Introduction

Dan Bassini is a professional photographer living and working in New York City. He is perhaps best known for his book series No Invite, in which he takes portraits on film at New York Fashion Week events, though he’s far from limited to fashion photography. His project The Rangefinder Diaries started eleven years ago and continues to this day. His latest book, Cruel Summer, is available now at danbassini.com and marks a significant departure from No Invite.

Dan was kind enough to take more than an hour out of his day to talk to me about his podcast, Have a nice life. produced with his co-host Erika, and Cruel Summer, as well as many other projects along the way. The following interview has been edited and condensed for flow, though I have tried to keep the intent and message behind my questions and Dan’s answers.

Without further ado, Dan Bassini!

Interview

Will Hopkins: So I have to admit, I haven't listened to Have a nice life., your podcast. It's one of those things for my podcast listening fell off when my commute stopped being a thing.

Dan Bassini: Honestly, that happened across the board. We noticed our numbers dipped a little bit, and everyone else I know who is in either streaming music world or streaming podcast world, listenership across the board has dropped just because everyone used it for the commute. 

WH: That makes sense. Yeah. So Have a nice life. Why did you decide to start doing audio again, after so long? And at least from my perception, you're a jack of all trades. You’re a photographer, and you do a little bit of everything. So what was appealing about moving into podcasts? 

DB: I mean, basically, it's just been... Well, my friend Erika, who I do the podcast with, she'd been bugging me to do a podcast for a while, just because she thought that our conversations together were very funny and witty, and what's the point of doing anything privately anymore? So she was "We should do a podcast." And I was apprehensive at the time. I guested on a couple podcasts and things like that. But it was a timing thing. But essentially, I was just "If you buy the equipment, I'll do it." And then for my birthday, last year, around December, she bought the equipment. And we started, I think, we recorded two episodes to come out when we first started. And I think they dropped like January 1st. So yeah, we recorded the first one right after Christmas, and then the other one right after New Year's, and I think dropped them together.

But it's been cool to have an audio record now of that, of this fucking year. 

WH: No kidding. And so it sounds like it really grew organically out of a relationship that you have with a friend and those conversations. And now it's become this weird cultural artifact. I got to know your work through No Invite, which I think also really functions as a cultural artifact of the times. I think you can really locate what's happening to some extent in celebrity culture, but also with fashion culture obviously, through the record produced by No Invite. And it sounds like Have a nice life. is almost doing a similar thing. It's really recording that moment. 

DB: Yeah. I mean, I guess that can really constitute for any photography, because you're literally freezing that moment in time. So over a long enough timeline, it's going to become a historical record of some sort, just out of its presence. But I'm also no stranger to just long term documentary projects. Did you see recently when I posted my anniversary of the blog I've been running? The Rangefinder Diaries?

WH: Yes. 

DB: That's something that I started 11 years ago. Where, so it's literally been just... I started that a month or two into me being in photography school. So it's pretty much just documenting my entire photographic career, run in the background. So it's nice to have that stuff that you can look back on and just see where you've been. It's really cool to have that just that stuff cemented there in your history. But yeah, the No Invite stuff, I never really expected it to become a project like it had. And now that No Invite volume eight, I can't believe it's eight volumes of that. I've been doing two books per year for like four years now about. And the fact that that's on hold was like a real bummer, because it's been fun. 

But I also, I put out volume seven back in April. And that was kicking off the pandemic. And I couldn't do a release party or a photo show or anything like that for it, and that was such a bummer. So it was nice to be able to open to some fanfare, and get to display photos. That's my whole thing, I feel like everything on Instagram is disposable. I know, that's my hang up personally. I know it's probably a stupid hang up to have, and it's definitely not a progressive hang up to have.

But film photography to me, feels a little more momentary, it feels a little more static, like it has a little more of a weight to me than I feel digital does. And that's something, like I said, that had me even start the rangefinder diaries project back in 2009. I just felt like my friends would go into the city, and they'd all bring their DSLRs. And I just hated lugging it around like. Even to this day, for the most part my digital kit doesn't leave the house unless I'm getting paid. It's very much a tool. Besides I don't really have like an emotional or like a warmness to my digital gear that I do buy expensive and stupid and fragile film gear. You've seen the camera I use, right? 

WH: Yeah. So you shoot with two Yashica T4's, or was that- 

DB: Yeah, the little T4. I've gone through... There was a time I was going through one camera per Fashion Week for two and a half years. [Editor’s note: Yes, dear reader, you read that right. One camera per Fashion Week!] So I went through multiple, probably I think three or four T4's. I got a T5 that developed a light leak for no reason. And I also burned through my prized possession, Gold 60th anniversary Contax T2. That was my baby. I want to fix it. I need to get it fixed. But that thing, when that died, that really took it out of me. But it hurts so bad when you know a 30-year-old piece of plastic that was never meant to last this long, dies on you. It's fully expected. But it doesn't hurt any less. 

WH: Yeah. I think I didn't want to lead you to describing film photography in that way. I wanted to see if that was how you would describe it. 

DB: Okay, yeah. You got me. 

WH: Yeah. So that makes perfect sense. And so I have listened to your interview with Analog Talk. 

DB: Okay, yeah. That was really early on. That was, I think, early on their podcast. But also I think that was when Volume Two was coming out. 

