The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

I have been an active photographer for more than eight years now. It all began with the suggestion of a friend, who was swapping careers [music for photography]. Through his suggestion, I purchased a used Canon Ftb 35mm camera with a standard 50mm f2.8 lens. He also donated an old but still functional Graflex Crown Graphic II 4×5 camera, complete with Polaroid back, 6×9 and 6×7 roll film adapters, fifteen sheet film holders and a metal carrying case that looked like something from World War II. Eight years and Lord only knows how many cameras later, I’m still shooting, only now I get a little dividend in the end. Sometimes I miss the old days before photography and money clashed to make a mess of things!

Using my father’s darkroom in the basement I started off on a journey that would come to consume and direct my life from that point forward: the creating and capturing of images. In that time I have moved from the Midwest to the West Coast and now the East Coast. I have taken my camera on all of my journeys, documenting what lay before my eyes. And in the spirit of Rob’s gesture, I have since passed off that Graflex to a young and upcoming photography student I met in Madison.

This section of the blog is dedicated to photographs that are either outtakes of professional shoots or just early work that I’ve yet to publish. I thought it would make an interesting project to go back and revisit some of this work, much of it before I ever started getting paid to shoot. Much of the work will also be film scans as I have only been shooting digital since 2004.

I hope you will check back again soon as I will update this project from time to time. And as always, feel free to leave a comment or your feedback. Click here to view Retrospective.

Thanks - “M”…

view the retrospective