Tripod Travels

Belated Change Update

2008-02-20T10:46:00.002-06:00

I changed the place of my blog to here.

And my website works now.

Thanks,

Matt

Ireland

2007-09-30T18:01:00.000-06:00

Hey again everyone, it's been awhile since I've posted anything at all. The Ireland trip was great, and now that I'm back into the full speed of school, it's very difficult to find time to work on the photographs I made in Ireland. I'm going to try and make this post mostly just images, since I don't have a lot of time to work on it.

The Ireland trip was a photography workshop led by these two guys,

Brad Temkin and Peter Zoeller.

And the trip mates consisted of Trev and I, Mike Meyer, Aidan Fitzpatrick, Katrina Flores, and Taylor McNeely. It was awesome.

Mike was my roommate when we stayed in Glengarriff.

The days would consist of us getting up and going to photograph just after the sun came up, or in some cases, when it was on its way up.

We'd photograph a location that Brad and Peter had planned out or would base us going on the weather at the time. Then we'd make it back before 10 for breakfast with everyone.

After, we'd either get our equipment, regroup, and head out

or it would be naptime, then head out.

Then we photographed, stayed the first 2 days in Glengarriff, then stayed in Dingle, and then in Clare. Here's some pictures...

There's many more pictures from Ireland, however I don't have time to work on them or upload them now. I hope you enjoyed these.

Thanks to Brad and Peter, and the 5 photographers that joined me to make this trip amazing.

I apologize for the brevity of the post, but I've moved on to newer work that I'm focussing on now, I'll be posting some of that and other photos and thoughts at a new blog: http://mattaustin.wordpress.com/

Take care guys,

Matt

Flight 256, 6:40pm

2007-08-24T02:14:00.000-06:00

Peace
,

Sup

passport

2007-08-22T17:21:00.000-06:00

so, one of the most recent troubles that i have had was dealing with my passport. i applied for it a month ago almost to the day. purchased expedited service and submitted it to the united states postal service. a few weeks go by and i call to check on it. it is still in its processing stage. ok that is acceptable it has only been like two weeks. i allow another week to go by and then it becomes the 'within 14 days of travel' period. the person i spoke to this time said that it is still in the processing stage and that they will put an 'urgent' tag on it (which means absolutely nothing) and that i should make an appointment to go the the passport office downtown. so i do that and make an appointment at 9 a.m. on august 20th. the 20th rolls around and i wake up early call the passport agency again just to see if maybe it has shipped. of course it has not and the person i talk to informs me that if i went to the passport office downtown it would be totally pointless and that i should call later on in the day because it will 'probably' ship. so i cancel. go pick up my father from the train station and we hang out for a bit. then i give them a call around 4pm central standard time and the person i talk to doesn't tell me anything new and tells me to call at midnight or in the morning because it looks like it is about to ship. so i call in the morning and the customer service rep i talk to doesn't say anything i haven't heard except to call again in a few hours. i then proceed to ask if there is anything i can do in chicago or if there is anyone that i can call to speed up this process. negative. this ends up happening for 2 more days with the exact same answer and then last night i decided that it was futile to talk to them anymore so i made another appointment with the passport agency in chicago. luckily i schedule one for the morning of the 22nd [today] in the morning. at this point i am extremely upset with all of this because if i dont have a passport i cant go to ireland. bad news. cant reschedule and nothing i purchased for the trip is refundable. including the fee for the passport i might not get. so then i wake up this morning and with one last attempt i call the passport agency and get the same exact response ive been getting. 'we promise not to promise you anything' god i love this country. after that i leave my house in somewhat of a panicked fury with my state id, social security, student id any other form of citizenship (except my birth certificate because it is M.I.A. in washington with my passport application) and my travel itinerary and march down to the federal building at 230 s dearborn in chicago IL. get there at 9:23 and i am greeted with armed guards and a metal detector. pretty standard for a state government building. i proceed through that to the elevators and begin my ascent to the 18th floor where i am then greeted [rudely] by four armed [doormen] guards treating everyone and anyone that walks by them as if they were a potential terrorist...what? for the sake of speeding things up i waited in line explained my situation to someone through 1/2 an inch of bullet proof glass. they told me to fill out another application and to get back in line. get back through the line and am then handed a numbered ticket DMV style and i am told to go sit in a seated area and to wait for my number. about 45 minutes go by and my number finally gets called, i go up to window 5 and talk to a very nice lady who informs me that all i need now are passport photos...shit, i already took care of that with my last application though. it doesn't matter we need new ones. so i run downstairs to the nearest Walgreen's get my passport photos taken run back through the metal detectors joke with the security guard about america and get back to the passport office (the lady i was with said to skip the line and just come straight back to her =]) after she processes everything she hands me a receipt that instructs me to return the the building at 330 that same day to pickup my passport. i thought to myself 'way to good to be true' so i asked if this would be for a temporary passport and she informed me with a laugh that it would be temporary for 10 years. so i leave slightly relieve but still skeptical of everything and return to the 18th floor at 330. confront the armed doormen about what to do. they take my slip and tell me to sit down. about 3o minutes later they call my name and a woman hands me a blue envelope and behold its contents are a brand new navy blue with gold text PASSPORT TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. god bless chicago. 'what the fuck?' is the only phrase that comes to my mind. the chicago passport agency did in 3 HOURS what washington d.c. couldn't do in a month...? once again 'what the fuck?'. and even further the six people that i talked to in washington told me that it was impossible to do anything about it and i would have to just sit and wait for my passport to come from them... 'what the fuck?' i am now very much in relief of this because it was the final step towards the travels to ireland...whew. in other news the fuji S3 pro rules.