WH: If memory serves. Yeah.

DB: That was a long time ago. 

WH: And I think Volume Two is the one that I have. I need to pick up the rest of them because something about the style of No Invite, like both as a print object and the images themselves, I particularly really enjoy. And I really... I can trace your style through The Rangefinder Diaries through No Invite. And hopefully soon the new book as well. And so you have a really clear, I think style is overused, so I'll say way of looking, if that makes sense. 

DB: No. For sure. 

WH: And that transcends whatever film or camera you're using, because it's your perspective on things. 

DB: Yeah. To go back real quick, regarding the point I was originally before I veered off into film photography. The reason I made a book was, that was something I did during... I used to tour with bands and things like that. So I would do like a Xeroxing, like a Kinkos style scene of my previous tour, and then sell it on my next one as a way to get some extra Taco Bell money. And so it started with that, and I really enjoyed it.

And then, as things started picking up with Instagram and everything, it just feels like, are people really... Because I know how I scroll Instagram sometimes, and I'm not taking the time with each photo that people post, and looking for the nuances. And I know, for a fact, people probably even have a less attention span than I do. And I feel like some of it just gets wasted a little bit. And even now, I don't want to get into fucking algorithm talk or any of that stuff, the bane of my existence. But same with The Rangefinder Diaries, like it's more of an exercise, just keeping on creating, keeping people know that you're creating new work, and you're not just incubating. 

Here's a completed idea. Here's what I did, February 2019. Like, here's what I did in September. And it's just a great way to, here's a completed idea in your hands. And when you're looking at a book, you're forced a little bit more to focus on it, or you can revisit it, or it's not something that shows up in your feed, and then you forget about it half a second later. And then you can't even go back to find it again, or you can't remember where you saw something. So like putting something out, that was physical.

And same deal with doing a print photo show or something like that. It's something you can look at it, you can you can stand close to it, you can feel it in a way. And that was something that I really, really enjoyed doing. I mean, like there's people who are still doing digital shows, and there's still people who are doing like FaceTime photoshoots and stuff, that breaks my brain. I have no interest in that. But again, that's probably me just being stubborn or ignorant or both. 

WH: I feel similarly. Actually my local dark room, Dark Room Detroit, is doing a projection-based show. So yeah, they've been doing... They have like a high quality projector, and they've just been projecting it on the outside of the building. Because they're in Detroit. You've been to Detroit, right? 

DB: I haven't. 

WH: Okay. So it's a very flat city in a lot of ways. It's a lot like... To me, it's a lot more like Philadelphia or Chicago than say New York.

So the darkroom is just in a house on the street, because that's where a lot of things are. And they just project on the wall. And so they'll rotate through the images from the show. So I thought that that was a pretty neat.

DB: See, I like stuff like that. That's cool.

WH: Yeah. It was a lot of fun. 

DB: I'm sure there's stuff like that going on. I've done a couple digital shows in a way, that it was just more or less a convenience thing. There's a really cool, I mean, they're still around, but company called... On Canal was the project, but it's hosted by a gallery in New York called Wall Play. And I forget how they found my stuff. I think actually reached out to them about possibly hosting a space for a release party back a number of years ago. Instead, they're, "Oh, do you want to actually just show your work? We're actually putting a fashion week thing together."

The first year basically the whole project was on Canal Street. They would take some of those like abandon or kind of like shoddy, knockoff marketplace shops, and turn them in art spaces. And they hosted them for smaller designers, and different kinds of people like selling their cool artwork and things like that. And then they had a digital one where they had literally my No Invite series on three different LCD like neural screens that like rotated the stuff. And that stuff's cool. 

And that's just because I mean, it's nice to have that. And it's pretty low cost for everybody. I didn't have to pay for prints. I literally handed them a flash drive, and they just put it up. And so it depends. There's definitely some cool ways to do a digital show. And I think the projection one is awesome, because that's so... Anything public art is pretty cool, especially something that's not usually as easily as a public art is like photography, unless you're making a bus poster or something or a bench sign or a bus stop sign. So it's nice to see, I like things like that, that aren't advertisements. Anything that is in a public sphere, that's not an advertisement, all for it. 

WH: Makes a lot of sense. Is that something that you are going to be working on doing? Do you have anything in the works right now that's going to be coming up? I know with winter settling in, it's going to be a difficult space... I'm thinking about here. So I live in Ann Arbor. And the downtown, it's difficult for people to spend a lot of time outside. But also, we have the University Art Museum, we have a couple of cultural museums, we have a couple of art galleries downtown. And so I know that they're going to be looking for different ways to engage people, even just if they're passing through. And so I'm curious if that's something that you are planning to do, hoping to do. 

DB: I mean, I don't have anything in the works yet. The focus, honestly, it's been... I hate to say it, but the lockdown and this pandemic stuff, it hasn't been good for inspiration, innovation. I have felt so uninspired. It's been tough. And like I said, a lot of my friends have felt the same way. It's you have all this time, but there's no energy. And it's been a bummer. And I tried to really shake myself out of it. And that's how this new book has come together. And it didn't really come together until the end of, I guess it's the end of September, early October, when things opened back up again. But I took the time when we were under... I mean, we're still under lockdown. I think we're going to be forever be under lockdown. It's so depressing. 

