I Have a New Series I’d Like To Announce (and by the End of This Article I Will Have Decided on a Name for It)

I want to start a new series in my humble little blog.

I have nearly 1000 monthly visitors to my little website, and I really think it’s cool that in the year 2022 that someone could still have a blog that gets viewership from around the country and around the world.

When I started the blog, I used it as a place to write articles in hopes of popping up on Google and attracting new photography leads. Now, I want to do something different.

I find myself constantly tired using today’s internet. The world of publications has been so heavily influenced by clickbait, ad revenue, agendas, corporate influence - the list goes on. Being in digital marketing, I see the keywords every article is trying to rank for, I see the affiliate links in the message, I see the ads - and I find myself despising reading articles more and more.

Everyone arguing about what’s good, what’s bad, who’s a sellout, who’s a real artist. It’s tiring.

A little piece of the magic of the music industry was taken away from me when I realized I’d probably never have the magic of reading a genuine music article from some cool magazine that I’d have a monthly subscription to, on the floor, headphones plugged in to a record player preamp and listening to a new record from some artist I’ve never heard of.

The older I got and the closer I got to a lot of the business aspects, the more I realized that media often gets reduced to the lowest common denominator in search of going viral, or generating the right headline to rank for a band’s name, or whatever. You know? There’s just this feeling that it’s all this terrible, shitty business, and all I can do is look with awestruck horror and disdain.

Sometimes, trying to continue doing music and travel photography leaves me feeling uninspired. In a world of so much commercial sameness, repetition and marketability, I keep finding myself wishing I could read more stories. Stories about people that inspire thought, express the genuineness of humanity, the futility of persistence, the never-ending mission to have tomorrow be better than yesterday. That kind of stuff. That’s what resonates with me.

I figured that, if I couldn’t find it out there already, maybe someone else wishes this existed. Maybe I can help give people a place to tell their stories.

It gave me this idea.

Storytelling, Tangible Memories, and a Connection to the Self in a Fast-Paced, Forgetful Time

Art is everywhere - there are stories to tell.

I am starting to believe that sharing stories with others is one of the greatest joys we have. Shared experiences, deeper than just a cursory greeting or a brief exchange of pleasantries, give us this tremendous opportunity to bring peace to those around us, have greater understanding of our community, the space we live in, and help break down the “us vs. them” mentality that humanity has been married to throughout history.

My last few years, especially with the extra time at home and new-found sobriety, have made me much more aware of how much I crave community & communication. I have both a great desire to talk to people and be talked to. I’ve found that my work in music, photography, marketing, writing - all boils down to wanting to document people expressing themselves. Their true selves.

I have called myself a photographer for over 5 years. I have been a music photographer, a wedding photographer, a landscape photographer, and a portrait photographer. Through all my experiences in each category of photography have taught me something, I’ve ultimately learned that a lot of what I do with a camera is transactional, and I want to do more than that.

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Documenting stories with big cameras on big film makes things feel big again.

Last summer, I obtained two cameras from the 1950s, a Mamiyaflex C2 and a Busch Pressman D. They are medium format and large format, respectively, and they have considerably more clicks, tings, and other metallic sound effects than my Sony cameras do. They smell like musty velvet. I love them.

I’ve made a few trips with these cameras already, and I’ve introduced them to mountains, fields, faces, and moments. They’ve brought me a tremendous amount of joy and they’ve been a fun conversation starter for strangers. I like to think that, sometimes, just seeing a guy with green hair and a very large, old-timey camera can be enough to spice up your day. When our lives feel really mundane, seeing stuff that’s different from the norm feels refreshing - and I want to both give and get a lot more of that feeling.

In my previous article on film photography, and in tons of other film photographers’ experiences, there are a lot of magical feelings in between the long moments of fiddling with knobs, pulling of levers, firing of shutters, and all throughout driving the film to the lab, and then patiently waiting for the “ding!” of a new email to arrive saying your scans have been processed. The beauty of film photography is in the care, the time, and the effort. It makes it all tangible. Going to fetch your developed film and holding it in your hand, knowing light had to reflect off of your subject and get absorbed into this weird chemical, suspended in gelatin - it’s a beautiful miracle. 

I am writing this in the very beginnings of the year 2022 and very few things feel beautiful right now. I seldom encounter truly inspirational messages. It’s rare for me to get to read a good story about someone. It is hard to find a message that hasn’t been debased to sell. Instead, it’s all replaced with viral drivel. There is an overwhelming amount of people trying extremely hard to make things appealing to the masses in hopes that they manage to get rich quick. I see stuff that does not resonate with me. I see stuff that does not inspire me. In fact, it is becoming rarer for me to enjoy consuming anything I see on the internet.

As shows began to come back, I asked myself - “Do I even want to do concert photography anymore?” The more I thought about it, the answer was still yes, but I wanted something else, too. As I pondered what that would look like, I realized that there will always be better photographers, there will always be people who have more time and more connections - so instead of asking myself if I can do what everyone else is doing, I asked myself what I’d like to see in music & travel publications instead.

It all came back to stories.

For me, I want people to be able to share themselves with the world outside of the scope of a corporations’ profit motive. I want them to be able to talk about themselves, their interests, their beliefs, and anything else they want to share with me. I want readers to be able to read good stories, insightful messages, and I want them to be able to see people for who they really are - people. People with rich lives, depth, values, missions, and dreams.

I decided that the only way to launch this endeavor was on film and on medium or large format. The larger formats lend themselves to much sharper images, richer tones, and allowing more depth to be captured. I think it’s a great metaphor for how detailed our lives are.

Plus, there are very few people in the media industry working on these formats - so I’ll admit, it does feel a little special. It does feel cool to roll up to a venues with old film gear.

I spent too long figuring out exactly how these interviews would work, and what to write for my introduction to the series, but now it’s time to just hit the ground running. I’ve already started pitching this idea to friends in music, and started scheduling some interviews and photoshoots. 

After countless hours of Googling synonyms and words having to do with being tangible, or “bigger picture”, and it’s been so difficult to come up with a snappy name that doesn’t sound corny. After a long battle, I've settled on something that I think speaks to me.

Granularity.

Get it? Because film grain? But also the definition just hit home for me.

 gran·u·lar·i·ty - /ˌɡranyəˈlerədē/ - noun

1. the quality or condition of being granular.

2. the scale or level of detail present in a set of data or other phenomenon.

It encompasses exactly what I’m talking about - that there’s such an important weight in the small stories - that each person is grain in the big picture. There’s inspiration in individual stories from people.

Anyways, I’m excited to launch “Granularity” today. This series is going to be monthly for now. I think it’s going to be really cool and I would love to be able to tell some important stories. If you’d like to be a part of this, and you want to tell me your story, you can submit your story here.