as i mentioned above dad came to town this weeked.
he gets confused about the city ^^

i photographed him awkwardly talking on the phone

and seriously talking to me.

and eating like an idiot =p

and then him peacing. we had a good time.
we even killed it at the bean.

since dad was in town i decided to become a tourist.
i've never really looked at chicago from the perspective of a tourist.
but since im about to be one i figured i would try it out.

it rained a lot this week.

as casual as it gets

im not always as sneaky as i think. =D

millers pub yo.

the self

im not explaining myself

fancy

passport suprise for matt!

she was nervous about something

and he was upset about something...

i like finding these things

bean-tography

i swear it was really elvis.
he drives a black mercedes now.
i think hes mafia now too.

by the end of it this guy had me wondering what life was all about.
good thing his shirt told me step by step everything.

.end.

Irelan-ventory, Booze, and Bean.

2007-08-18T13:13:00.001-06:00

To prolong the countdown, we now have 6 days until Ireland. Pretty exciting, the government let me know that my passport is on its way so the days of worry and pant-wetting are finally over. We still have to deal with airport film hand-checking though, we're keeping our fingers crossed.

In light of our close departure, it was obviously time for Irelan-ventory.

Trev: 107 rolls of 120 film, 38 rolls of 35mm film, 16 gigs of cf cards.
Matt: 90 rolls of 120, 45 rolls of 35mm film, 40 sheets of pack polaroid.

Central Camera made some extra bucks off of us this month.
Yikes.

I processed two rolls of slides from the Bessa, they look beautiful.

That lens is so sharp.

The crazy thing about having a rangefinder is I guess I shoot a lot more, I've had the camera for a week and I've put 19 rolls through so far.

While I was waiting for the Bessa to get here, and my other camera had broken, I went out to the suburbs to visit some friends and only had the digital. So here's what came from that fun night:

Aside from that, I decided it would probably be a good idea to show some images from a place I've spent some time at over this summer, behold...
"the Bean."

At the beginning, I thought this was a project idea waiting to happen. However, I think this might just be a fun and enjoyable experience every now and then.

I simply enjoy watching the interaction with this piece of art and how the normal self-conscious hesitations we have as people seem to disappear around this object. I'm fully aware the images easily appear condescending, however I'm looking at the situation with a plain curiosity: what makes this massive difference between the apprehension of the way people act under and around this artwork and the apprehension of the way people act when they are far away from it? I'm impressed by the artist, Anish Kapoor, and his achievement of creating a piece of work that changes the way people act. I don't think I could imagine accomplishing that with a photograph, let alone any other type of art.

I've noticed a strange amount of lone babies...

I tried uploading another abandoned baby, but there was some error...
Oh well.

That's pretty much it I guess,

See you when we get back!

-Matt

I blacked out.

2007-08-06T17:59:00.000-06:00

The summer's ending?

WTF?

It's crazy to think that the summer is pretty much over. I feel like I blacked out when school got out, somehow worked 5 different jobs, shot 70 rolls of film, and woke up and had made enough money to get to Ireland. As long as the government doesn't rip us off, Trevor and I will be on a plane to Ireland in 17 days, seeing as they get our passports to us in the "guaranteed" time. It's weird thinking about the amount of this summer I've spent alone. It really has been a good portion of the summer, but I think it has helped with my mental/artistic mindset. I photographed, wrote, and drew all summer knowing that I was not going to be bringing it into class or a critique for approval or discussion. It didn't have to be "good" for anyone but myself, but I quickly realized that it never does, really. I plan on applying that to most everything I do with art, it's much more fun this way.

I think I'll dedicate this post as a tribute to my fallen Canon Elan7e. It fell out of my camera bag at Bennigan's, in the rain, after the Decemberists show. The back won't close anymore because the little hatch inside broke off.

Yatzik, being the handsome, yet also intillectual, man that he is, fixed the broken lens. The focussing gears on it are still tight, but it does work. I tried gaffer's taping the back of my camera together so the film wouldn't pop out, and that worked...for awhile. But at the Gold Coast art fair, I was walking around at which point 90 degree heat melted the tape off the camera and exposed the film, again.

So I got mad and bought a Voigtlander Bessa R3a with a 40mm f/1.4, haha! Don't get me wrong, it's a camera I've been eyeing for awhile, the fall of the Elan7e just gave me enough reason to go for it. It'll be here Wednesday.I'm psyched!

So I think I'm going to do a photo-recap of the summer, if you will. Will you?

Awhile back the July 4th festivities on July 3rd allowed for walking in the middle of the street all the way home due to the total chaos in the South Loop.

But we made sure to not have too much fun.
Well, all of us except maybe Trev.Trev's amount of fun-having was scaring children.