But it was, I took the time to rediscover my neighborhood again, for the first time since I'd moved here almost five years ago. When I first moved here, I didn't really have a lot of clients yet. And I was relying on working for some friends who are other photographers, who I was assisting with. But I would have days where there was nothing to really do. So I'd go out and take a walk. And I'd go explore the next city over, next town over, and just walk through my neighborhood. And then I finally, four years later, so had that time back on my hands again, and would try to go out and rediscover. So there's a lot of photography. 

The last seven books, I did were all portraits. So they were very heavily reliant on being with other people. And my camera has a fixed 35-millimeter lens, and I'm shooting headshots with it. So I'm literally... I have to be like two to three feet away from somebody. So not having that anymore, I've had to like switch gears. And it felt very odd. It was a different trial and different tests towards... And a lot of it was just I feel like I needed to be creating in some way. Not that it's like a primal urge for me necessarily, like some tortured artists can be.

But it was just I feel like I got to do something. Like I got to... I took a lot of photos. And a lot of stuff didn't make it to the new book. But the biggest thing I think was right before the pandemic happened, I got a job that ended up not actually happening but I've gotten an advance for that. And I bought a new laptop, because I needed a new laptop. And then I opened a new credit card when I bought a new laptop, and got all the introductory travel rewards. And then lockdown happened and all of a sudden it's useless. I can't go anywhere. And that was super frustrating, and I had a relatively new car that I also couldn't go anywhere with, for the most part. 

And I just felt really canned, cabin fever, and just real antsy to go somewhere. And finally in September, New England opened up there, just to lock everything down again. But they opened up for a brief moment in time. And I very fortunately got an artists grant from Jersey City, which is awesome, like a COVID relief grant. And with that, and my travel rewards, I was able to book like a two week road trip up through New England. So I was in Cape Cod, Boston, Bar Harbor, Maine, and went around Acadia. And then I went down to Portland, Maine, and then stayed a couple days at my friend's house in northern Massachusetts. And it was just a great way to go out and feel homesick for the first time in months and months. So that was like a big thing. And I went out, and I'm in new places so I'm taking photos and documenting, and it was really cool. There were certain parts like when I was in Acadia, it was very moody and foggy. So visibility sucked. But it generated these real moody photos. 

But then I originally was like, I want to do like a book maybe, on my trip to New England. But then after I got the photos back, there wasn't... There's great stuff in there. But it's not... It didn't tell the right story. And I was like, "Maybe I'll do something that just encapsulates everything I've been photographing since March." And that's what led to the the new book called Cruel Summer, which I think describes it pretty well. And it's funny, every time I mention the title to somebody, they all have a different reference point from it. Like certain people reference the Kanye West mixtape, or the Taylor Swift song, or the Ace of Base Cover of the Bananarama song, or falsely attributed Ace of Base, but it's a Bananarama reference, to put that on the books.

WH: Unequivocally a Bananarama reference. 

DB: Yeah. We got to show some respect to Bananarama. But yeah, it was actually a bear to lay out. Because a lot of the stuff taken around the summer, in my neighborhood, bright colors. I used a lot of films in different ways. I messed around a lot with ASA adjustments and things like that. So I was shooting a lot of films purposely overexposed in a way, which I think is actually a good trick for people out there. If you're using like cheaper films and things like that. It gets rid of that graininess or the muddiness of cheap film, if you expose for the shadows or so. I usually shoot it like a stop over. So a lot of stuff is shot like Ektar 100 shot at 50. One of my favorites is Kodak Gold, which is 200 speed shot at 100. And it's beautiful. Especially on a nice sunny day, you get that real warm tones and warm sunlight look. So I was just messing around a lot with that. 

I even took out my T5 with a light leak, and shot a roll through that. Still has a light leak. I was hoping it magically would just disappear like it magically arrived. So it was just a lot of experimentation with really no expectation. Just go out and shoot, and it started with there was also like 50 photos, I don't ever see the light of day of me taking a picture in the mirror every day with a little post-it note with a number in the corner. And then it got beyond like day 50, and I thought this is too much. So right now we'd be on like day 190 or something, and it'd just be a waste of film. But just taking long walks around the neighborhood and things. But putting it together, now balancing these really colorful photos mixed with some of the more moody stuff I took up in Maine, and things like that. 

Laying it all out and trying to make it make sense or tell a cohesive story, was tough, it was a lot tougher than I thought. Because a lot of times when I'm laying out No Invite, there's a lot of different... And I pride myself on my spreads. But there's a lot more elements that you can use to play off each other. So for instance with portraits and things, you have color, you have background, you have gesture. And usually with those two, you can find a difference between photos and you go, "This guy is carrying a blue umbrella, and this woman's wearing a blue dress, and there's like an orange pop in both," and they can make sense together as a spread. And then if someone's also walking with a similar gait, you can match it up with a mirrored photo, or even just like a background, if you've ever shot in the same location, and they have a similar like blue wall. 

And laying this out, like I said, it was just... They're mostly landscapes or street shots, and trying to find similarities that go beyond just being photographed in the same place is tough. And then especially, there's some tonal shifts in the book that in certain points remind you that there's still a pandemic happening in some cases. So trying to make those transitions, it goes from bright to dark, and then it ramps back up to bright again towards the end. But trying to lay it out in a way that made sense like that narratively, was one of my tougher expectations, or tougher challenges during all this, I guess. 

