NOTES
NEWS About My Upcoming Book: Ghosts of New Amsterdam
I'm excited to share news about my first book due to be released in October.
TriBeCa, Manhattan
“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
I'm really excited to announce the release of my photography book, Ghosts of New Amsterdam. It's a visually lyrical collection of photos that together compile my experience of living and visiting, New York City, the spiritual home of capitalism during a post-9/11 era; a time in which many of us have begun to wonder what the American Dream really is and what traditional values have changed and why. The visual text is subtle and I leaned more on metaphor than literal interpretation, which gave the project a dreamlike narrative. It's photojournalism if photojournalism was taken literally as a personal visual journal, like a diary.
The book is slated for an October release and will be available on Amazon as well as my site. I can't wait to share the cover, which is beginning to look exactly as I wanted.
As always, thanks for reading. Stay in touch.
Email: info@carlosdetres.com
There's Nothing Like the Streets of New York City
Photography throughout New York City including the Occulus, 9/11 Memorial and Midtown.
On a recent trip to New York City, I took a couple of days to wander from Midtown to Downtown Manhattan for the purpose of photographing it with 100% focus. I'd previously do these trips half in/half out with a more carefree approach rather than a rigorous work, bleeding out a scene until I got a photo that I wanted. I wanted to put my all into this recent expedition. The street gave back.
It's not a secret, among my close friends and family, of my love/hate relationship with the City. After nearly thirteen years of living in this metropolis, I had developed a reserve of animosity for the place I had once dearly loved. I admit that when I spent those two days out there in Manhattan that I couldn't help but focus on the negativity, the feeling of invisibility among the throngs of people bumping into each other, wearing sullen faces and walking in the shadows of godlike, stone faced buildings. A feeling came to me after the end of the second day, one that I hadn't felt in a long time. It was like the story of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas when his small black heart became filled with love and compassion again. I actually started feeling a pang of "love" for this place that I had been so happy to now be away from. It was an old feeling, an old love.
I hope you enjoy the photos below. There is certainly surreal elements within the framing and juxtaposition. It was a lot of fun doing these and I'm glad I walked away from this mini project with an old flame reignited.
Email: info@carlosdetres.com
The Happiest Day of the Year is Followed by its Saddest
In case you feel like reliving the celebrations.
...I'm exaggerating, of course, but the post-Mardi Gras blues is real.
Only 348 more days until Mardi Gras 2018.
(Photos arranged in sequence of events.)
Email: info@carlosdetres.com
Wandering the Old Streets of St. Augustine, FL
Anthropological photography through the historic streets of St. Augustine, Florida.
My shadow and I walking the grounds of the old Spanish fort, Castillo de San Marcos.
After a ten hour drive from New Orleans, I was in St. Augustine, visiting family. Although it took a few days to get going with my camera, I imagined the kinds of photos I wanted. The best part of photography is the time alone when it's just you and your camera, wandering a street, looking for something that tells a story. A detail such as a wall marked with old graffiti or a wall pocked with bullets from musket fire due to the executions that occurred on the side of an old fort.
It’s an old, old city, the oldest, continually operating European city in the United States of America. If you turn a corner and you’re paying attention, you could be treated to artifacts left behind from people who are no longer living. This is the kind of anthropology I love. The leftovers of our existence, resisting the change of the years. St. Augustine's rich history includes a significant role in the colonization of North America, the tragedy of the plight of Native Americans and the Civil Rights movement, from Frederick Douglas to Martin Luther King, Jr. and more. So much more.
One hypothetical thought that haunted me throughout my day of shooting in St. Augustine was of time travel. Can you imagine if a Native American or a Spanish colonist was resurrected from the 1500s and taken on a tour through the northeast coast of modern Florida?
For more info, please email info@carlosdetres.com
One Year in New Orleans 2016
Another year passes in New Orleans and I documented almost the whole damn thing. Here's a little bit of it.
We celebrated another year in New Orleans on July 20th. I'm a bit late. In 2016 we survived another Carnivale, enjoyed two Halloweens and made new friends. For this version of "One Year in New Orleans," I went for the straight documentation route. I considered including portraits I had made doing throughout the city but then decided that it didn't say much about my overall experience.
