Carlinville, Illinois

Rob Haggert posted the other day about toy cameras and the Holga--my absolute favorite toy camera of choice. See the post.

As for me, I am currently in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois visiting my mom, who recently moved here. The commissioned shoot for my friend, that brought me out this way in the first place, went well really well. We took the redeye to from LAX to O'Hare on Friday night. Got in just before 6am and drove the 4+ hours to Carlinville, Illinois---population 5700 according to the sign. Carlinville is truly small town America-- and if you take exception to the flora, I think I could have been in just about any small town east of Colorado.

Nick, Rob (his brother and a close friend of mine), their mom, Janet, and I arrived at the house around 11:00 am where their younger sister Katie, and dad, Phil were already there. Nick and I did a walk through of the house and it was immediately apparent that there was plenty of to shoot and any associated stress of wondering just what the heck I was going to shoot immediately disappeared. The house is over 130 years old, sits 2 stories high with 10 foot ceilings---it had plenty of character. Beers were cracked and mimosas poured sometime before noon---and I thought, okay, so this is how it's going to be.

I started my first shot sometime around noon---using my Holga, lomo, RZ, and an old 35mm Mamiya Sekor (the one with the uncoated lenses). Nick is a big fan of my Holga images and asked me to bring that sort of nostalgic feel to these images. He stayed with me throughout the day, breaking away periodically to sit and hang with the family. We continued shooting exteriors as well as a portrait of the family too until about 7 that evening.

Sunday, I got up just past 6 am to check the light on the front of the house. The front of the house faces East, and when we arrived the sun was fairly high overhead. I shot it the first day, but I wanted to try and get a more front lit shot of the house as well. Unfortunately, the morning was socked in with clouds, so instead, I lit for another family portrait on the screened in porch. By 9 am we had finished that shot and Nick and I moved on to set up for an interior portrait of his mom and then a separate one of his dad. The sun busted through the clouds sometime while setting up and we got the front of the house hero shot (with the morning light this time) and also finished both portraits as well.

All in all, I was in Carlinville for about 28 hours, but somehow it felt much longer (in a good way)--and complete. I never felt rushed and we were able to cover more shots than either of us had initially imagined. Most everything I shot was on film, with the exception of the individual portraits of his parents.

Here's a rough jpeg [quickly processed using my laptop -- no real monitor for color/density corrections] from the images of his father---Phil, that I wanted to share...