WH: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm trying to absorb all of that. That's- 

DB: ... a lot. 

WH: It sounds like it was a lot to experience and produce. 

DB: And it was different. Like I did a road trip book. Back in 2015, I went on a road trip with a woman I barely knew, at the time, who we're now good friends, mainly because we spent 10 days together in a car. She was relocating from the east coast to Oregon. And she basically posted something like, "Hey, does anyone want to cross the country with me?" So I got to drive someone else's car across the country. And that's a whole story. It's a whole thing. But I did a book called Highway Hypnosis. And that was a book I put together in 2015, and it became... That was crossing the country, that was also shooting mostly landscapes and things like that. But also, I had someone to put in the frame. So they're mainly landscapes, but there's still a subject somewhere in it. 

And this recent road trip was solo, which was awesome. It was amazing. But there's, it's mainly landscape. And there's some other friend shots and things like that. I got together with friends over like Fourth of July. So there is still some humanity in the book. There's some real actual people in it. But it's brief slices. But yeah, it was tough to go through between those things, for sure. 

WH: And it sounds like you really are trying to weave, as you said, a narrative through these images that really do have a variety of techniques and film, all-color. 

DB: Yes. 

WH: I don't think I've ever seen a black and white photo from you. 

DB: I haven't shot a black and white photo in probably almost 10 years now. 

WH: Wow. 

DB: Yeah. I don't know. It's just not how my brain works. I know people who shoot exclusively black and white, and their work is incredible. I like black and white photography. It's just not how my brain works. I see everything in color. And I see everything, I feel like the color adds a lot of narrative, a lot of I guess narrative, I guess story to my photos. Like it's part of it. I think sucking the color out of it takes a certain characteristic away from my work personally, other people obviously, in a lot of cases leans towards beauty. But I think shooting color sometimes it's actually a little harder because it's like another thing you have to worry about. But- 

WH: You can abstract away. When you shoot black and white, you're able to abstract away the scene a little bit. It's an interpretation of what you're seeing. 

DB: Yeah. And a lot of my work, I guess technically would fall into documentary. I me, they're snapshots. There's not much editing done to them. There's not much interference done to them. 

WH: I’m sure that you've heard this before, but your work reminds me a lot of Stephen Shore. Yeah. I was recently looking through American Surfaces for the first time, which I hadn't looked at before. But I think stylistically there's a lot of surface similarities there. Like he used the Rollei 35 and a flash and color film. And I think that the Yashica series with a flash and color film, like you can make a lot of comparisons there.

But I think it goes beyond that. I am no photography scholar, I am not an expert in the field, but to me and my relatively naive point of view, Shore really is viewing it, he is looking at the world with a very specific point of view. And he's really trying to capture everything from the color and the form together. And I think that that is a very similar approach to what I get from your photos, especially the non-portrait work. I mean, I definitely get that as well from the portrait work. But I think it's portraits. They're not easier. But you're working with a different set of parameters. Our brains look for faces, we like faces. And that changes how you're composing an image. 

DB: Yeah. And I think also with portraits, too, you have the added benefit of the energy that they're transferring back to you. And our human bodies mimic that a lot. That's actually something that's been a real funny, psychological takeaway I've had recently. When I was in college, or at least community college, I really loved taking some psychology and sociology classes. And probably if it didn't require so much schooling, that might have been where my life went into that field. But it's always something that's really piqued my interest, and really, I think, consciously or subconsciously driven a lot of my work is just the human, just, what's the word? I don't know. Just society and personal things.

And a lot of that I've noticed when I've been working with a new portrait company, which has been a lifesaver lately, because I used to do a lot of event work, and that was my bread and butter. Not much events happening right now. I've been doing some portrait work with a company. So it's been a lot of like family stuff, and not anything I'm particularly super inspired by. But it's fun work, and it's rewarding work. But when I first started back shooting again, was back in August, when things like open back up again. And it was my first time shooting with a mask on. And not being able to relay my smile back to them, was such a handicap that it's so hard to like a barrier to cross. And they realize how much energy transference is from them mimicking you. And it's really interesting. And I mean, that's the thing with portrait work in general is, you can manipulate your subject by acting a certain way. You can't get much interaction back from a landscape. So you're really... You lose that extra variable or that extra element. So you really have to focus on things like light and composition, because you're not getting that human element back. So they really have to speak for a lot of that's to go beyond that, because you don't have that easy thing to help. 

And that's something I'm fairly critical a lot about some street photography and things, and there's so much street photography out there that is just terrible, it's just very mundane. I really love Garry Winogrand, and things like that. And that's really humanistic, really bordering on surreal. I like Daniel Arnold a lot. I think he's fantastic. And he's somebody who shoots all color, which is pretty rare for street photography. But it's capturing those weird surreal moments of the human world that I think is what makes street photography so great. And there's so many people who just like take a picture of a man with a briefcase and they're like, it's street photography. 

WH: There's a person there in the street. There you go. Street photography. 

DB: But yeah, people who are able to bring out the surreal... Another one I really love is Chris Maggio. He's been really getting some cool gigs lately. He photographed the Lysol factory. And it was incredible. And his stuff is very simple. It's very like hard flash. I think for the longest time he photographed everything on a little Sony Cybershot.

