2 juin 2022Aucun commentaire

Writing and planning

What I like with writing in advance for /NO.NAMES/ project is that it fits with my very psychorigid mind. As a guy who loves to get everything straight, be sure I don’t forget anything, and above all, be sure we share a common understanding with the models I work with, it’s such a relief to be able to communicate in advance about what we’ll do and how I envision it. Also, when shots are planned in advance, it lets a lot more room for creativity on specific aspects during the shoot. So how do I do this?

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5 mai 2022Aucun commentaire

Rebooting, again

I can’t believe the last post on this blog was four years ago. I would have bet two, cause that the time I’ve spent in my cave hiding from Covid, but four… I guess I wasn’t using this blog properly, trying to explain the work instead of spitting parts of it.

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21 février 2017Aucun commentaire

About writing

English content

It’s been a few months now that I force myself writing at least 300 words long articles when publishing images. First, it was only for improving SEO, but I realized very soon I don’t really care about getting known or improving visibility through my website. Next, it was because some people told me they actually read and feel like they understand a bit more what I’m trying to express through some series.

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10 mars 2016Aucun commentaire

My tools and app of choice to collect and store inspiration

English content Originally posted on ELLO

MY TOOLS AND APP OF CHOICE TO COLLECT AND STORE INSPIRATION

Control Freak
I don’t really know if I can call myself a Control Freak - probably yes. I’ve always been fascinated by optimizing processes and organization. I’m the kind of guy who will play a video game and focus only one specific character to reach the higher level and optimize each piece of equipment. It’s all the same in my everyday life, I don’t have a military organisation but I have a series of methods and systems (mostly based on GTD, Get things done which will allow me to free some mental space up in order to be in a positive mood for creation, concentration and decision making.
A large part of my daily routine is to read and collect some information about a lot of topics, and obviously a lot about photography. I have never been taught photography, nor I went to art school: all I know is self-training which occurred over time, practicing, reading articles and looking at images every day. This article, a bit special, try to explain how I have organized this collect and store process. As a mac nerd, pretty much all tools are on OS X and iOS, except a few that are available as cloud services.

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13 octobre 2015Aucun commentaire

How instant photography came back to my life

English content Originally posted on ELLO

HOW INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY CAME BACK TO MY LIFE

When I was a child (you did know this explanation had to begin like this ^^) I used to play with a Polaroid instant Camera. The kind of camera that had 10 shots and a disposable flash you had to turn back to keep using.
As many other photographers experienced in their childhood it was a kind of magic. Then I grew up, had no real money and cannot afford working with film cameras and also nobody to teach me or introduce me to 35mm photography so I wasn’t able to overcome that money issue at that time.
I really came back to photography 10 years ago with the first digital cameras (the one you had to put a 3’5 computer disk in it ^^) and then it became a real part of my life.

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26 août 2015Aucun commentaire

Instagram

English content Originally posted on ELLO

I just wanted to share my thoughts about IG, since I've been conducting a few experiments during the last two weeks.

IG claims to have one of the biggest photo community (which I believe is true) and I don't really know why, but I keep feeling attracted by IG. I think it's basically the feeling of wanting to 'be part of it', that a lot of people seems to have fun there and that I deserve some of this fun too.
Then comes the thinking, and once I have the overcome the simple idea of getting likes for likes, I tried to figure out what would be the purpose of IG, not in general but for me. Sharing my reality with friends and relative is not an option since I'm really concerned with privacy and I don't want to share anything on a platform owned by Facebook and with no clear statement about the way data is used. So I had a simple approach, more business oriented and I tried to see if I would be able to use IG as a network allowing to get a new collaboration, meet new models.

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7 juillet 2015Aucun commentaire

Ello. 07, juil. 2015.

English content Originally posted on ELLO

Last Sunday, I shot with Lea. It was not the first time we were shooting together, but this time she welcomed me in her very home in order to make a try for new « in situ » project. Actually « new » is not quite right since I’ve already tried multiple times to deal with this tendentious project of shooting home.

In the past tries, I either brought my studio flashes or some kind of strobist installation. Let’s say it straight: I didn’t really achieve anything that good. I mean, I’m not an expert but I don’t consider I’m in trouble in studio. I know pretty much what I do while I’m in studio , even if I don’t really know many lightning techniques. But when I’m on location … I never reach a sufficient satisfaction level with flashes or strobes.

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16 juin 2015Aucun commentaire

Ello. 16 Juin 2015. The up and down

English content Originally posted on ELLO

The up and down
It’s very common for a creative to have up and down phases. Anybody who has been involved at least once with the creative process encounters this phenomenon and you can find a thousands of « incentive sentence » from various literature explaining how it’s required to go down to rise again.

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29 janvier 2015Aucun commentaire

Ello. 29, janv. 2015. Work in progress, /humanimal/

English content Originally posted on ELLO

Work in progress, /humanimal/

I’m currently working a new project called /humanimal/. This is really a work in progress, even the name is not final, so everything can still change :)

First, I need to remind that continuity is very important in my work. I’m trying new things at every project, I do not have a very consistent work, I lack a lot of homogeneity in treatments but I love remind former projects in new ones. Basically this is due to the way I use photography: as a diary to express my life, and there is both heterogeneity and consistency in life. Things evolve and change everyday but past is still there and a basis for present.

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21 janvier 2015Aucun commentaire

Ello. 21, Jan 2015. First 35 films

English content Originally posted on ELLO

First 35 films

I’ve just received the first pictures of my develop-it-yourself experiment!
Ok let’s face it: as every beginners, I’ve fuck up some stuff :x But for a first a first try that’s pretty ok. Negative development is the part I’ve really done during this first experiment, from putting the film in the tank with no light at all to dry the negative after it’s developed. Since it was the first stage I didn’t want to make the print by myself on the first try so I gave it to a lab.

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Get in touch?

Currently in Montréal, QC Canada
I speak French, English and even a bit of Italian!

Email: hello@angeswadman.com
Twitter: @angeswadman
Instagram: @angeswadman

© ange swadman, since 2007

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