome" at Notre Dame, which I'm sure is pretty popular for photos taken in front of, which I think easily could've given them the idea that they should have wide smiles on their faces, so I kind of just wanted to capture some random interaction with them and anything they were interacting with. So there was no "okay ready..." or even a "move this way, move that way." I just took it. We'll see what happens. I'm now rambling on about each portrait, so I'll stop for now and speed things up.
We shot outside until just about 6 p.m. when we realized that Steak and Shake was waiting for us. It was more than fulfilling aside from Steak and Shake not having a smoking section? To fully describe the experience, Rob ate 16 dollars of food. All of it.
After that, we headed over to St. Mary's so I could photograph an old friend, Lauren. She had a lot of work to do, so we got upstairs, I took the shot in like a half hour or so, and then we headed out again. Both of those campuses are beautiful. And quiet. I'll miss it during the week when we're back at school in chaotic Chicago.
It's extremely snowy here. It snowed giant snow flakes almost the entire day today, but the good thing was that it wasn't all that cold. Like 20 degrees or something like that.
After shooting at St. Mary's we headed back to my dad's to chill for a bit. We sat around for like a half hour I think and then headed back out to shoot again. I went through a 120 roll of Velvia 100F and then a couple 4x5 sheets of 160 pro S. Rob took a half hour exposure over a highway and talked to some nice cops, something photographer's don't get to experience basically ever. Well, that brings us to about right now. I'm going to head to bed and I think we're going to head back to Chicago around 12 tomorrow because of snow precautions.
It's an inspiring experience so far, there's so much more to offer in places that we would normally never go. If we stayed home this weekend, we would've been recovering from the night before and sitting on our computers, at best maybe shooting the same Chicago areas we have been all year. Instead, we saw new things, and shot more than we ever normally would have. Next weekend's destination is Madison, Wisconsin. I'm psyched.
-Matt
From last week, to hold you over.
-Rob