That's part of the reason I like shooting on film and on this little point and shoot. Obviously I have the ability to use a full DSLR or SLR or a bigger camera, but I like working within parameters. I like giving myself a set of restrictions., and then having to work within them. And by giving myself shooting with a camera, I'm shooting at a fixed focal range, I can shoot with flash or without. And then I can choose what film goes into it to give me the result I want. 

And now I mean, I've been working with these cameras for long enough that I can look in my mind of, if I put this film in, it's going to give me a certain thing. And if I put it this flash, it's going to give me a certain amount of contrast. And it's become second nature a little bit. And that's something I always recommend to the people who asked me about where to start, and I said, "Just shoot with as many cameras and as many films as possible, and then just build this mental database of how things will look in certain conditions." And it takes a long time, it takes a long time. But the best way to do it is just go out and shoot whatever you can get your hands on. 

WH: Film doesn't give you that instant feedback the way digital does, but it does still give you feedback. 

DB: And you can still feel that. And I think that's another reason I like it. It's not doing delayed gratification, I feel like it's becoming less and less a thing. Like everyone is so obsessed with instant gratification, and they want to immediately take a photo and see it, and then throw it into an editing software and then immediately get it online, and then immediately get the serotonin boost of getting likes back. And the attention spans are only getting shorter. I mean, you could see it everywhere, including like the news cycle. It's universal at this point. So the idea of taking a photo, and then at the minimum usually, having to wait a week from you clicking the shutter, in the best case scenario to then having the photos back, you develop... I think this goes back to where I talked about just the importance or the weight behind it. And I feel like it's one of those things, where having to wait that time, you have time to sit with it a little more, or you have time to build anticipation. 

If I were to walk out and take a picture on my digital, and then I come home and then immediately look at it on my computer, it wouldn’t be as good as I thought it would be. And then there's stuff I shot from going through like stuff I shot in college. And it's like, "Oh, no, this was good." Like, I just hated it at the time, because it wasn't what I wanted, or I didn't have a chance to look at it with fresh eyes. I think having that gap between the time it takes to process film, or the time it takes you to finish a role, you are able to look at it a little clearer later. And I think that's important. And I think a lot of people are going to probably have stuff on their camera rolls that they deleted, that they probably will miss in five years. 

And again, like I said, that's me being stubborn about digital photography in general. And like I said, it's a tool, but I have a mental block on being able to picture it as having an importance, which is stupid. Because I guarantee you, there's a lot of people who probably look at my work and don't even know it's film. So, all this is just 100% for me and my idiosyncrasies. So it's all for not essentially. 

WH: That makes sense. I honestly, I think you could have told me that, "No," that it was shot entirely on an iPhone, and I would have been, "Oh, yeah, absolutely, I can totally see exactly what you mean."

DB: And I mean, that's what it comes down to. And anyone who's looking to create, and has hung up on the gear, just create. First and foremost, just do what you want to do, make the work you want to make, and don't get hung up on the process. It's just that for me shooting on a 30-year old piece of plastic, is the process that works for me. And I don't recommend it. 

WH: I always make the analogy that some people paint with watercolor, and some people paint with oil paint, and some people draw. And they're all making images, but they're following whatever process works best for them. And I think photography is very much a similar approach. I think it's fun to get involved in the process, and to really think about it. And film has a very specific hands-on process, if you want it to. Which I particularly enjoy. Like after we're done here. I'm going to go down to my darkroom and do a print session for a little bit.

DB: That's awesome. I never fell in love with the darkroom. I did some of it in high school. But it was never something I really got into. Even my father, growing up he had a darkroom. He was an amateur photographer, I suppose, or he was a hobbyist. And he had a darkroom in my grandma's basement and things like that. And I just never fell in love with the process. I understand it. I mean, if someone who loves routine and the ceremony of things, it's just not something that clicked with me. And I have a ton of friends who do home developing, and they do home color developing, which is insane to me. But it's just I guess part of it comes with me doing, shooting a lot of color is that, if I shot black and white, maybe I'd give it a shot. But the whole process of developing color at home is rough. 

WH: I've been told by so many people that it's even simpler, because they use the sous vide to keep the chemicals at exactly the same temperature. 

DB: Yeah, there's a really good new innovations have come up that made it easier. Because yeah, temperature control is key. 

WH: Nonetheless, my mental model of what color developing is like is so different from black and white, that I just don’t know.

DB: Yeah. It's almost probably better to start fresh. 

WH: Exactly. 

DB: I mean, there's some like local labs that I've been using. And it's awesome that there's like new labs that are popping up, which is incredible. But I would be really bummed if I went out and shot a roll of film, and then went home to try to develop it myself. And then it was ruined. And then I only have myself to blame. I don't know if I need that mental torture. 

Again, that's the risk of shooting film in general. There was one time I was at a coffee shop, shooting the shit with some friends. And a kid came in who was, I think he was 18 or 19, but he's a cool kid who hung around a bit. But he asked to see my camera, and then he opened the back on it. And then was, "Oh, I didn't know. I've literally never touched a film camera." It ruined the roll, but there wasn't too much on it. But it happens. 

WH: Apparently the XPan is one of those cameras where it winds all the film out when you first load it, and then it winds it back in as you go. 

DB: I like that. 

WH: Yeah. That seems like a little bit of extra safety. 

