haschenfeffer's photostream

When I started to get over the bad habits I had gained in adolescence and the self-involvement that spawned them, I started noticing the world around me. It's very beautiful, I find. It seems that all I need to do to be comfortable and attain some measure of happiness is pay attention to what's actually happening around me, so I trained myself to do so with a camera. I used to watch shit through the viewfinder and pretend I was watching a documentary called 16th & Valencia or Red Square and marvel at the miracle that I live in. Once in a while I would turn a couple dials and press a button, and now apparently I'm a photographer.

I don't pose things, I don't think too hard about it. Photography to me is about looking, not about editing or mutating. That's for other arts. I don't want to create, or interpret even. I want to accentuate and point out. I don't think I am personally capable of creating something prettier than what actually exists.

I was in my fourth year of film school and not enjoying it when I was assigned to tell a story with still photos. I reinterpreted the ending of Francois Truffaut's 400 Blows as a skateboard ride to the beach, using a little disposable camera. God, it was delightful! After I got an A on the assignment (the only A I got that year) I borrowed a friend's Minolta XM-70 and shot a roll all willy nilly, not paying attention to how I was exposing the film. When the photo guys noticed my dejection at the inevitable results they started tutoring me.

Jose, now a good friend of mine, said, "If it's direct sunlight, and you're using four hundred speed film, you want f-stop eleven, and shutter speed five hundred..."

It's been an amazing journey.