Chris Athanasiadis

Photos Over Books

I’d rather spend my time making photos then making a book. The idea that the photo book is the endgame is language of the boomer. Photos books are boring. I’ve bought dozens over the years. I never go back and look at them. I buy them to support the artist mainly. Maybe I’m in the minority that I’m not very inspired by photo books. If I don’t like looking at photo books from the greats, then why should I aspire to make one. I have no interest in them. I’d prefer to figure out a different approach to showing my work..if it even exists.

Journey From Raw to JPEG

I’ve gradually weened myself from shooting raw photos to only JPEGs. I initially heard about shooting small JPEGs from Eric Kim years ago, but I was too heavily influenced by basically everyone that says we should ALWAYS shoot raw. I dabbled in it a bit but never stuck with it. So now more recently I decided to dedicate myself to JPEG only. I haven’t shoot one raw photo in months and I have zero regrets. And even further, I went from large JPEGs to now only small JPEGs. At the end of every month, I transfer all my monthly photos to a hard drive. Here are the number of files and size for the last six months. September was my first full month shooting only JPEGs. And November was the first full month shooting only small JPEGs.

June 2023: 329 photos/12.23 GB

July 2023: 510 photos/10.24 GB

August 2023: 922 photos/9.33 GB

September 2023: 834 photos/5.45 GB

October 2023: 661 photos/2.8 GB

November 2023: 552 photos/ 1.05 GB

There it is, drastic difference between raw and JPEG.

Photography Works Anywhere

I can go anywhere in the world and make photos I like with my current style and workflow. I spent 20 minutes today on a bridge taking a bunch of photos feeling inspired. I pass over the bridge pretty often. No matter where you are in the world, around the corner is another 20 minutes of inspiration.

Go Heavy On The Sepia

Go big or go home. A slight color cast looks fine but a warmer photo is preferable for me.

Santa Monica – November 30, 2023

Road To 1,000 Sepia Keepers

I’m not sure if it’s useful or not to constantly think about the future but it is what it is. I’m thinking that after I get 1k keepers in high contrast black and white with sepia tone photos I’ll move on to another style. Sepia tone is the first of five color tone options on the Ricoh Gr. The second is red tone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black and white photo with red tone. So that will be next on the list. Thinking 1k keepers of all five color tones. Sepia, Red, Green, Blue and Magenta.