My name is Ethan Moses, I have been shooting film since I was a highschooler. I have a very good friend to this day who taught me how to develop film in high school photo club, who drives me crazy, but I will be forever grateful for that small lesson which changed my life.
I worked as a photographer years ago, and quit that pursuit almost as long ago for more 'grown up' endeavors. These days I broker, design, and build industrial electromechanical machinery and devices for work, but I've not shaken the bug in all these years. I like to call my affliction camerabedies.
About a year ago, I was taken with the many potentials of 3D printing. I could make mounting blocks and registration gearing for potentiometer meters on a labeler for salsa jars on an industrial canning and bottling line, but also, I got up to some personal projects, which since eaten up much of my free time. I have built a few 4x5 cameras and photographic accessories and started a small company since then: CAMERADACTYL.com. I am not going to write about the technical aspects of producing cameras or starting a photo business here, I have done so in a few articles on EMULSIVE (here and here ). Here I just wish to talk a little bit about taking pictures.
I grew up in NYC and one of my very favorite things to do was just walk around for a day, basically from one pizza shop to the next with a dumpling place and maybe a subway in between, carrying my camera, waiting to be surprised by something. These were always my favorite days, and favorite pictures. I love taking pictures of things that surprise me, things I haven't seen before, things that make me chuckle. I used to say that I like taking pictures of verbs more than nouns, something happening, a scene, rather than an object.
These days I live in Albuquerque, NM. It's a car town, the pizza is bad, and there're no dumplings to speak of. I spend much of my limited adult free time exploring the mountains and canyons and semi ghost towns of this state and the southwest at large. No longer can I expect to find surprises around every corner, but I am still stunned by the landscape out here after all these years of living in the southwest.
I recently released a new hand held camera, the CAMERADACTYL OG 4x5, and took my new camera on a road trip with my girlfriend around the eastern and southern portions of the state. I also toted along a small pinhole camera (the 24Squared) from my friend Graham, who runs the Homemade Camera Podcast and the Frozen Photon Camera Company , where he makes small batch pinhole cameras and sells them on Etsy. I really enjoyed having a (relatively) giant camera capable of exceptional detail, and a (relatively) tiny camera that makes dreamy memories on little squares of 35mm film.
Even though I am deeply afflicted with camerabedies, and love cameras almost as much as pictures, I am not one of these people who needs to tell you how sharp my lens is, or how many megapickles I have scanned my film at. I am a firm believer that what makes a good picture is what you point the camera at. Sometimes I succeed at this, sometimes I fail.
Here are some pictures from the road trip, and a few pics of my camera gear.