Trev's excess of fun continued on...

And then at some point, Victor and Riley made ribs.
And then discussed their rib-mastering techniques.

Some, skeptical of these techniques of rib-mastering.
The ribs were excellent!
There was nice light in our backyard that night.I'm glad Riley showed Brian how to correctly use a guitar, it's been bothering me.
Haha, and Riley (who still owes us a full bottle of lighter fluid) playing with fire made for a great ending to the night.

Then I think I worked a lot and pretty much didn't see anyone for awhile.^a student from the class I was TAing.

One day after working at the photo studio, I came out of work and everything had flooded, it was strange. I couldn't even leave the parking lot because both exits were deep in water.

So since most of this summer I was at work, I would photograph either before or after, or during, sometimes.(taken during class)

Working in the darkroom with Tucker.
What's up Steve Lang?

I walked to work a lot this summer, always with a camera.

I tried to stay clear of the train as much as possible, but had to sometimes.

A lot of the summer, I resorted to photographing while driving. Scary? Yes. But I did end up liking some of the photographs that came out of it.

(^I got out of my car for this one.)

Then at some point I quit my weekend job so it freed up some nights to go out.

Cheers!

This job stopping also allowed for a night trip out to Milwaukee with my man Tucker to drop off the work for the CoPA show.
Staying at his friends' house made me want to live in Milwaukee at some point. It was fantastic.And hilarious.

When we got back, we helped our friend Kristen with her hair styling business she's trying to start up and took some photographs for her.I could've done better, but we were pressed on time and still had fun, and I got to see my friend Sarah, too. Which was righteous.

A little later, it was my brother's birthday where we went to an Amrita show. Which was excellent, those kids are really good. Check them out if you have the time.

Then my brother had a party afterwards, which was a lot of fun.

This kid claimed his name was "Dank Man," I don't think anyone disagreed.

I hate cell phones.I've been contemplating throwing mine in the ocean when I get to Ireland.

After that, I think I've spent the majority of my free time in the darkroom, printing. Mostly with Victor.

There's more photos from the summer that were taken after the school facilities closed. I'm psyched about those, Victor let me use his Mamiya 6.It's amazing.

Oh, and I would completely agree with anyone who thinks there's too many images in this post. With that said, I'll end this immediately.

Take care of yourselves!

-Matt

Tennessee Wedding.

2007-07-21T18:57:00.000-06:00

A little while ago I made a quick weekend trip to Tennessee with my Dad and Brother for my cousin's Wedding. It was a good trip and a good break from Chicago, which I think every Chicagoan sometimes needs. Did I just say Chicagoan? We ended up leaving to go there a little late because we made a stop at Lazo's for some dinner first. I think we ended up leaving around 9pm. My dad drove for 3 hours and asked me to drive and I told him we'd be in Tennessee when he woke up (at the time I thought I was kidding).

Then I kind of blacked out and ended up in Tennessee at 7am, it seemed like nothing. I think what kept me going was the sunrise through the fog, driving through mountains. It was a sight to see. The bummer was that there was no place you could stop that would be high enough to look over the trees. So the best view you had was on the highway, which was still alright. Sometimes you don't need a camera to fully experience things, sometimes all it takes it some energy drinks and lack of sleep to put you in the same mindset.

As if it would be some surprise, our first stop when we got to Tennessee was breakfast at the Waffle House. I still can't get over how awesome that place is. And the best part: every single restaurant is the exact same, ensuring a great full meal of waffle, eggs, bacon, and coffee for $4.50 no matter what state you're in.

After the filling meal, we did what most people probably do after eating at the Waffle House and took about a 7 hour nap. We woke up around 4pm and my dad gave me and Jeff about 45 minutes to go photograph and explore a little bit of beautiful Johnson City.

Then we went to the rehearsal dinner and after-rehearsal-dinner-after-party...where we had a great time.
^Nice shot Dad!

Then we headed back for the night and got up early for the always necessary pre-family-get-together-awkward-uncomfortable-picture time before we went to the wedding.

Who am I kidding, that time was awesome!
Dad, there is something on your lens.

We went to the wedding and I ended up photographing it because my Uncle asked me that favor. I'd post some of those but I believe they are on two cds, one in Tennessee and one in New York. After the wedding we went to this awesome house further into the country. Very relaxing.

For all the fellow nerds back in the nerdry, ^HP5+ @ 1600 in Xtol 1:1, 9.5 minutes.

Then the next morning it was time to head back home.Don't cry, Jonathan.

So then we were back on the road home, but my Dad wanted to take us to a place called the "Cumberland Gap," which from what I understood a place where you take a road up really high and then you can look out at Tennesee's mountains.

It was pretty awesome.

When I went to get my 35mm slides processed from the trip, I asked Precision to not cut, not mount, and process my slides normally. I got cut, mounted, and what looked like vomited/stepped on slides. My guess is they just knew I deep down wanted that "vintage" look.

A word to fellow travelers:

If you're desperate for food on the road and see a sign for a restaurant that says "Shoney's," and you think, "Oh well that could be kinda good, it kinda looks like a T.G.I. Friday's or a Chili's. I could go for Chili's." DO NOT STOP.