As you'll notice, I still have not gotten cemeteries out of my system. While there are less photos of these hallowed locations, I still couldn't help myself. I never can. Rather than creating three sequential posts, I decided to do one with a bunch of photos as an exercise to see what works together and what doesn't. It's for fun.
Florida Obscura
An exercise in reflection on the roots of where I come from.
Whenever I'm back home in Florida,
I return to places that I'd visited in the past
and photograph them,
mostly alone,
to further understand the person I've become.
It's personal anthropology. The cloud of my thirteen years in New York City has cleared. Here in New Orleans, Louisiana, I almost feel retired, not from work but from a lifestyle that dictated the choices I made and the directions I've gone. It's suffice to say that I'm at a reflective point in my life and that the specter of my home state of Florida looms silently over my work as I continue identifying my personal style and future creative goals.
The photographs below are part of an exercise to isolate the common threads of my work. It happens easily because there are always subconscious elements that are introduced into my portraiture and topics of interest. Enjoy.
Social Commentary Street Photography from New York City
Social commentary through street photography. This week's subject is New York City.
There's a reason why we usually think of New York City when someone mentions "street photography." The architecture make great backdrops to the frenetic energy that affects everything from people to dogs to the pigeons and rats that live together. With up to 12 million people interacting with their environment and eachother every day, there's rarely a moment when anyone notices you. It's the benefit of often being invisible to the crowds of people who are too busy and in too much of a hurry to pay any attention to the photographer walking around taking pictures.
When I go to New York for work, I make sure to take 2-3 days to roam the streets, easily clocking between 10-16 miles of walking through every corner. The Financial District is my current favorite neighborhood to photograph. When I previously mentioned that you are invisible in New York, you are TOTALLY invisible when you're in Lower Manhattan. This part of the City is dually a tourist destination and, obviously, the financial capital of the world.
The photos below are my observation of the disconnect I see between humans living in such dense and energetic urban environments and the tranquility and spiritually invigorating elements of nature. This may evolve into a bigger project but for now, it's what I've been doing during my visits.
Email: info@carlosdetres.com
Portrait and Low Light Test of Sony A6300
The Sony A6300 with the 16-50mm kit lens at work in both portrait and low light street photography settings.
PREFACE: This isn't a super technical piece, just some thoughts of using the Sony A6300 in real life settings. I'm not big on pixel peeping or needing the most sharp lens of all time, ever in the Universe. To give a little insight about myself: one of my favorite cameras to shoot with is a years-old digital compact, the 10.1 megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7, which has limitations that make it merely a decent camera to shoot at night with (you can see photos I've taken with it HERE). In fact, most of my upcoming book ESOTERICA is shot with this little bad boy (it really is a great little camera).
For this post, I've included photos from a commercial portrait session and some street shots. Most of these pictures were made using the Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens while the portrait work was done with a Lensbaby Composer Pro equipped with a double optic lens attached via a f-mount to e-mount adapter from Vello. These photos have not been retouched or edited and come straight out of the camera.
Now that that's out of the way, let's get into this camera and why I felt it was time to jump into the Sony mirrorless world. I've been wanting a small, lightweight travel camera that I could use for studio, night time street photography, had a viewfinder, could shoot decent video and had fast autofocus. Until the announcement of the Sony A6300, there wasn't a camera that got me excited. I pre-ordered the camera, considering seriously that I might return it. So how did it do?
I don't know if it's because I haven't paid much attention to what's been released since the Nikon D800 but for me, the Sony A6300 had a game-changey quality about it. The number of settings in the menu, expanded metering and autofocus options was staggering. I've become so accustomed to the older Nikon cameras that looking at this thing was like, "Ok wtf do I do with this?" The custom buttons and focus lock are in awkward places but that comes with a camera that's smaller than the Fujifilm x100s that I recently sold. And maybe because my hands are big.
The real test would come from shooting with only ambient light in some of the darker corners of New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter. I was impressed by how it performed in low light conditions with mostly usable photos shot at 12,800 ISO with noticeable noise in the shadows.
