Self Portrait thinking about Bob Kaufman, September 2022, 1 sec hand-held
I first held a camera in my hands at age 9. It was a Rollei, and it had a broken upper lens. Then came various Instamatics, a Speed Graphic, and a Nikon FM, which I still own. I loved art, and I spent large chunks of my free time in New York's museums and galleries. But I didn't think I could make visual art. Instead, I got involved with The Poetry Project, going to readings, taking workshops, writing, and giving a few (inconsequential) readings.
It took the purchase of a halfway decent Sony digital camera (RX-100 v5) and access to advanced digital darkroom software for me to realize that I could actually create something that I would want to see and show. I haven't looked back, and I haven't spent a day since without working on my photographs.
Currently, I shoot with a Ricoh GR iiix. It fits into my pants pockets, so I can take it everywhere. I 'develop' and modify my pictures with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop sometimes using a Wacom digital drawing pad. I use Topaz AI's suite of products to clean things up, and to enlarge small fragments cropped from an original images to a printable size.
etan.benami@gmail.com
@etan.benami
347 . 844 . 0071
Thank you!