gregory t. davis

back in august, mel and I went home to kentucky to spend our anniversary with family. while we were there, I grabbed a few things from storage, some of which were binders full of negatives from college photo classes I had taken, and a few personal projects I had started but ended up not going anywhere. this past week, I went thumbing through these books and boxes of film, and while I was known as a landscape guy in graduate school, I was surprised to see that over half of my images were self-portraits of one kind or another. I don’t mean the self referencing kind of image where “I’m not in it, but it reflects who I am therefore it is a self portrait” kind of image that my students try to pull when they photograph their friends at a party. I mean that i am the person in the image. most are the acting kind, where I am playing a role for the camera. inspired by cindy sherman stills and such, I play through different scenarios and story lines in my own head, occasionally allowing the camera to record my likeness. these gave way to an avedonian directness with the lens, though I still played a character that is a departure from the reality that is me.

as I began to develop as an artist, I began to reference my own relationship with photography through a self portrait. using one photographic trait/device or another, I have lately been photographing myself directly, not a character I play. two of these images, both on my homepage randomly, were in a group show recently. one of the viewers asked if I had a series of them. I was about to say “no”, when I gave it a second thought and realized, that yes, I do. whenever I get stuck while working on a project, or just bored, I get my cameras and make a self portrait. I try to come up with as clever an idea as I can at the moment, and then I get to work. over time, I have made a lot of them. I get stuck a lot. when I get to the end of my career, I will probably look back at my work and say, “I made a career of photographing myself, with a few other pictures thrown in the mix.”

some of my students have been asking how I attach filters to my lenses.  I don’t have the normal screw on type of filter, I use the old style “series” filters and shades.  here is a video I made showing how these work.

I am a fan of stephen shore’s work, particularly his “uncommon places”, so when I found the kress store in miami, I had to pay tribute.  the original…

and my version…

the buildings have been remodeled, but the floor tiles were still there.  awesome.

epson 4990

and the drum scanner…

howtek d4000

the edges are a little sharper in the second image, and the grain is definitely sharper in the second.  there is also more detail in the shadow regions.  there seems to be a blue halo effect around the edge of the finger below the screw in the epson scan, while the howtek is clean.  the color is different as well.  I have an it8 calibration target for the howtek, but no such software for the epson.

despite epsons claims, the max resolution I have been able to get from the 4990 is 1500 dpi.  higher resolution settings create bigger file sizes, but no difference in image resolution.  above 4000 dpi, it is interpolating the image, that is, it inserts pixels it didn’t actually scan in order to get the file larger.  the howtek goes up to 4000 dpi and one can see a difference in image resolution.