DB: I'm trying to think of one. You know that camera that's really, really thin? It's like a black street photography camera. 28 millimeter. 

WH: The Ricoh GR? 

DB: Ricoh. Yeah. That does the same. It winds everything out, and then winds it back in. And it's smart. I don't know why they all don't do that. 

WH: It seems like a little bit of a safety procedure in a way. 

DB: I could see where it would be good and where it'd be bad. But it's also affected my life in both ways where you're shooting, you're shooting, and then the roll is over. And then you have to wait for it to rewind. But I've also been there where I've had to put out a roll back in real quick and then fire off a shot. So there's no real... I guess, the faster the winder, the better. My Contax T2 winds really fast. And that's nice. 

WH: I don't want to get like too obsessed with equipment. But I'm always curious, because my personal view on it is that the equipment that someone chooses influences how they're creating their images. They're choosing that equipment for a reason. And so I don't want to focus solely on that. But I'm still curious. So you said you use the T5 with the light leak for this book, among other things. I'm curious, what else you use for the new book, in terms of point of view. You seem to use like generally a wider point of view. So I'm guessing somewhere in the 35 range. 

DB: So the T5 with the light leak, I'm not sure any photos made it into the book from that roll. Maybe one, maybe two at the most. But I mean, I mainly carry the cameras for convenience. And that's the same thing that started with the whole Rangefinder diaries thing. I hate carrying around a big, bulky camera. So having something that I can have on me most of the time, with as little effort as possible, is one of the biggest keys. Obviously, my gear has evolved into finding the best, more or less, camera that fits in those needs. 

I've had probably five Olympus Stylus epics, and I've never paid more than $10 for one. And they've all come from the thrift store. I used to have one in the car. It would just rot in the sun all day, because I had four of them, and I almost gave one away to a girl. She didn't have a film camera and I said, "Here you go. Take this." And now they're worth hundreds, which is insane. But they were just a super tiny small camera with a decent lens. The flash on them isn't too great, but for portraits at least. It just evolved from what's the best camera that will fit in my pocket. 

I've had some T4's that were not great, like focus wise, but they’re plastic cameras. But then I have some that are sharper than my digital camera. So it sucks that it varies so much, but when you find a good copy it's good. So for this book, yeah, shot mostly with the T4. And then I also shot a bit with the Contax G2, which I don't take out very often. But it was nice to have it out again. I took it out a little bit during quarantine around town, but then I hadn't had it a lot on the road trip. So I shot a lot of the landscape landscapes with it. That's a camera. I think I love that camera. It's beautiful. It's probably one of the most like ergonomic film cameras ever. It's very beautiful. The 45 millimeter lens is actually one of the sharpest 35 millimeter camera lenses ever made. It's bananas. So I've been using that. 

But that came for me loving Rangefinder stuff. When I first started the Rangefinder Diaries, I had a little Canonet QL17 which is a beautiful camera, really cool, really sharp, fantastic. It's a 40mm f/1.7 lens. But that one, the light seals on them are all junk, and that camera had light leaks on every roll I shot. It looked different and cool at the time. That project started with me just documenting what's around me.

But from there obviously the rangefinder goal is a Leica. So I had a Leica M6 for a while but I just didn't shoot with it that much. And then I bought a Contax G2 which is technically, mechanically a rangefinder. It is just an autofocus rangefinder that uses rangefinder technology but automated, which is awesome. And then from there, that fit my shooting style a lot better than the Leica. So I eventually got rid of the Leica, which I wish I hadn’t now because the prices have about doubled since when I sold it like five years ago. But the G2 is an automatic camera, it shoots aperture priority. It's autofocus, I think it's just a big thing, because so much of my work is more snapshot. It's very quick, it's very in the moment. And it's more about capturing the moment, than creating it, I think defines a lot of my work in general.

For Cruel Summer, the G2 was something I'd have around me. That would be on a strap, and I'd have the little Yashica in my pocket. I sent out a couple proof copies of the book digitally to some friends for their ideas. And they would go, "Well, these two photos and spread their color balance is slightly off." And I'm like, "Well, that's because this one was shot on the Yashica using Portra 400. And this one was shot on the G2 but it was on Gold at 100. But it was a little underexposed." Again, like I said about the mental database, you start to learn all those idiosyncrasies of the films and the cameras, and you can tell just by the contrast pattern, what this was shot on. That just comes with doing it a lot, and shooting roll after a roll of film. 

But again, try what you can get your hands on and find what works for you. I've had almost every, what would be now coveted, pro-compact camera at this point, everything essentially but the Contax T3, one day maybe. But I've had almost all of them. And I've sold off a lot of them, because I discovered what works for me, I discovered what fits my shooting style, and have pared things down, but not by much. Usually it's selling something to buy another Yashica that I keep waiting in the wings for my other one to break. 

WH: Yep. That makes perfect sense. I picked up a Fuji Klasse W over the summer.

DB: Very nice. 

WH: Love it. Huge fan. 

DB: Those are awesome. I probably personally would go for the S, because I don't shoot that wide generally. 35mm, I think is my perfect focal length. 

