About
Homepage → Shane Singh
Hi, my name is Shane. I've been doing photography for about 4 years. I started out mainly as a street photographer with a Nikon FM2 and mainly Black and White film. While doing street photography I really fell in love with Photography and New York. Street Photography really helped me grow, it forced me to get out of the house and to sometimes approach strangers and just be comfortable in and around crowds of people. I also learned a lot about photography this way too. Learning how to time a shot, how to balance light, moving around to find the right composition and even when I might want to use a specific lens. Now I blend what I learned on the street with my knowledge of studio lighting to make work that is a lot more produced and closer to my more specific visions.
Thank you so much for joining us. We're truly honored to have you here. To kick things off, can you tell us how you first got into photography?
I ended up taking an intro to photo class at my community college a few years back. I had always been curious about photography before that since I had never owned a camera and thought the class was the perfect excuse to try it out.
My intro to photo class was with an older photographer, Bob Rogers. I called him Mr. Rogers in my head, cuz it reminded me of the show. He was a very lax teacher, we didn't have a strict class format and our only task was to shoot a roll every week and try and get one good print off in the darkroom when we came in for class. He did see that I was extremely interested in learning and making better photos so he would often come watch me print or give me extra advice on how to fix the problems I ran into either in camera or in the darkroom. I think he kind of lit the spark in me for photography.
While wrapping up my intro to photo class my 2d design teacher, Ms. Coffey prompted me to submit work for a juried student show. I was hesitant since I felt like I had only been doing photography for less than a semester and many of the other photo students had been doing photography since high school or longer. I ended up putting up an image in the show, because she caught me printing in the darkroom while some of the faculty was judging the work for the show in the connected room. She insisted I show my work to Jules Allen, the faculty looking at the photo work.
I went over to Jules after much encouragement, and the enthusiasm he showed me after seeing my work turned the spark that Mr. Rogers gave me into a fire. He told me my work had raised the bar of the work he was looking at and after flipping through my photos for a little he chose one, a photo of two chefs in a kitchen preparing some pastries in a pop up at Bryant park. After he put my photo up on the wall he took down about five images. I had never felt so encouraged before but at the same time I felt kind of weird since some of those students were in the room and had seen their work get taken down. After that Jules encouraged me to take his advanced photo class in the coming spring. I did and after taking that class and hearing his encouragement I decided to go all in on photography.
What a charming story! Are you working on any projects at the moment? If so, would you like to share anything about them with us?
I am working on a few new projects. One of those being a refinement of my style. I have always loved the lighting, colors and texture in baroque and renaissance paintings and I have been trying to find ways I can tie that in with my lighting, environments and poses. I'm also working on a portrait project which I hope to use to show how connected we all are and how similar the experience of being a human is even though we live such completely separate lives and have so many unique and varied experiences.
You appear to be quite occupied. What was the inspiration behind these projects?
Over the last few years after making many new and close connections to various friends, my eyes were opened to how similar all our lives are and how we really all are in this together even when we think we are alone. We may be singular individuals but we all go through so much of the same that we should be able to empathize and care more for each other. My other goal with the Classical art is because I loved how those painters were able to guide your eye around their paintings and show you the things they wanted you to see. They really paid so much attention to expression and how people engaged with each other and that's what I really care about.
How are photographs utilized?
I use portraits in the series about people to connect with various written stories I gather from the people I make the portraits of. The stories are meant to share something that we can connect to without really knowing the persons and the portraits are meant to show you they're people just like us and as different as everyone may look we are all so similar.
Can you describe your creative process?
I usually create based on how I am feeling at a given time. That can be influenced by the weather or music I am currently listening to or even things happening on the street or the weather that day. I find that the images I make while feeling a particular emotion tend to be charged with even more feeling. It's a strange thing to explain, but it's what I see people gravitate toward when they talk about some of my work
Tell us about the equipment you use. Where did it come from, and what does the camera you use represent to you?
For 35mm I mainly use Nikon F series film cameras. I have a bad habit and I have collected quite a few different ones. My main one though is a Nikon F3, it feels great in the hand and can use all of Nikon's film lenses which allows me to use all of my lenses with it.
I recently acquired a Bronica ETR kit and have been absolutely loving it. I typically prefer a 6x6 medium format camera, the ETR however has helped me warm up to the 645 format. It posts to instagram with minimal cropping and can be fun to compose. The lenses it came with are also lovely. They are all quite sharp and have a natural softness towards the edges which really works for me because I tend to place my subjects in the center of the frame.
For me all of these pieces have a lot of tactility which make them incredibly fun to use. They also make great conversation pieces and are gorgeous to look at. If you're a fan of aesthetic cameras then you will definitely love these.
Do you have a favorite film, and if so, what makes it special to you?
I love Kodak Tmax 400, the way it renders tones really compliments the way I work in black and white. I really love a very contrasty, look and Tmax 400 handles the details in shadows extremely well. They can get very dark while still having a good amount of details.
How do you engage with the film development or enlargement process?
I typically develop my own black and white film, it can be a very relaxing process. I haven't printed in the dark room as much as I would like to lately but I absolutely love taking the time to make a good print. My printing process is incredibly slow and sometimes I will take me a day to really lock in one solid print but I will usually be very happy with the final result.
Do you still photograph in digital format? How do you perceive the differences between analog and digital photography? When do you choose one over the other?
I work digitally from time to time, typically when I need to get work done quickly or the work needs to be digital for client reasons. Sometimes working digitally can be much more practical and just makes sense. It is also so much cheaper than working with film so sometimes when I am a bit strapped for cash I will absolutely shoot digital.
For me there is a kind of sterile look to digital photos. They can often look too clean and too sharp and I find that removes all of the feeling from the work. Film on the other hand has a natural softness to it that I absolutely love, that and when combined with a good vintage lens just results in such a great look. Combining those with a great composition or interesting subject just makes it all that better. I also am a very tactile person so I love the feeling of using an analog camera. The way you can feel the winding and clicking of all the gears and springs just immediately puts me in a good mood.
To wrap things up, are there any artists, even outside of photography, who have greatly influenced your life and work?
Francis Bacon was the first artist whose work really had an impact on me. I remember seeing some of it for the first time in a class and just feeling so uncomfortable, I really did not like looking at it but there was something about it that kept pulling me back to it. Maybe it was the expressions of the characters or the textures or I would sometimes notice something new. Edward Hopper was also a huge inspiration to a lot of my street photos. The way he would depict various interactions between his subject and the compositions of the images. I also heard he made a quote once saying that he tries to depict images you couldn't really see in real life. I liked taking that as a challenge and I often look around at the real world trying to find places and moments that feel like they could be a Hopper painting.
Thank you so much for joining us, Shane! For more of his amazing work, check out his Instagram: @virt_obscura.