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"Become who you are." - Nietzsche

I took some photos of my friend Derek a while ago for a project he's been working on for a little over half a decade now. He basically grows out his facial hair and then trims it into some style and documents it with photos. For his final photo he just grew out a gnarly beard.

Anyways, the first photo is a digital photo edited in Photoshop while the second is  4"x5" color slide film. I may have said this before on here, but I have a theory on film/digital photography. Digital photography tries to duplicate reality and does it very well - film does not. Film is a chemical process that was refined for roughly the last 100 years. The object was not to look real; it was to please the photographer, and to that end each manufacturer makes several types of color film that produce slightly different hues. My personal favorite is Fuji RDPIII (Provia). What's interesting to me is that digital photographers spend a lot of time in Photoshop making their digital photos look like film (think of all the iPhone apps that do this) not because they want it to necessarily to look like film, that may be what they're going for, but in reality they're just trying to make Reality (with a capital "r")  look more pleasing; which is what film does. Film is a tangible interpretation of what humans find aesthetically pleasing.

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"There is a wild spirit of good naturedness which looks like malice." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 184

This is another photo I picked up (for $3 no less) at the Printer's Row Book Fair. It's an almost 100 year old gelatin-silver print of an artillery shell exploding in no mans land during WWI.

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"Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy, around the demi-god a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes - what? Perhaps a 'world'? -" - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 150

I've shown this image repeatedly here and here, but this is my first palladium print of it that I'm actually fairly happy with. In person the palladium print (also called a palladiotype) looks very different from a normal gelatin silver print. It is completely matte and has a much longer tonal range. Once I make some enlarged negatives I'll be able to show off the process a bit better than I currently can with a night photograph.


For those interested this was printed on 8x10 Bergger cotton rag paper using a mixture of palladium salts and ferric oxalate. It was then exposed under a UV lightbox, developed with potassium oxalate, and cleared with tetrasodium EDTA. The internegative and negative were made on Bergger BPFP-18 film which was blown up from a medium format (120mm) negative.

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"The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have 'improved' in the meantime." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

It is with great displeasure that I admit that Nietzsche is most likely correct yet again.

I like black and white film because it doesn't quite depict reality as we experience it. There's something much more ethereal about film. It gives us a somewhat false memory of an event just as our actual memory does, but we believe both because they're so vivid! I made this image at the Lincoln Park Zoo two years ago and I chose it to be my first of, hopefully, many images I'm selling on Etsy.

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"From love of man one sometimes embraces anyone (because one cannot embrace everyone): but one must never let this anyone know it..." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I wonder if reading that would have been as profound if I had read it a year ago? I'd like to think not.

This is what film looks like when I scan it. I've been playing in my darkroom a lot more recently, so maybe I'll throw some photos of that up tomorrow.

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"Thanks - A refined soul is oppressed by knowing anyone is under obligation to it; a course soul, by knowing itself under obligation to anyone." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human

This is my dad's warehouse in Chicago Heights. It's currently condemned. I've spent long hours there many weekends since I can remember. This is one of my first printings. I'm still awaiting the arrival of lots of darkroom equipment such as a proper safelight, but in the mean time I'm finding that printing is possibly more involved than making negatives. It is a lot of fun though.

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"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Smart man that Nietzsche. I was watching V for Vendetta the other day and near the end Natalie Portman says to V "You don't have to do this! We can leave here together..." which reminded me of a similar line of hers from Star Wars III aimed at Anakin, "We can still leave this place. We can go somewhere and live the rest of our lives together..." And then the guy walks away (idiot, from Ms. Portman non the less)... Does this ever happen? I know, I know it's like the beginning and ending question to every episode of Sex and the City, but seriously. Are we not raised on a steady diet of "you can have a mature trusting reciprocal relationship one day?" I call bull shit.

I made this photograph at my cousin's wedding in Charleston, SC. However rare, I'm sure they'll be more than fine.

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"Shadows in the flame. - The flame is not itself as bright as those that it illuminates: so, too, the wise man." - Friedrich Nietzsche from Human, All to Human I

I guess that made us the illuminated. This is a photo (poorly edited, sorry) of my former paintball team, Chicago Farside, before we went pro. From left to right: me, Ben, Kyle, and Jason. Paintball, like Randy Pausch's head fake theory, taught me more than any single person or school ever could.

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Shut Your Eyes by Snow Patrol.

"Age and truth.— Young people love what is strange and interesting, regardless of whether it is true or false. More mature spirits love in truth that which is strange and interesting in it. Heads fully mature, finally, love truth also where it appears plain and simple and is boring to ordinary people: they have noticed that truth is accustomed to impart its highest spiritual possessions with an air of simplicity." - Friedrich Nietzsche from Human, All Too Human I

This is a pen and ink drawing I finished today.

Messed with in photoshop