(^This image isn't edited.)

Shoney's is nothing like Chili's. My brother went with the buffet, and as a vegetarian, chose the watery mac and cheese. The rest of us went with the "American Burger," and ordered it to be prepared medium-well. Response: "We only cook it one way here."
The water was good...

Then I took some portraits of my cousin, Andrew.

And then we drove home.

And that was it.

See ya.

-Matt

'free' time.

2007-07-13T12:03:00.000-06:00

well, it has been a while. |long| . i almost feel like I'm not apart of this anymore. but I've been swamped with working and haven't had the 'free' time. which now means time that is not devoted to doing something for someone else. it's crazy. but it is for a good cause. as is already apparent all of this struggling is for a week and a half long photographic workshop around southern Ireland. in my eyes it is worth it. anyway. i had found some 'free' time to edit some of the massive amount of scans that i have just sitting, waiting, in hopes to reconnect myself with this again.

these kids were getting yelled at for riding their scooter under the bean

i don't even know.

of course. a portrait of matt.

lake forest IL, we woke up at 4:30 and photographed the beach at sunrise. one of the most peaceful things i've done in a long time.

lake forest IL

my bathroom in the morning.

.chiara.

.matt.

Victor and i driving to devils lake WI

julia and i reflecting [haha] on the devils lake trip

gotcha!

more reflecting.

moving day for mom.

moving day. L to R mom, dustin, ruby.

brother .miles.

van packed up.

.scott.

abandoned.

i'll be back with more soon. i promise. this is just a start to what ive been photographing this summer.

Plans for new travels.

2007-07-12T19:55:00.000-06:00

Thankfully, we're going to be able to pay for the Ireland trip after all. Which means we'll be flying out August 23 or 24th and returning from Ireland September 2nd.

Other than that, only a few minor updates.

1. Our next door neighbor's apartment is getting gutted and revamped. The workers doing the destruction have been throwing the large pieces of wood and concrete out the window, across this sidewalk (where people walk by) and into one of those big metal dump containers (most of the time, missing their target.)
Our plan is to hide in the alley on the side of our house, and when a 2x4 is thrown out the window, dive into its line of path and not move until the ambulance delivers us to the hospital and some lawyers deliver us a lot of money. What do you think?

2. We're driving to Milwaukee tonight to drop off mine and Nadine Reinke's pieces for the CoPA exhibition tomorrow morning. We're going to stay with Tucker Schwinn's parents or friends or something. It should be a nice "breather" from the Chicago atmosphere.
(Jessica and Tucker)

I found some photos from awhile back that I never did anything with, so I decided to throw some of those in here for the hell of it. It seems like so long ago, but it was only the first week after school got out. Granted, I was in a different home with not really any job, and now I'm in a new apartment with many more jobs. A different place in my mind I believe, too.

Some random portraits...
Brian.

Brad.

Chiara.

Hilary and Mike.

A couple weeks ago or a month ago, or some point before I lost track of all time. At some point in my life, I went to Lake Forest with Brian, Trev, and Victor where we photographed the sunrise. I have a lot of 35mm shots from this that I know I scanned, yet they're not on my computer. So here's what I do have from that short adventure.

A good opportunity for a "Kodak moment"?

And album-cover-looking pictures?

(Victor)

(Victor and Trev)

(Balloon in the bushes)

(Sunrise through a barrel)

I wanted to update all my photos I've taken of the people at "Cloud Gate," yet I just realized that would double this post. So I'm going to save it for another time.

So until then, take good care.

I almost forgot,

Happy Birthday baby bro!

Happy Birthday Uncle Sam!

2007-07-04T18:07:00.001-06:00

Wow, I didn't get anything for Uncle Sam on his birthday this year, but crazy enough, he got me something!

Man, I REALLY appreciate it!
I wonder if that seems like a good thing to start off a 4th of July for most enforcement officers. 8:36 in the morning on the 4th, anyone update their stickers on their plates in the past 3 days? Nope! TICKET TIME! My roommates said basically the whole block was ticketed. Happy Independence Day!

Why don't we move on then...

Lately, due to the work schedule taking over my life, I've been limited to a certain degree with photography. In order to photograph, I basically need to be bringing a camera to work and home from work and then to another job, and back from that, etc., which allows for time only in between non-photograph-able situations. I think it sounds bad, but I'm learning to deal with it and care less about the outcome of an image (which I am enjoying). I was talking with my friend Victor last night about giving people what they want when you photograph, and he put it as "sometimes I'll give them what they want and keep what I want for me." He was speaking in terms of printing style, however I think it can be applied in both situations. And lately, due to the limiting time to photograph, I barely have time to make that decision of constructing something likeable for someone else, and the image ends up being really only a quick decision for my own eye. I guess I'm training myself to care less about the image and photograph more or less on instinct and interest. It may not result in anything beneficial besides a self-satisfying image, but I'm okay with that. It's fun. Victor's been doing something of the same recently with his polaroids, take some time to check them out, they're glorious. He refers to them as "just breathing," an accurate description, I think. I feel like this is a way of learning or practicing for the more serious things I'll do later on. I'm just photographing in different situations now, to use what I learn from them to make a more cohesive, formulated body of work in the future.

