New York City
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.” ~ Neal Cassady
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“Everything happens fast during the act of shooting. But afterwards you have your whole life to try to understand your images and what hides behind them.”
Patrick Zachman
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Somewhere in Boston
Right after photo school, I worked for a time as a commercial photographer for a company in transition between analog and digital. We produced slides for corporate presentations, a precursor to Powerpoint, on hulking computers the size of washing machines, output to slide film. The original part of the company, neglected and slowly dying, did conventional analog photography with an amazing ancient wooden 16×20 camera with shutterless lenses, mounted on huge rails, and more conventional studio shots. We had one client who built syntervac (sp?) furnaces, which I never knew what they were. Large custom on-off items which I photographed on the factory floor. I used a lovely old wooden Deardorf 8×10 camera, painting the fill-in light with a lightbulb mounted in a sort of a cake pan. Primitive, and I had no idea what I was doing, lucky that I managed to get useable exposures. I had plenty of free time to play in the basement studio with cameras and lights. I made liberal use of all the “free” slide film and processing, and spent many a lunch “hour” wandering The Fenway shooting slides (see above). When I left after two years, I managed to abscond with a WW2-era Linhof field camera and a few lenses (which I foolishly sold). So ended my one brief foray into professional photography.
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From the boardwalk along Lake Geneva in Montreux.
I don’t seem to take the standard tourist photos when I travel. Then I get home and wish I had. The boardwalk was a crazy open-air market, all kinds of people and vendors. It was a treat to come from my tiny world of small-town America into an international throng in Switzerland. I didn’t do a very good job of managing street photography from a wheelchair. Next time.
Look for me on Instagram: @harvinstephis
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Over Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland 2012
A once in lifetime (or twice if my ship comes in) trip. Beautiful location, heroic support team, amazing music, brilliantly accessible venue. No smoke on the water.
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North Yarmouth, Me.
Made in my Ikoflex camera
I’m working my way through my back archive, rediscovering favorite images.It’s a trip, so many I’ve forgotten about, some that really are better off forgotten.
Look for me on Instagram: @harvinstephis
