About desolate | metropolis
D|M was founded in 2005 to showcase my photography.
I remember when I was in middle school...a friend of mine was taking the super-basic pinhole photography course. I was interested so I came to check out the darkroom with him. As soon as I smelled the fix and saw the image from his cardboard camera beginning to form in the developer I was fascinated. From that point on I pretty much took as many photography courses as I could shooting countless rolls of Tri-X and going through $100 packages of Ilford Multigrade IV Pearl like they were toilet paper.
Unfortunately, a lack of resources after college lead to me not having access to a darkroom. Eventually, in 2005, I finally felt like digital cameras were at a point where I could use one without missing film, so I bought a 20D and created this site. At first, I lacked direction. I went back to the same places I had photographed when I was younger, but they just didn't hold quite the same appeal.
Looking through photography websites, I started seeing a lot of pictures of abandoned architecture and became intrigued. I had always had an interest in exploring...whether it was dry docks and shipyards as a kid...or roofs and tunnels in college...but I had never really considered abandonments. It wasn't long before I was driving 2 hours out to Northampton state hospital every weekend. Exploring gripped me with the same kind of hold that photography had always had over me.
Since then exploring has taken me to places I never thought I would visit and introduced me to some really incredible people. It is a journey I never imagined myself taking but it is, unquentionably, a journey I was always destined to take.
Exploring has had a huge influence over my photographic life, but by no means is this solely an "exploring website". This site is my outlet for all my creative endeavors, whether they be exploring photography, nature photography, model photography, digital art, or even video production.
Equipment List
Before I give you my equipment list I just have to let my inner curmudgeon speak for a moment. The internet has lead to a cult of people calling themselves 'photographers' who are nothing but bored yuppies with more money than brains. Yes, I have mostly decent equipment and, yes, being a gear head is often inseparable from being a photographer. However, if you own an $8,000 digital body and don't know what an f-stop is or wonder why your pictures are blurry when you shoot at 1/5 with no tripod...or don't even understand what that means...then you need to go to hell. Stop reading my gear list and go read a tutorial on basic photography.
Gear is important to photography but you don't need good gear to learn about composition and exposure. I have decent equipment because I know WHY I want it. My gear doesn't sit on a shelf 11 months of the year until vacation either. It is out there climbing cranes and crawling through tunnels and dodging freight trains with me.
- Cameras | Canon 5D MKII, Canon 20D, Canon EOS 3, Canon Elan 7e, Canon A1 (x2)
- Film Scanner | Nikon Coolscan 5000
- Lenses | Canon 16-35 f2.8L, Canon 24-70 f2.8L, Canon 24mm f3.5L TS-E, Canon 135mm f2.0L, Canon EF 50mm f1.4, Canon EF 70-300mm, Canon FD 17mm f4, Canon FD 28mm f1.8, Canon FD 50mm f1.8, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II (RIP), Canon EF-S 17-85mm (sold)
- Filters | B+W Circular Polarizer, B+W Skylight filter, B+W 8 Stop Neutral Density Filter, Hoya R72 Infrared Filter
- Tripod | Gitzo Levelling Carbon Fiber Legs, ReallyRightStuff BH-55 Head, ReallyRightStuff 90 degree angle plate, Bogen Aluminum legs and Pan head, Bogen 724b Ball Head Portable Tripod, Bogen 718 Pan Head (RIP)
- Additional Equipment | Canon BG-E2 battery grip, Canon TC-80N3 Timer Remote, Canon 580EX Flash, Sto-Fen OmniBounce, Seagull Right Angle Viewfinder, Naneu Pro Alpha-L, LowePro CompuRover AW II, Hotshoe Mount Level, Fenix Flashlights, Surefire flashlights
Copyright and Use
All images on this site are the property of Desolate Metropolis © 2005 - 2010. Any unauthorized commercial use of the material on this site is expressly forbidden. Images from this site may not be reproduced in print or on the web for any commercial or non-commercial purposes without explicit permission from the creator.
If you are interested in using my images for academic or other noncommercial purposes, please don't hesitate to ask!
Contact
Technical
Every effort has been made to make this site work in a cross platform environment. As of this 2.0 version of d|m I am dropping support for IE6 and browsers which have extremely poor standards implementation. Most up-to-date browsers are (finally) embracing HTML and CSS as actual standards, and this site is coded accordingly...by hand.