To save two dollars for the train, and get exercise?.. Trevor and I have been walking to school a lot lately which proves to be a prime time for easygoing photography.

^Nice posture!

The evening skies this summer have been fastastic.^Someone left their shirt at Lake Michigan.

Arriving at work at the studio.
On the way home from the studio.

A visit with my dad and brother in the suburbs, I think we were talking about money."Whatever, dad."

Caitlin at Pizza Hut (TMax3200 expiring in 1998 = not really 3200 speed film and very thin negatives.)

Elise on the table in the darkroom.

Girls making plans to go to Europe. On the bus, going to Victor's.

Trev figuring out how to use Windows XP, Mac OSX, and Linux on the same laptop.

John next to the window at his cousin's birthday party.

Rachel in the grass.

Gina in the mirror.

Me in the elevator.

Happy 4th!

Oh hey!

2007-07-01T10:56:00.000-06:00

I guess it's been a full month without posting. It seems longer than that. So I guess I'll take this time to explain what I've been up to in that time. I'm working a lot to hopefully make it to Europe by the end of the summer. I'm pretty positive I'll have no trouble making it to Ireland for the workshop with Brad Temkin, however I'm doing my best to save up so me and Trev can travel from Vienna, to Prague, to Paris, to London, to Dublin, to Shannon and make it in time for the workshop. That's the part that's difficult right now, but 5 jobs are working their way toward it. So that sums up the past month basically. Working.

Haha Trev and I have been assisting Anna Shteynshleyger and she took a test portrait of us for one of her shots:

Probably one of the best photos of us ever taken, and kind of looks like a Wedding or Christmas Party invitation we would make.

Although the new schedule has given me really limited time to get personal work done, it's given me a lot of time to think about my work. Also, being without a view camera has forced me to fall back in love with my Mamiya, which I've been using as much as I can. Hand-holding it doesn't seem as ridiculous as it used to. I'm actually starting to really enjoy photographing with the tank that way. Here's some new ones, I'll hopefully get some time to update more when I scan more this week.

I think I went on a little black and white portrait binge for awhile. Neopan 400 @ 1600 in xtol, what do you think? Kind of strange tones in my opinion.

This one from the same roll ^.

Then I tried some Acros 100 in xtol, and overprocessed it a bit by mistake, but..I like:

A couple weeks ago my friend Kristen from New York and my friend Kristy from Freeport came back for a few days, it was good to see them again.

I think I've come to the conclusion that I like Kodak 160NC more than 160ProS, a big step for me. So long, friend...

I've also been attempting a form of street photography with my Mamiya, a little difficult with it's weight and needing to lock the mirror up, but I'm getting quicker. Here are a few, I'm pretty sure all shot on HP5+ at 1600 in xtol.

You can see me in there if you look real close^.

This one's from awhile ago though.
And then there's some color.

I've also been trying to figure out how to get this "Bean" project going. I tried bringing this mamiya street style to "the Bean" to see what I could do with it.

In other surprising news, two pieces of mine were accepted into the CoPA Exhibition in Milwaukee.

It's from July 27th-August 31st at Walker's Point Center for the Arts. It'd be awesome if you could make it out. The opening is on the 27th from 4-9pm. Take care guys!

Not really new news.

2007-06-01T15:41:00.000-06:00

Again, apologies for the lack of posts recently. In the new apartment there is only stolen internet, so with a desktop, I am out of luck. So here's what I can do for now. Here's a few very quickly edited shots from the past weeks. I have now fallen in love with 320TXP and Xtol 1:1 as a combination and plan on using it often.

Anyways, an example that it's been awhile since anything's been really updated, here's a shot I developed yesterday that I took before finals started...a long time ago.

Oh! And I got my car kind of fixed (the horn was stuck on for about a month and a half), the guy at jiffy lube just jabbed the shit out of the wires to the horn and it stopped. I now don't have a horn. Trev had an awesome time at jiffy lube.

And then the other day I hung out with my friend Alyssa and met some cool skate boarders before, they were awesome.

I have to run, but I'm going to add to this post when I get more time. Take care!

Blogs, Artists, Photos, Fun!

2007-05-25T13:41:00.000-06:00

I found a bunch of blogs of artists I've grown to love over the past year or so. Please check out their work and maybe talk to them if you want. All good people.

Bernhard Wolf

Hanno Wiesmann

Rhizom (Blog), (Work)

Suzage

Gonzale

Guost (Work)

Mustafah Abdulaziz

and then I don't know much about these artists, but found their blogs and enjoyed them very much so check them out, too:

I am not a photographer

Severin Koller

Jamie Stoker

RTCC

Enjoy!

Show?

2007-05-24T18:40:00.000-06:00

This just in! Thanks to a good friend, Caitlin Arnold, the members of Tripod Travels have a show at the South Union Arts on June 8th. We each are submitting 3 or 4 pieces from our travels, so come! It starts at 8PM, the address is 1352 South Union Ave, Chicago. Two blocks south of Roosevelt road. We'd love to see you there.

I don't have internet at our new apartment so I also don't have images to post.

However, even better. I found this site recently that I didn't know existed.

Please, take a look and enjoy!