I had the Klasse... I had the Rollei version of Klasse, the AFM, the 35 AFM I think it was called, the silver one, and that was the older model where it had the dial on the front wasn't exposure compensation. It was focus, which was really stupid. The camera is super sharp. And then I tried shooting it in like a club or somewhere or venue at night, and for some reason the LED, the focus LED in the viewfinder was so bright, that in dark situations it would blackout the viewfinder. And it also didn't have infrared focusing. It had the focus assist light. And for some reason with that camera, I always had Fuji 1600 film in it, and I was always using it at night.

WH: Fuji 1600, I have never shot. I was recently asked, "If you would bring back any film, what would be it be?" And I was like, "Probably Fuji 1600 if only so that I can shoot it, and try it at least once without paying an astronomical amount." 

DB: Yeah, it's stupid that they got rid of it. Fuji, I'm convinced hates their film customers. They don't treat them very well. I'm mainly a Kodak shooter. But the Fuji stuff was great. 1600 was cool just because it was the only color 1600 out there for the most part. I think I might have a roll or two in the freezer still. 

WH: Nice. Find the right opportunity for that. 

DB: Exactly. Yeah. Maybe next paid gig that wants me to shoot film in a bad situation, I'll bust it out. And then I could charge them for it. 

WH: Yeah, that's a special part. Today... So you are a working photographer, you have a client list as long as my arm. How often do they ask you to shoot film? Is that something that they're interested in? 

DB: Sort of. And you have to convince them. Like I said earlier, my bread and butter mostly is event work and things like that. And like the stuff I'm doing now for the portrait company, it's volume work, essentially. So that stuff, they're not looking for film. But there's been stuff where people will hire me based on my No Invite work, who wants to reproduce that style look. That way, usually, I'll actually shoot digital and film. But I'll recreate the film work on digital in a way. And that's a way to really keep our directors happy, in a way, because they usually don't like to trust that you're getting the shot. So I sometimes will bring along my Fuji X100T. That has a very film look to it, and you can give them the right idea. 

That's also good, because there's certain situations where you need something more than 100 speed film. So I do both. But again, I guess what a lot of people are a little apprehensive about is to just trust 100% in film. But it depends on the client, it takes the right client, and it takes the right expectations. It's really important to set proper client expectations, and letting them know, you shoot film, it's not only going to be more expensive, but you're also going to get less back. But you weigh those pros and cons. And like I said, not many clients will actually go for it. But the ones that do, will understand why. So client expectations are huge. Finding the right client is huge. 

I've shot some weddings on film, or at least hybrid. That's always a lot of fun. But yeah, I think it's tough. I mean, the goal eventually would be, I'd love to be hired by someone to shoot some event or some fashion spread or something on film. And using that No Invite work as leverage for that creative work. I really love what Daniel Arnold's gotten to do or like Cass Bird where they're shooting the Met Gala, like a street photo. It seems awesome. I would love to do that stuff. I photographed outside of the Met Gala, and still got some really cool stuff. But being able to go inside and then to shoot it, like you're on the street, is awesome. So one day, that could be the goal, for sure. I think the fact that places like The New York Times and things like that are hiring photographers who shoot on film to shoot stuff in their style specifically, is awesome. I think that's super important to be able to get hired to shoot in your style, not to recreate someone else's style. I think that's a big issue.

But having that creative control is important. And I feel like unfortunately, it's getting a little harder to find. But all my other work, I'm fortunate enough that I'm able to make money from photography, that it helps pay for me to do my artistic pursuits side of things. So it's not a day job. It's just shooting wedding work to pay for fashion work. 

WH: That makes a lot of sense. I've started doing some photoshoots with a couple friends in town, and I'm pulling out the big boy, the GW 690. This is the first one. And I have the GSW690III which is the 24mm equivalent focal length, which I don't use for people. It does not make anyone look good. And it can't focus closer than a meter.

DB: That's the other reason I like point and shoots, and I can focus from a foot away, which is incredible. But do you shoot mostly medium format? 

WH: Honestly, no. I shoot mostly 35 millimeter. Well, at this point, I think of myself as a 35-millimeter shooter, but looking at lately what I've been doing, it's mostly medium format. Yeah.

DB: That's awesome. Do you have a preferred film? I'm flipping this interview around. 

WH: Yeah, no kidding. Put me in the hot seat. I like... so I'm a little bit frustrated with Kodak over how they've handled a lot of their social media response to Black Lives Matter and protests. That said, I do really like Tri-X. And I also really like T-Max P3200. I love putting T-Max P3200 in the Fuji Klasse W. It works really well and it's good for just general purpose, "Oh, hey, someone's over" photos, which obviously has not been happening as much lately.

I work full time as a data engineer. But when I'm not doing that, and that's paying for the film, I've been popping out the GW quite a bit. Because I really have discovered a love of environmental portraiture through using that camera. You put it at F4, and it is great. It isolates the subject, but you still have enough depth of field that you're not going to miss focus most of the time. And the negatives are just so enormous. It's so nice. And then a friend recently 3-D printed me a panoramic 35-millimeter mask for it that I’m giving him feedback on.

DB: That's cool, exciting stuff.

WH: To come back to what you were saying about Daniel Arnold and the Met Gala, and that work, I think I am always thrilled to hear... I loved his piece in The New York Times this summer, where he did the photos, and they had a writer do the words for it, and they did this collaborative piece. I think that there is an integrity of vision from the editing side when they are looking for people to do work like that, because it's their work, it's their style, it's their voice. I think that will help move the overall political conversation in a more positive direction. And fingers crossed, they'll be hiring you to do that in the near future.

