OLD SCHOOL BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY IN PALM SPRINGS – kind of

So my dad is in town… we decided to leave him with the kids and skip town. 48 hours on our own – no nagging, asking, crying, complaining, demanding pouting… oh wait, I was on the trip so there was still plenty of that… no, really.. it was quiet riding down to Palm Springs (we stopped at the Riverside Mission Inn ) and even though we didn’t have the kids in the car, we still played the ABC game…now, usually I don’t bother bringing my camera, my iPhone can do everything I usually need it to, especially fit in my pocket – but I took these two days to reconnect with what I like to do… so besides swimming, riding a bicycle, sleeping, eating, watching movies and people watching – I actually like taking pictures, so no other reason but actually taking them. Not for a memory, not for a documentation of a wedding, not because I am paid… but like I used to, 25 years ago, when I got my first camera, and took photos of doors, and shadows, and stairs, and clowns, and homeless people and dead cats…I wanted that – to be able to stop and snap. I wanted to reconnect with the magic that once was photography for me – and in order to do that – I needed to go “old school” … Ideally – that would mean get out my old Nikon, get a  couple of B&W rolls of film and take that route… but film is not something I miss really, so I did the next best thing. I took my old, Canon 5D, set it to Manual,  B&W, JPG Large, 28 mm lens with a polarizing filter – and used black gaffer’s tape to hide  the screen on the back of the camera so I couldn’t see the result…It took me some time to stop looking at the screen after every shot – but it also made me make sure my exposures were spot on, or bracket a couple of shots.. an then I did what I used to do when shooting film – I couldn’t wait to see the results and prayed I liked what I saw.. I hope you like it too….

I shot 251 images in tow day. I quickly narrowed it down to 118, then my next round brought me to 47, from which I picked my top 22 above and the rest are in this gallery….