Anna Shteynshleyger

Photograph by Anna Shteynshleyger

random

2007-05-13T00:18:00.000-06:00

Behold!

2007-05-08T22:03:00.000-06:00

Here's a stupid post with some stupid photos from me and Trev being stupid in Millenium Park, I forgot I said I'd post images from when we went there. They didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Maybe next time I won't shoot with already terrible and also expired film. I'll try something worthwhile next time. Anyways, photographers: I recommend you try this at least once. It's a damn good time.

forever

2007-05-02T22:45:00.000-06:00

so i finally found some time to scan some film this week. its from the florida trip and quickly edited but i enjoy some of the images. and in no particular order.

somewhere, TN

St Louis

St Louis

Nashville

Nashville

Nashville

miami beach

miami beach

miami beach

hobe sound

daytona beach

thanks.

Lampin' it in Chicago, brohemians.

2007-04-29T11:42:00.000-06:00

It's been kinda nice being around in Chicago lately. Hanging out with everyone again. I think the travelling has made it somewhat easier to photograph in Chicago.

Updates: Our house is becoming a hostel for the summer. The residency count is going from 5 to 8 people...in a 3 bedroom. Chaos? yes. $120 for rent? yes.

Yesterday Trev and I photographed people taking pictures of "the bean." Probably the strangest most fun experience I've had in awhile. People throw their inhibitions to the wind because of a large reflective art piece in the middle of a park. And they all call it 'the bean', which kind of sucks for the artist, Anish Kapoor, who originally named it Cloud Gate. I'm pretty positive I haven't heard anyone call it Cloud Gate. I'll update some shots from yesterday when I get the film developed.

We photographed with no plan at all last weekend. Just to shoot, it was nice.

Everyone should go check out Versionfest, it's open 'til May 6th. It's excellent.
Versionfest '07

Peace yo.

Review.

2007-04-16T23:53:00.000-06:00

We made our last trip of the semester this past weekend to Madison, Wisconsin. There will be plenty more trips, we're just done for the time being. It's been a wild few months. Here's some more photos from the past couple months that never made the first cut. Have a good one guys, good luck with the finals-time chaos festival.

I still have a roll to develop from Miami, i should probably do that soon.

Here's some other portraits from that Pro Printing final.

And here are Victor's hands

that made the photographs on this website:

Victor Yanez.

Latuhz.

Suburbia.

2007-04-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

This past weekend I headed out by myself to visit my Mom for Easter. It was a good time and I made some photographs I like a lot. The Kodak Scholarship application is now in, which takes a lot off my shoulders and it's full speed ahead for these finals now. The money situation may actually be semi-kind of figured out. Which means I can get my 16x20 forte warmtone and 100ft roll of epson luster or semi-matte and actually get these images on paper finally.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the reasons I make art because of the questions I've been asked recently. (I think the artist statement for my Studio I final project that I turned in for the Kodak is what initiated this thinking.) And I've had trouble with this question. Since I like to believe the art is mainly self-fulfilling, it was difficult writing an artist statement in a certain way that would most effectively get my idea across and obviously making my work more understandable for others. So it's a strange balance between my own satisfaction with my creating work but also my attempts to convey the ideas I want to. I think the more strange part of this realization was the part where I figured out what that project was about 4 months after making it, not exactly having a grasp of the concept when actually making it. I guess I brought this up for no other reason but to ramble and maybe spark some thoughts. I think it has to deal most closely with what I'm interested, which brought me into another thought about how I think I'm much more interested in the power of the ideas that can be expressed through picture making than photography itself. I guess I don't have any complete answers really, just lots of incomplete ones. But I do enjoy thinking about it, it's fun.

Here's what this weekend brought:

-Matt

Catch Up.

2007-04-02T23:03:00.000-06:00

My apologies about the lack of posts since the vacation. I've been very busy since we've gotten back and we made a trip out to Dekalb, IL to visit Steve and Davenport, IA to visit Olivia this past weekend. I had a really good time. It was good to visit my friends at NIU and revisit St. Ambrose for a trip down memory lane.

I'm not posting everything from the trip South, that would be far too much, but I will post some highlights and call it quits for posts for that section of the project. So here we go! Pretty out of chronological order...

Daytona Beach, Florida:

Hobe Sound, Florida:

I don't really know:

Miami, Florida:

Nashville, Tennessee:

And finished. Kind of. Here's some of the portraits I've taken for the project I've been working on along the way. Again, out of order. But here we go.

Aaron
West Lafayette, Indiana

Andrew
West Lafayette, Indiana

Bob
Hobe Sound, Florida

Brandie
Davenport, Iowa

Brittany
Jacksonville, Florida

Susan
Chattanooga, Tennessee

Tony
Juno Beach, Florida

Trevor McNaughton
Dekalb, Illinois

just kidding, Trev's not really in it.

Ha!
Enjoy your week guys.

Oh, and if you have time, check out some excellent photographers:

Craig Cowling

Photograph by Craig Cowling

and!

Cameron Wittig

Photograph by Cameron Wittig

Take care guys.

-Matt

Florida from my eyes.