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @16mm, f/3.5, 1/30th second, 12,800 ISO
The autofocus, when I thought I knew what I was doing nailed nearly every lighting scenario. The kit lens isn't my favorite but it did better than I thought it would.
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @17 mm, f/3.5, 1/125 second, 12,800 ISO
The retractable LCD screen on the back of the camera was hella fun to use as well. I'm usually a little shy when I'm doing street photography so being able to look down into the viewfinder made it so easy for me to shoot without being noticed. Huge plus.
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @50mm, f/5.6, 1/50th second, 6400 ISO
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @50mm, f/5.6, 1/50th second, 6400 ISO
Did I mention the autofocus?
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @16, f/3.5, 1/125th second, 12,800 ISO
The autofocus is probably the best I've used on any system but the manual focus peaking assist is effin' tops! It might actually be easier to use a manual lens on this camera in low light settings than an auto lens on most other cameras. Once you select this option, you can use various colors to indicate your focal distance so there's no hunting, you just follow the focus, use the manual assist to zoom in on your subject (although you don't have to) and click away. Just a note, it's kind of a pain to use on a zoom but easier on a prime.
I did find that if you're intending on using your DSLR lenses, that you have to use a faster shutter speed than before because it becomes very lens heavy. This camera is of durable material but it is lighter than the 24-70 DSLR zoom you may have lying around.
Lensbaby Composer Pro, Double Optic Lens, f/4, 1/400th second, ISO 100 on a F-mount to E-mount adapter by Vello
Oh and I forgot to mention that the autofocus system doesn't work when you have a lens adapter on but as I mentioned before, this isn't that big of a problem. I brought two cameras with me to the portrait session I did on Saturday: the Nikon D800 and the Sony A6300, just to try it out in this kind of setting. I ended up using the Sony A6300 for 1/3rd of the shoot. It was fun, light, allowed me various options and played well with my PocketWizards.
Lensbaby Composer Pro, Double Optic Lens, f/4, 1/400th second, ISO 100 on a F-mount to E-mount adapter by Vello
Yeah, this is a dope camera. I love it. I'll be bringing it along today for my portrait session with DJ Hektik so let's see how it does then. Thanks for reading.
Sony 3.5-5.6 16-50mm kit lens @16mm, f/3.5, 1/50th second, 6400 ISO
11 Months to Go Until Mardi Gras 2017
Photos and thoughts of Mardi Gras 2016. We'll sure miss you.
I had a conversation the other night about whether a "New Year's Resolution" in New Orleans should actually begin after Mardi Gras to coincide with Lent. With all of that binge and purging that goes on throughout the months of January and February, it feels appropriate to give or take up that thing you'd normally reserve for that "resolution".
The photos below are a mish-mash of parades and celebrations throughout the city. Some are from Chewbacchus, Krewe du Vieux, Hermes and on and on.
Email for info: info@carlosdetres.com
New Street Photography: New Orleans
Street photography on the rocky asphalt of a city beat down by the sun. Let's go, go, go.
Wet and hot. New Orleans is the stuff my photography dreams are made of. Weird and fun. The city contains much of what inspires me to pick up the camera.
So here's some new stuff. If you haven't seen the old stuff, look HERE.
Photos by me, Carlos Detres. Email: info@carlosdetres.com
One Month in New Orleans: July 2015
Here are some of the things that happened last month. Friends, pool, cemeteries, graveyard leave-behinds and more.
Here are some of the things that happened last month. Friends, pool, cemeteries, graveyard leave-behinds and more.
For more info about my pictures, email me at info@carlosdetres.com
One Year in New Orleans Part 3
Photos from one year in New Orleans from April-June 2015. Burlesque, Weddings, Crawfish Boils, Street Photography and more.
Shooting on the Streets of New Orleans
Street photography in New Orleans.
Calling street photography a hobby, for me, feels strange. It's an extension of all of the work professional photography I do. This blog post is of some of the work I've been doing the last year. It's an ongoing project, never ending and so fun to do. I feel that these are some of my most personal photographs.
Here are just a few randos.
Email: info@carlosdetres.com
