Sunday & Wednesday

When I was in London staying with Tom I played with his Contax T2 and really fell in love with it. It’s so light, but has such good control with it’s manual functions. I really love the beauty of film but I do not like the weight of cameras anymore. I didn’t care in school, to schlep around a Hasselblad or Mamiya but now I’ve found the last thing I want to do is use carry shit in the city. And I love that fucking thing, but I used it the other day and was just like “Really?” It’s so not practical for New York, and no one wants to pay for my 120 scans (Flextight, I Miss you.) I received a really late (but completely amazing) christmas gift from Tom, and there it was, my own Contax sitting at my desk.- with my name engraved (dudes take NOTES). I finally got a bunch of film back from it and I’m so hooked. Despite it looking very Terry/Nocito/everyfuckingoneelse with flash, it does tremendously well in daylight and almost looks like my 120. I try not to use the flash so much to avoid that played out, but oh-so-good aesthetic — however I had to use it at our Best New Designers of America party.
GQ announces 6 finalists every year that compete as a best new designer — some of these guys I had photographed for the web, so it was really great to see their clothes in person (and worn by incredibly hot guys.) Now, I’m no fashionista, let alone know shit about men’s clothes, but luckily, because of my job, I’ve been exposed to really different things and I appreciate that. Patrik Ervell, who I shot a couple weeks ago, was one of my favorites, but Alexander Wang won. The party was surreal — I took Kanye’s picture and he looked less then thrilled (so dope), had Aziz Ansari tell me to “shoot digital boo” and saw a lot of drunk colleagues, which is always my favorite part. I came a couple hours prior to the show to photograph the models in their before stage and shot during the presentation. Some photos can be seen here on our (NEW!) GQeye.tumblr but here are the rest. Goddamn I love this camera. When I get film back, I get that feeling Like, the happy I fucking… love this shit –… feeling. I’d love to take more on, but I just don’t have the time. I really value learning the opposite end at work, the photo editor/assistant role is a little strange sometimes. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but I tend to empathize with the photographers and sometimes I just want to “reveal” my photographer identity but I’m like calm down… the time will come. Yes, I’m a little discouraged I can’t say “photographer” (yet) when people ask me what I do, but I’m learning that it’s perfectly fine to take on other roles until I get there.