2007-03-26T22:41:00.000-06:00

well we finally return from our roadtrip and we are exhausted but satisfied. i know matt already went through most of it so ill just chip in a little wordage and some digital photos (i sent off a 60$ processing order for all the film i shot so ill have the scans up in a few days).

matt and i

So basically we woke up on Saturday morning and left Chicago with st. Louis as our destination in mind. it took roughly four hours to get there but we were greeted by thousands of people watching and participating in their st. patties day parade. So we shot there for a while then booked it towards Nashville, which was probably an 8ish hour drive. when we got there we were amazed because it was a beautiful city and everyone was wasted. later that night we found a hotel outside of Nashville, slept, ate, and then continued onwards toward Florida. blah blah blah we get to Daytona Beach and it is completely dead. like i was suprised to NOT see tumbleweeds rolling across the street. we were very confused because its fucking SB2K7 (spring break 2007) and there were signs all over the place that basically said, 'welcome to daytona beach spring breakers come get wasted and fuck this town up!' but no one was there... so here are some images from D. Beach.

After the disappointment's of Daytona Beach we headed south to our actual destination and home for the week ahead Hobe Sound, Average age 97. But don't get me wrong it was a beautiful town with a really nice beach. there was just no one within our age group and we DESPERATELY searched.

the next day we decided to trek down to Miami. and man was it a great idea. probably one of my favorite cities everrrrrrrrrrrrrr. the colors and architecture and people and stores are awesome. and the beach is beautiful tooooo white sand and really nice green blue water. Most of what i shot in miami was film so ill update this in a few days, but i did get a shot of some drunkass trying to catch a seagull. i was amused. so was he.

Drunkass ^^

the rest of what i shot digitally was on the way home. so here they are.

naturally we stopped at dinosaur world ^^ outside of louisville

matt was an excited little boy.

this is a 13 foot gator! DANG THATS A BIG GATOR!

Sup Sup.

2007-03-25T23:20:00.000-06:00

We're home again. And scared shitless to send out all our film to get processed, but it needs to get done. I'm pretty exhausted and need to sleep but I'm going to give a brief run down of the trip and show some digital snapshots along the way.

Alrighty, well first my apologies for no updates this week, even if we did have a way to upload images onto Trev's laptop, we had no internet all week, so here's the quick overview of everything. We'll probably be posting the next entries in sections of cities visited.

First we left last Saturday and headed for St. Louis as I stated in the last post. It was a good time and relieving to stop and hang out for awhile. However lugging a view camera around along with an RB67, a 30D, and a 35mm slr...sucks. After St. Louis, I realized choosing 1 or 2 formats only was necessary.

We then headed to Nashville which on the way we drove through the Chattanooga mountains, they were amazing.

We ate at a place called Demo's, the food was great and everybody was wasted cause of St. Patrick's day. It was awesome. We stayed in Nashville, like I said in the last post and that was sweet. We then headed toward Florida and didn't stop until we hit Jacksonville where we went to Steak and Shake. We were dedicated customers of Steak and Shake...until this visit. The service set us back almost 2 hours. So that sucked.

And a note to anyone who's driving through Jacksonville, do yourself a favor and listen to Ryan Adams' "Jacksonville City Nights." But don't roll your windows down and sing at the top of your lungs while stuck in traffic. You'll successfully get the entire city of Jacksonville to hate you. Not that we did that.

At around 1 a.m. we were passing Daytona Beach and figured that since it's spring break(ish) for most people, the town will probably be a crazy party. We were sadly mistaken but ended up staying there anyways, which turned out to be pretty cool. We had to check out the next morning by 11 so me and Trev got up at around 8 to shoot a bit before we had to go.

At 11 we checked out of the hotel but went and parked somewhere so we could stick around and photograph the area a little more. We'll post more of that stuff when we get our film back.

We then headed toward our original destination, Hobe Sound, where we were staying for the week. A little known fact: we were the youngest people in Hobe Sound...ever. But they have a couple pretty awesome beaches.

We stayed around there that night, well kind of. We drove to West Palm Beach, but again, no one was around at all. So we drove back. The next day we decided to try out Miami, since it was only an hour and a half away or something like that. Miami was awesome.

We'll post more soon, can you tell I'm exhausted? Have a good week guys.

Chicago to Nashville

2007-03-18T00:54:00.000-06:00

Sorry guys, we've got no way to post any photos so far on the trip. We forgot our card readers at home and we've only got unprocessed film other than that. Anyways, for an update we headed out of Chicago this morning at 8:30 and we got to Nashville at around 8...30 ish tonight. As soon as we saw how awesome Nashville was we decided to get dinner there, roam around til 11:30 and we're now at I think Country Inn Suites or something like that. It's nice. We also made a detour earlier today to St. Louis and shot some St. Patrick's day festivities for an hour or so. The weather's getting kind of warmer and the accents are getting stronger, it's awesome being around completely new areas that are so unfamiliar to us. The car's running like a champion and we just downloaded some Tom Petty tonight so we'll be set for tomorrow.

The hotel is giving us free "hot breakfast" tomorrow morning. Sup.

Florida...2 more days...sup!

