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Tyler James

@firsthandaccount

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Minnesota 📍
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Free Iran 🇮🇷

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One week with the Ricoh GRD1, a camera with a cell phone sized sensor that came out in 2005. I am in love. Mine unfortunately has that rare sensor manufacturing tolerance defect where the sensor and lens planes are not aligned, one edge of the frame is always extremely blurry even when stopped down. Luckily I found a great Ricoh GRD2 on eBay and ordered that as well lol. It can only handle a 2GB SD card, and it takes 12 seconds to write a single RAW photo to the card. I use it in JPG only in the B&W mode in camera. I’m treating it as a sketchbook, a stream of consciousness camera that I can bring everywhere in my pocket and instantly make a photo when I see something. For $180 bucks this little guy packs a punch and I am instantly in love with these Ricoh cameras.

#ricoh #ricohgr #ricohgrdigital by @firsthandaccount

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a month ago

Finally starting to make some photographs again. I’ve been resting, enjoying the fruits of my labor, spending time with those I love, and catching up on sleep from being in survival mode for my entire life. It’s also been one of the hottest summers I’ve seen in a long time, which is one of the things I was trying to escape when leaving Houston lol. Life is truly one of the craziest things we get to experience in this realm, but I’m so grateful for it. Love hard and treat each day like a gift. Great things take a long time to build, but I promise they are worth it. by @firsthandaccount

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2 months ago

Some recent work I’ve made this summer. Decided to edit these in a darker style this time. I’ve been playing around with what I want to do with my personal photographic work, while healing my inner child, and also abandoning the room pleasing approach I’ve taken in my art making for years now. It’s time to finally let go of all expectations and stop performing for specific audiences and just make the work that makes me happy 😊 by @firsthandaccount

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3 months ago

When I was a kid I used to have my birthday parties at a place called The Roller Garden. They would turn on the black lights, play any song you requested, and give you endless fun dip. When I was living in Texas I threw a dart at the map and landed here at this spot that reminded me so much of the garden. After moving back home to Minnesota and searching for The Roller Garden, I realized it closed right around the time that I made these photographs. It was as if my subconscious knew that it had closed. by @firsthandaccount

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4 months ago

On 4/20 in 2018 I wanted to try concert photography and so I DM’d @skizzymars manager and asked if he could get me a pass to come. The opener for Skizzy was @olivertree. I was familiar with his music but after seeing his energy on stage I started to pay more attention to him. Have been a fem since. We lost a true creative today ❤️

#olivertree #rip by @firsthandaccount

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4 months ago

Neighborhoods in Texas 2022

#kodaktrix400 #woofermagazine #contemporaryphotography #texas by @firsthandaccount

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5 months ago

Last Friday I got to see my buddy Jonny who I haven’t seen since my MCAD days in 2017. He hit me up wanting to walk around some neighborhood and make photographs. He recently picked up photography and wanted to walk the neighborhoods he had seen in some of my work. I dropped a pin in a random spot in a random neighborhood and he was down. When we started talking it had felt like we had just seen each other the other day, and I was right back to MCAD in 2017. I’ve had so many friendships throughout the years where we haven’t spoken in years, then pick up right where we left off. If we’ve ever been friends in the past, just know my door is always open.

#contemporaryphotography #blackandwhitephotography #artphotography #contemporaryart by @firsthandaccount

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5 months ago

These are the last photographs I made in my grandpas house before he could physically not live there anymore and had to be put into an assisted living facility. His place was sold without me knowing and I never got to go back. The funny part is something in my gut told me that was the last time I would be there. by @firsthandaccount

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5 months ago

Texas, 2021 taken in Houston, Texas by @firsthandaccount

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5 months ago

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5 months ago

Photographs I made throughout Texas in 2022 by @firsthandaccount

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6 months ago

Scientifically, Albedo refers to the measure of light reflected by a surface. Snow, with its high albedo, bounces light into the night, illuminating what would otherwise remain unseen. In winter, this effect is heightened—streetlights glow longer, headlights scatter across frozen roads, and even the dimmest bulbs hold weight in the dark. This phenomenon serves as both a visual and emotional metaphor within this work, capturing the tension between illumination and obscurity, presence and erasure.

Made over six winters, entirely at night using ambient light and long exposures, these photographs exist in a suspended state between clarity and dissolution. A tire swing drifts in the cold. A playground lies buried in snow, emptied of the voices that once filled it. Christmas lights flicker against the weight of winter, their glow fragile and persistent. Each image is a record of stillness, of waiting, of time accumulating like frost.

This work is deeply rooted in personal memory. As a child, night was the only time I felt safe. In darkness, the world quieted, and I could move unseen, existing on the edges of things. Albedo reflects this relationship with night—not as an absence, but as a presence, a slow and patient light that reveals just enough while leaving space for what remains hidden. by @firsthandaccount

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6 months ago