DB: Let's see. 

WH: I am wary of fanboying too much, but I am a huge fan of No Invite. I'm not kidding when I say I see a big connection with Stephen Shore. And American Surfaces has done a lot to change how I think about photographing people, and how you capture that moment.

DB: It's funny to hear you compare my portrait work to Stephen Shore. Shore is known for being landscape. Huge compliment. Thank you.

WH: Have you read through Uncommon Places? 

DB: No, I don't think so. 

WH: So we did a book club. We do a book club periodically with Frozen Wasteland. We'll do a Zoom Chat together, and we'll talk about a given book. So the most recent one was Uncommon Places and Steven Shore's portraits in there are completely underrated. I think people are very focused on the 8x10, taking the photos of the streets and the cars and everything. But the portraits that he put into that book are unbelievable. I think they really show his breath as a photographer. That's gotten me really interested in the different ways to approach the portrait.

Similarly there’s Tariq Tarey in Columbus, Ohio. I'm also always a fan of Midwestern photographers. He does 4x5 portrait work, and he does a bit of fashion, but he also is doing this really long-term project on refugees in the United States. And he does these absolutely breathtaking, 4x5 large format portraits. But they're a very different kind of portrait, a little bit more Avedon, and a little bit less street portrait. And so I'm really interested in all of these different ways that you can get the portrait even with less common ways like No Invite.

DB: Yeah. And because it's a little less common, it's a lot harder to market. That's something I've always found myself in unfortunately. Falling between the gaps between things. And I haven't tried to pitch it in a while, not since Volume One, when it was still very much at the proof of concept stage. But I took No Invite the Printed Matter in New York, to see if they want to carry it. And they basically said, "We don't have anywhere to put it. Like we don't have a fashion section." And a lot of their photography stuff doesn't focus on portraits, just like you said, for the most part. And it falls in that gap. And it's the same deal with even the production of the book. Like it's not a Xerox machine, it's not black and white, it's not made on a Kinkos copier. So like the people at Eight Ball don't give a shit. And it's also not quite as nice as being like a bound book or like a hardcover or put out by Passion or Rizzoli. And so it misses the mark there, too. 

So even in that aspect, it's like not skinny enough, but it's also not pro enough. And it even pushes a little bit beyond being considered a zine, outside of it being smaller format and self-published. So because of that, it actually falls in this like Middle of Nowhere purgatory. I wanted to do a 10-year anniversary retrospective for The Rangefinder Diaries. But the galleries all just wanted to show the celebrity portraits for No Invite. But then also, selling portraits isn't easy, either, at least on a fine art market thing, because people have to know who's in the photo for the most part, or they have to have some relation to who's in the photo, and that stuff doesn't necessarily sell. 

So I've put myself in this like hole of unsellability. It's tough. But that's how I've always fallen on thing, like that's how I've always felt like when I was in the punk world of punk music, I was never punk enough, but also too punk for the normie. I don't know. It's so stupid. But I've always been like riding that line between that becomes just... It becomes a specific taste. But it's all I can do. Like it's I'm doing what I know how to do. I'm shooting what I know how to shoot. I mean, I've just been doing it now for so long. Whether that's good or bad, it is what it is. 

WH: So, back to the upcoming book to wrap up. Is there any blurb you want to give for it? What hasn't been said about the book that you want to make sure gets said?

DB: Yeah. So basically, I think it's just a abstracted form... Not abstract, but it's differing from the books I've been putting out or have been building lately, due to the fact that Fashion Week didn't even happen, and photographing people that you don't know is a taboo at the moment. So it's more or less me just creating for the necessity to create, to document what's been happening, to take photos to kill the time and the boredom, and rediscovering the things around me. I've been doing two books per year, and I wanted to keep that creativity flowing, because it is something that keeps me going. If you don't do the book this time, and then next time rolls around, I didn't do it last time. That momentum is important. I still have no idea how I'm going to market it, because it's not going to fit into what my Instagram has become. But hopefully people will dig that. 

But yeah, essentially, it's just been documenting the last seven months or so. I feel like it's important to document. And again, it feels good to do something different than what I've been shooting. It feels good to have to lay out something that's different than what I've been laying out. It just feels good to put something physical out into the world. The idea of that is a little selfish in terms of, I want this to be in the world so I'm going to create it. And I feel that most artists are selfish in general. But I'm going to do it because I want it to exist. So I'm going to make it exist. And that's how it is. 

And I'm not big on like the Kickstarter model. I order 100 copies, they go up for sale. And then sometimes I have boxes in my room. Up until the pandemic, I had a bunch of boxes in my room until I finally got bored enough to put them on a shelf. I always felt like I want 100 copies to be in the world, I'm going to print them up, and then whoever wants them can buy them. It's simple as that.

Chain question

“If there is a single photo story that you can work on in your lifetime, what would that be and how would you create your images for it?”

DB: This is a really tough one. I’ve always been interested in the Met Gala and loved how photographers like Cass Bird and Daniel Arnold have been able to photograph it in their own style. I would love to have the opportunity to photograph it in the style I’ve done my No Invite series. Close up portraits on the Yashica T4 or Contax T2 with flash using Porta 400 or Lomo CN400 film.

And for the next interviewee: Plan your perfect photo road trip.