This week as I reworked some galleries on my site, I ran across the Holga photo below. I immediately recognized that I had photographed the same truck at the same annual car show this past September. I guess I have a thing for flames.
2018 – Rolleiflex
2011 – Holga
Snow falls in front of the Student Building tower at IU Bloomington on Thursday, March 7, 2019. (James Brosher/Indiana University)
Snow falls near a sculpture of Herman B Wells in the Old Crescent at IU Bloomington on Thursday, March 7, 2019. (James Brosher/Indiana University)
Last week I photographed inside the FedEx Express Hub in Indianapolis for a weekend story in The Wall Street Journal about the booming U.S. economy. I left my house at 1:17 a.m. and arrived at the massive facility at the Indianapolis International Airport just before 2:30 a.m. I’ve been in a lot of factories over the years, but I had never seen anything like this. The subject for the story, James Wilson, is a material handler who uses a forklift to pack pallets of overnight packages into aluminum shipping containers to be loaded onto airplanes. Wilson’s work area is a ballet of forklifts playing three-dimensional Tetris. It kept me on my toes. I had my head on a swivel to make sure I wasn’t walking into the path of a forklift or getting in the way of the other workers. It was incredible to get a glimpse of the intricate process that goes on while most of us are asleep.
James Wilson, a FedEx material handler, uses a forklift to load a pallet of packages for shipment at the FedEx Express Hub in Indianapolis in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019. The jobless rate in the United States is near the lowest level since the 1960s, but gains are not being distributed evenly. (James Brosher for The Wall Street Journal)
James Wilson, a FedEx material handler, secures cargo netting over a stack of packages at the FedEx Express Hub in Indianapolis in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019. (James Brosher for The Wall Street Journal)
Earlier this month, I photographed Indiana University student Zaid Karabatak for a One Day/One Hoosier feature.
Indiana University senior Zaid Karabatak poses for a portrait in the Indiana Memorial Union on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019. (James Brosher/IU Communications)
A worker watches as a flooding Jordan River flows across Indiana Avenue near Franklin Hall at IU Bloomington on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019. (James Brosher/IU Communications)
My New Year’s resolution this year is to take more “personal” photos. In other words, I want to force myself to photograph more of my own daily life. The last couple years, I have gotten burned out at times to the point where I didn’t even bring a camera on family trips out of town. I started to view photography as work and therefore shied away from practicing it outside of work. I need to challenge myself visually more this year and continue to grow. One of the first tests of my resolution was my wife’s 30th birthday weekend. I dusted off camera and made a few pictures of a very fun weekend.
Kappa Alpha Theta fans rush the track after their team won the Women’s Little 500 at Bill Armstrong Stadium on Friday, April 20, 2018. (James Brosher/IU Communications)
Swimmers enjoy a day in the sun on Lake Ouachita, Arkansas on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018. (Photo by James Brosher)
After a few years of holding out, I finally relented and started posting non-iPhone work on my Instagram. I found I was often shooting things twice using both my DSLR and iPhone. Rather than continue this merely for some sort of Instagram purism, I started posting a wider swath of my work – film photography included – in September. This coupled with a heightened interest in my newly-repaired Rolleiflex meant I shot considerably fewer photos with my iPhone in 2018. One of my resolutions for 2019 is to shoot more day to day. This includes on my iPhone even though I’ve blasted through the “iPhone only” barrier on my Instagram. Below are a few of my favorite iPhone Instagrams from 2018. Thanks for looking. Please consider following me: @jamesbrosher.
Now that winter has arrived in Bloomington, I’m immediately thinking back to our warm summer. A few months ago, I received several rolls of film back from the lab. These rolls contained miscellaneous photos I had shot over the course of the summer from farmer’s markets, family visits and hikes at the lake. Here are a few of my favorites:
