The 36 - 2023

Unlike last year where I did a long explanation of “The 36”, I just want to jump into it. If you want to read about what this is and what I thought of 2022 feel free to go back to that post.

Well, the first thing to note is that this edition of “The 36” doesn’t have 36 pictures in it. It has 39! There are 39 pictures because I wanted to give a bit of love to the half frame photography I did in 2023. As a result, there are still 36 “frames”, 3 of which are composed of half frames. 36 + 3 = 39.

The other thing to note is that it’s extremely live music dominated. And while my life overall may not have been entirely focused around live music in 2023, my photography very much was.

That said, I really wanted to cover the range of pictures I took and what I was interested in. 2023 had a strong focus on the A/B split image I’ve been talking about all of 2023. As a result, it pops up quite prominently throughout this edition of “The 36”. But I was also interested in other things. For example, the 2 double exposures of Lena Luca and Elise Trouw on the right side.

What’s also fun to note are the unexpected pictures here. There’s a picture from that really odd Lomochrome Turquoise roll in the top right (2nd from the right). There’s also that bizarre Housekeys/David Slowing “multiple exposure” that wasn’t actually meant to be one.

While art and the Blanton didn’t feature much in 2023’s posts, I wanted to highlight that they continue to be important to me and to my photography. In the middle of this edition of “The 36” there are two pictures taken at the Blanton. The “We belong here” with the Capitol in the background is a very fun and meaningful picture to me. While that sign is not up at the moment of my writing this, I find that sign to be one of the most meaningful and inclusive pieces of art that the Blanton owns and is one I’m always looking for when it isn’t there. To its top right is a piece by Gabriel Dawe that permanently hangs in the new welcome center at the Blanton. It had just been opened up to the public a month or two before I took that picture and is a glorious piece to welcome you to the Blanton.

Above that are the bird cages from Sydney, shot in CineStill 50d. While CineStill as a company had a bit of a weird year, they had sent a bunch of cease and desists over the usage of 800T, one of their other film stocks rated for tungsten based lighting, I still appreciated that specific roll for its unique look and feel.

The upper right is largely landscape photography from my trip out to New Mexico. It’s important to me because it really broadened my vision in regards to telephoto photography. I really want to do more with that in 2024 because I feel like there’s a lot more space for me to explore there.

With all that said, I want to talk about the structure of this edition of “The 36”. As with 2022’s version, I wanted to grab a picture or two from every roll I shot. This didn’t quite end up happening as there are no medium format pictures here. Medium format’s something I really need to spend more time with and I’m not fully comfortable putting it as a part of this. It also doesn’t fit ergonomically. The half frame pictures can be doubled into a same shaped frame as the others but the square format of the Yashica Mat 124G just doesn’t fit the same. So I’ll have to figure out what I want to do with those later.

Anyways, including medium format and half frame, I shot 26 rolls of film, twice as much as in 2022. 3 of those were medium format, leaving 23 rolls of film represented in this collage. Only one roll has 3 pictures from it. That roll is the 6th roll of Portra 800 which has the sunset Milky Way picture, the Housekeys picture, and the silhouetted blue Lena Luca picture coming from it.

Speaking of Lena Luca, she is one of a few artists that are represented twice. The others are Shooks with both a half frame and full frame in the first row and HOT///CAKES with a pair on the left edge. Interestingly, none of those pairs are from the same roll of film, each pair spans two different rolls of film.

Overall, this edition of “The 36” is largely organized in two ways. There’s the non live music photography which goes from the center to the top right. And there’s the live music which is largely color oriented. It’s organized with yellows and reds in the top left, sweeping around to blues and purples in the bottom right. The bottom right also includes more light and silhouette focused pictures and the 2 double exposures + the weird “multiple exposure”.

When comparing 2022 and 2023, 2023 is a much denser collage. My photography in 2023 was significantly more focused on balancing density and readability than 2022 when I was more focused on general mechanics and rough ideas. That said, I think 2022 was more dynamic in its use of light and motion.

As a result, while I do think that I made a lot of progress in terms of how I think about and approach my photography I also think there’s a lot of room to be more free with it. Not every picture needs to be shoehorned into a particular image’s box that I’m aiming to do.

In 2022 I described the idea of the A/B split image as a part of my going through the making of and describing of “The 36”. So what is the picture for 2023 that points me forward? Arguably the most visually distinct picture of 2023’s “The 36” is the one I put right in the middle. The half frame picture of me taking a picture while swinging my arm. It’s interesting in that it kind of doesn’t look interesting and I want to explore that a bit more. I’ll go over my thoughts on where I want to go with 2024 in the new year post, but suffice it to say that while 2023 focused super heavily on live music I don’t really want to do the same in 2024.