A couple of weeks ago I talked to my friend Brian about photographing his band Disappears in the studio while they worked on their new record. After deciding on a day and my window of time I got a train ticket, packed my gear, and last Wednesday I spent about five hours with them in the booth and control room in Sonic Youth’s studio (their drummer is Steve Shelly of Sonic Youth) in Hoboken, NJ. Although many would argue that the recording process is boring, I found it interesting to just be a fly on the wall while they worked. I love watching the process of really talented people create things.

It was also a great opportunity to put my new D7000 to the test. The booth was a dimly lit space and I had to crank the ISO up to 12,800 and shoot wide open at between 1/80 and 1/125. I’m pretty pleased with the results. The images are noisy, but no more so than pushed 3200 speed film, which I love the look of so I’m happy. I intended to do some portraits with a Speedlight and umbrella, but just ran out of time. They started to get into a groove and were experimenting with a couple of ways of working out the ending to a song, which I didn’t want to interrupt, so I’ll just try to get those shots the next time they come to DC.

If you are unfamiliar with Disappears you should check them out. Big thanks to Brian, Jonathan, Damon and Steve for letting me invade their space for a couple of hours.

I’ve been taking photographs seriously since 1992. With the exception of school and a few group shows, I haven’t shown or really done much with a large percentage of them. Ever since my friend Jamie Tanner successfully got funding through Kickstarter for his graphic novel, I’ve been thinking about doing a book of my work. The idea of self publishing is really appealing to me, because it lets me be hands on, have complete control and, for better or worse, be part of every step. Plus, doing something on your own is very satisfying. Obviously the first step is to decide what my idea for the book is.

In the past I have been very project focused in how I work. This is not unusual or necessarily bad for a photographer or artist, but about five years ago began to realize that working that way made me not take any pictures unless they fit into one of those “projects”.

I read this great quote describing the work of Lee Friedlander by Gerry Badger which was republished on American Suburb X:

“…about photography – not about pseudo-painting, not about graphic schema or chemical manipulation, not about social or political propaganda, not even about itself as an art medium, though it can embrace all of these things – essentially about the act of taking a photograph, not in a physical but in a psychic sense. It is about the act of seeing, knowing and understanding some small part of the world or fragment of experience, and placing oneself in a singular physical relationship to it in order to make a record of that experience with the camera.”

I’m not comparing myself to Friedlander (although I would list him as an influence), but in describing Friedlander’s work Badger managed to very succinctly describe how I think of my own work. It’s something felt and always had trouble putting into words. I similarly identify with a quote by Robert Frank, who is also an influence:

“It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.”

With these ideas in mind I have been trying to let go of “projects” and just take pictures. It seemed like a good time to get back to basics and fundamentals as well. For the last two and a half years I’ve been shooting mostly black and white film with a fully manual camera. It’s been a process that I realized I missed and I feel like I started over with the way I work and think about photography. I try to always have a camera with me now and I try not to over think everything and just take pictures. I can edit later. It seems way more natural and organic to me. This may seem like a no brainer, but it’s interesting how you get to these sort of epiphanies. It’s about the process and that process informs the work and sometimes becomes the work.

My plan is to go thought all of the image I’ve taken over the last ten years, focusing mainly on the last five or so, and find a sort of narrative among the images. My first rough edit is 130 pictures. From these I’ll continue to edit down to a cohesive selection. In the end book will essentially be about how I’ve been looking at things around me for the last five to ten years.

GLEN E. FRIEDMAN’s FUCK YOU ALL show in San Francisco, with special guest Shepard Fairey from Burning Flags Press on Vimeo.

When I first got into photography I was inspired by two things. Punk rock and skateboarding. I quickly realized that the person who was taking some of my favorite photos of both was Glen E. Friedman. He’s one of my early influences and someone who I really respect. I had the chance to meet him once right before I moved to DC at a party after the opening of a show of his work at Govinda Gallery. I probably talked to him for like two min. and I doubt he would remember, but it was awesome. Later after I moved to DC and was working for Adamson Editions, we did a print of the photo that was on the cover of the Minor Threat “Salad Days” record. It was great to be able to work with one of my favorite photographers on one of my favorite photographs. When Ian MacKaye came by to pick up the original we scanned to make the print, it yielded this hilarious photo:

Water#1 from Bryan Whitson on Vimeo.

Not long after moving to DC following grad school, I started working on photos of the surfaces of water. They are not really about the place they were shot (which was mostly the tidal basin near the Jefferson Memorial) so much as simply the beauty of water and the way it looked totally different from one shot to another and one day or week to another. I worked on them on and off for a year or two, but put them on the back burner.

Recently I was thinking about them again and wondered if video might be an interesting way to start them back up again. I’ve been looking a the Nikon D7000 as a potential upgrade for my current DSLR so last weekend I rented one with a 24mm lens to test it out. I was particularly interested in the video capabilities, so I went down to the Tidal Basin and shot some footage of the water. Two birds with one stone. The above scene is from that little experiment. I also got to learn a little about Adobe After Effects, thanks to my co-worker and After Effects Jedi Yan Goldshmid, so I could tweak the color and exposure a bit. Below is a still image I shot at the same time. I still think there is somewhere to go with them as well.