2007-03-14T21:27:00.000-06:00

These images are now hanging in the display case on the 11th floor of the 600 building now thanks to Jennifer. Thanks Jennifer! Even though this week has been less assignment-driven than all the rest of the semester, it still seems much more hectic: getting things together for the Civic Arts Foundation Competition, finishing midterms, skipping English Comp II, and also outputting what we did this past weekend. Not to mention getting things and ideas together for the Florida trip. We're crossing our fingers that the color neg film we ordered 2 weeks ago gets here by Friday. If not, that means we'll have to spend much more money on much more film. Heyo...Alright, well. Now more project proposals to write, goodnight.

Here's two more from last weekend.

-Matt

A quick review

2007-03-12T23:36:00.000-06:00

I'm kind of in a hurry to edit the images for the Civic Arts Foundation contest I'll be applying to so I quickly edited some of the digital photos from the weekend to give a quick run through.

This past weekend we went to Rockford to visit our friend Kristen before she moved to NYC for good. It was a really good time and we got some good shots, too.

Here's a few digital snapshots to help you get an idea of Rockford.

We then headed toward Champagne-Urbana and stopped in Bloomington-Normal for Denny's on the way.

We got to Champagne around 7 and explored the area and shot a bit until around 11. Then my friend Rojo came home from a party and we hung out with him and my other friend Danny and their roommates for awhile and walked around Green Street. Thanks everyone for letting us stay over this past weekend, it's much appreciated.

Have a good one guys, more shots from this weekend will be up soon.

p.s. we're going to florida on saturday. sup.

Oh my...

2007-03-06T23:48:00.000-06:00

A lot to post tonight. If I'm not mistaken, posting these should get me pretty up to date with our travels. Wait, no, I take that back, there's more coming. Anyways, here we go. I'll put these in order by latest to further back on the trips. Here we go.

This past weekend: Northwest Suburbs

Madison and Janesville, Wisconsin. Feb 23-25.

South Bend, Indiana. Feb 16-18.

Homewood, Illinois. Feb 9-11.

Lisle, Illinois. Feb 2-4.

Where should we go this weekend? You guys should really comment on here.

Have a good one!

-Matt

heyo!

2007-03-06T00:22:00.000-06:00

here are some pictures of one of the places a friend was kind enough to let us stay at this weekend. thanks. She just moved into this place, and we stayed there the first night she stayed overnight, i think. I did sort of a small documentary or narrative on it while I was there. Ill post more as I get them edited.

Yo, Sup.

2007-03-01T23:45:00.000-06:00

yeah, I've been quiet and haven't posted anything from our trips but I promise that will change. So to start things off here are a few images of mine shot with my hasselblad with efke R100.

Chaos

2007-03-01T22:37:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone, how are we tonight? Good.

It's been a pretty wild couple weeks with the addition of this project to our lives, let alone it being probably the biggest focus in our photographic lives as of now. It's been real tough balancing all the class assignments and keep this going on the side too but it is saving our mental health completely. The trips have become a mental escape from the normality of our daily lives. It's rewarding seeing an honest result of our artistic eyes based on what comes from places we haven't seen before. Normally it's a challenge in creating something interesting out of things we see daily over and over again. With the new unphotographed ground, it becomes a direct expression of how we look at life, without hesitating your picture to avoid familiarity. Not to mention the people we meet on these new locations with open minds to allowing us to photograph them and place them in our artistic outlet. It's inspiring to experience these invitations into these people's lives and take what we see in it and put it on silver. A new optimism to life has just been building because of the things we wouldn't normally see and the people we wouldn't normally meet. All of this adds chaos and outraegeously busy schedules but at the end of the day it is more than worth it. This weekend we're going to the northwest suburbs and shooting the area as a whole and also the local colleges in it (hopefully north central college, benedictine university, college of dupage, and elgin community college). Take care of yourselves. Here's a few more.

-Matt

South Bend

2007-02-28T01:36:00.000-06:00

2 more shots taken in South Bend, Indiana. We're going to try getting more consistent with the posts and editing, maybe even develop some type of system for doing this blog. Anyways, here's a few to check out from South Bend.

We don't know where to head to this weekend...possibilities: Champagne, IL for the U of I "Unofficial," which apparently is some ridiculous drinking rampage that everyone except me seemed to know about. Also the Quad Cities in Iowa are also an option. Or St. Louis. Comments? Recommendations? Anything? Cool. Enjoy. Life.

-Matt

Whatevs Dude

2007-02-27T00:53:00.000-06:00

Seriously.

I'm drunk on lack of sleep...so here's two pictures one from Homewood, IL. And the portrait of a Notre Dame student, Rob, in South Bend, Indiana.

The portrait was pushed Ilford HP5+ 400 to 3200 in Xtol...that film test I was talking about before. It turned out. Cool, well hopefully I can get some more photos edited and up here soon. They're all scanned, I just have no time/energy for anything. But I'm working on it. Take care,

--Matt

Notre Dame: Bengal Bouts

2007-02-21T00:19:00.000-06:00

First round of pictures from the first 'real' part of our trips, and one or two from the previous trips around the city.
First few are from Matt while in South Bend.

-Matt

The next bunch is a few of Robs from South Bend.

Preview: Homewood

2007-02-18T02:03:00.000-06:00

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