Rider’s Lens: Will Keating’s Black and White Film Photos
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In this installment of Rider’s Lens, we introduce the work of Will Keating, a passionate film photographer and the general manager of Rivendell Bicycle Works in San Francisco. He shares some inspiring words, a little of his riding philosophy, and a beautiful selection of grainy black and white images shot on film. Find it all here…
Words and photos by Will Keating
I’m Will. I’m 34 years old, from Los Angeles originally, but I’ve been living in San Francisco since 2009. I grew up skateboarding, and that influenced almost every direction my life has taken – in a good way, I think. I got into bikes when I moved to San Francisco, and they’ve permeated my brain and my life ever since. If Flann O’Brien’s world were real, I’d have morphed into a bicycle by now. I like steel, rim brakes, limit screws, and lugs.
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-1-2000x1340.jpg)
I ended up working at Rivendell after I was living in Haight Ashbury and working at RVCA, a surfwear store, about a block from my apartment. And a bunch of the staff were super into bikes; vintage road bikes at first, but then we got into ’80s touring and mountain bikes too. I found Rivendell because I wanted a huge frame to fit my long gams (96.5cm PBH), and they were the only company that made sizes that big. I quickly became an avid Blug reader (that’s what the Blahg was called back then), and Grant posted that they wanted a bikepacker (literally) in the Summer of 2012. I applied and didn’t even blink at the long BART commute because I was so obsessed. Ten years later, I’m still as obsessed, and I’m now the general manager. Everybody here knows exactly what they have to do, and everybody works so hard that the management part is easy. I still do a lot of customer service, I write the email newsletters, and I help with production stuff here and there. Rivendell turned me into an adult in the best way.
I’ve been around photography since I was a kid. I played around with disposable cameras and was an enthusiastic cell phone photographer in the golden pre-iPhone days. Both my parents were into photography – my dad has a medium format camera with movements so he can shoot architecture, and my mom worked as a professional photographer while I was in high school. Skateboarding too, especially once my friends started to get good, was photo-heavy, and although I was never the one to take the picture, I saw early on how much effort can be put into a single frame. My partner (pictured on her Homer) was deep into it too, so she’s been a good resource for darkroom questions and has turned me on to a lot of photographers that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Photography only started occupying a large part of my brain and time maybe five or six years ago when Grant gave me a Rollei 35. It’s such a fantastic camera – I wanted it because of how it looked, but then I realized how capable it is too. I loved the learning curve behind it; learning to scale focus, set exposure without a meter, and compose pictures that I actually liked was so satisfying. That last part gets harder and harder as time goes on; in the beginning, I was ecstatic just to get the first two things right. That was enough to hook me, but printing in the darkroom cemented photography as a major part of my life. I think of myself as a happy amateur and I’m okay with it.
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-33-2000x1353.jpg)
The photographers who inspire me most change all the time. I’m currently obsessed with Guido Guidi, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Janet Delaney, Mark Steinmetz, Dawoud Bey, Mimi Plumb (Walnut Creek legend!), and Robert Adams – always Robert Adams. And Henry Wessel too – I love him. Any Henry Wessel YouTube video gets me excited to go out and see what I can find. You can’t listen to him talk about photography and not want to go out and shoot; his enthusiasm is contagious. I’m jealous of everybody who had him as a teacher.
“Evidence” by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel is a photo project that has had a huge impact on me. There’s a photo of a bunch of stuffy looking suits standing on an embankment, pointing in different directions, and it’s one of my favorite pictures of all time. I read that photo, and a lot of that book, as a light-hearted dig on the American notion of progress. I love the accidental subversiveness of the decontextualized pictures. Janet Delaney’s work in the SOMA district of SF is incredible too. I meander around there a lot, and it’s wild to see how it’s changed since she documented it. Also, Dawoud Bey’s large format portraits are perfect, and Walker Evans’ Polaroids are great. And it’s old-timey, but Eugene Atget always makes me want to go out and shoot. Any photo project that expands my idea of what’s a good photographable subject is inspirational.
![Will Keating](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-4-2000x1523.jpg)
When I’m not at work, I ride bikes and I walk around. If I’m not riding with my friends, I like to ride one of the SF bike share bikes to some spot in the city and then walk home as circuitously as possible, or just ride my own bike super slowly. I take pictures, stop for coffee, and occasionally talk to a new person. It’s magic.
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-27-2000x1345.jpg)
Black and white film is currently my favorite medium. I dig color prints, but a good black and white fiber print is my favorite. Color sheet film is out of my budget, and the chemicals are a little too toxic to keep in my apartment. I have a cabinet-exploring cat that I’m watching out for, and the B&W stuff is bad enough. I also feel like I’m just at the cusp of being a competent B&W printer, so it’s too early to switch to anything else. Film is a constant, though, both because of the end result, which I prefer, and for the joy of working with mechanical cameras. There’s a correlation between the cameras I like and the bikes I like – digital cameras don’t appeal to me at all; I think they’re super useful and people make amazing stuff with them, but I have no interest in using them unless it’s to get a product up on our website.
The most obvious way that bicycles have influenced my photography is that they’re how I get around to take photos. So much of American photography’s history is tied up with the car; there’s this whole tradition of the American photo road trip, starting with, I think, Edward Weston and Robert Frank, and even though parts of that sound appealing and I do find it easier to take pictures in unfamiliar places, I’d like to separate my photography from cars and see what’s possible locally. That makes it sound like a philosophical decision, but it’s also a practical one. I work a full-time job and I’m generally terrified in cars, so I like to think of it as a limitation that hopefully will spark creativity.
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-25-2000x1348.jpg)
Thinking about it from the other perspective, photography has influenced how I ride in a way I really like. One of my favorite ways to ride is with a camera on my back, looking for pictures. It’s the perfect excuse to go on a slow-paced bike ride and explore. I like any bike ride where the actual riding is secondary to something else, whether it’s to run an errand, take photos, or go swimming. I do longer out-and-back type of rides too, but I like to temper those with these more mellow adventures. All the non-bikey pictures in this feature were taken on a ride, sometimes even while I stood over the top tube.
I don’t see my photography going anywhere professionally, and that’s alright with me. I want to protect photography as a fun hobby and take pictures that satisfy me, without any pressure. I want good negatives to print every week. Geographically, I’m staying in San Francisco until I get priced out!
At the moment, I’m working on taking more portraits. I talk to people all day long at work, but when I’m out shooting, I get shy. I always worry people will get angry or something, but that’s never been the case. Generally, they’re happy to oblige me, and even flattered sometimes. The TLR and 4×5 make people feel more comfortable because they’re so obviously old-fashioned cameras.
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-29-2000x1348.jpg)
I’ve got a couple photo projects cooking now, but I don’t know what form they’ll end up in. Maybe a show, or if I can figure out InDesign, a little book. I’m working on a series of photos taken only during bike commutes to and from work. I’ve been thinking recently that I’d like to start my own blog that documents walks and rides around the city with photos and captions. I’ve done a couple blog posts like that for Rivendell and really enjoyed making them.
Will’s Photo Gear
I see recreational bike rides as a fun way to try out different cameras, lenses, and filters so my photo gear varies. But, nowadays, I generally bring my Fuji GS645 folding camera inside a light musette bag with a stabilizer strap. If I don’t really feel like taking pictures but want a camera on me in case the mood strikes, I have an Olympus XA and a Fuji Klasse, and I shove ‘em in my pocket.
If I’m walking around taking pictures, I use either a Horseman 4×5, which I put into a giant messenger bag, or if I feel like shooting squares, I bring a Mamiya C220, usually on a shoulder strap. I like normal focal lengths and I shoot Ilford HP5 or FP4 exclusively. My friend Max makes messenger bags under the name Space Age Bags (@spaceagebags), and I use the huge sling and the zine holder for camera carrying.
Image Breakdown
![Will Keating, Rivendell Bicycles](https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Riders-Lens-Will-Keating-Photography-20-1600x2000.jpg)
San Francisco, 2022. This is my partner Rachel on her new bike outside of her work in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It’s a simple photo, and I’ve taken a bunch like it with smaller cameras, but the bigger camera, when I manage to focus it properly, renders everything in a way that is fast becoming an obsession.
The pictures always surprise me too, mostly because it’s so hard to see everything on the ground glass; I knew that her perforated shirt and web elbow tattoo would show up well, but I didn’t anticipate how much I’d like that newspaper window collage behind her or the texture of the beat-up sidewalk. This, I think, is the direction I’m headed in with photography. The work it takes to set the camera up means I value the picture more in the end, and the fact that there’s no quick way to snap a picture makes portraits feel more collaborative than with the small cams. Every time I manage to take a picture of somebody with the big camera, I feel like I just found a super rare baseball card or something.
From a workflow point of view, 4×5 negatives make it so much easier to decide which photo is the right one; I’ve always had a hard time sorting through 35mm rolls and figuring out which ones are keepers. My most productive day shooting 4×5 is 10 sheets, and I always shoot doubles, so it’s always pretty easy to decide which one is going to get printed.
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