Tom Scola
LightNews LightNews
banner
heyscola.bsky.social
Tom Scola
@heyscola.bsky.social
280 followers 210 following 250 posts
Photographer, Brooklyn
Buffista
Posts Replies Media Videos
heyscola.bsky.social
The Castro, 2025 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a typical-looking two-story Victorian home on the corner of a street in the Castro district of San Francisco. Typical of the city, the foundation of the building is ahistorically painted a bright green, while the rest of the building is painted a lighter shade of green, with yellow highlights. The base of the building curves as it goes around the corner; replacing the wood siding of this building must be an expensive endeavor, as each plank of wood has to be meticulously steamed and curved. On the second floor, an even curvier window bay juts out of the corner, with delicate patterns carved into the eaves. I caught this building in the afternoon sun, and the color is spectacular. The deep blue late summer sky provides tension with the green, and the sidewalk has a bright yellow ADA pad, which helps to break up some of that tension. The scene was so bright it was pushing the limits of the 400 speed UltraMax, yet the film held its own against the onslaught of color it was presented, and yielded something beautiful as a result.
November 28, 2025 at 6:55 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
My sister’s dogs, Percy and Nissy.
Nissy the dog. Percy the dog.
November 27, 2025 at 6:51 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
The Castro, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a mostly blank wall of a home in the Castro district of San Francisco. The stucco wall is painted a peach color. It’s very calming. Along the periphery you can see a doorway and some windows, whose frames are painted a complementary yellow. On the bottom right is a box labeled BAY BURGLAR ALARM. Such boxes are commonplace among homes in the SF metropolitan area, although I suspect that such technology is quite obsolete in the 21st century. On the right is some kind of yucca plants, whose spiky green succulent leaves pierce the uniform peach background.
November 25, 2025 at 3:43 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Pier 24, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of the side of a building on a pier in San Francisco. This is Pier 24, which at the time was the site of a kickass photography gallery. This is an old wooden building, which is in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. This building has seen a lot during its time. You can see the places where the wall has been punched through to provide pipes for ventilation, and plumbing, and places where the holes in the wall no longer provide any use and have been patched over. Anyway, the photography gallery was awesome, but since then, it has been closed because the gallery’s rich patron decided he didn’t want to pay for a rent increase, so he took all his balls and went home. Rich people suck.
November 23, 2025 at 2:37 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
North Beach, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Close-up photograph of a red door in the North Beach/Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco. The afternoon sun shines brightly on the door, and a shadow bisects the frame diagonally. The door has a brass handle that shines brightly in the sun. This is (or at least was in 2019) the entrance to a boutique. The shop owner was asking me what the hell I was doing when I took the photo. She thought I was working for the landlord, who she suspected was trying to evict her. She was more chill than most people who confront me about my photography, but still. People need to calm the fuck down. Just because I’m taking photos, it doesn’t mean I have sinister motives. It’s just a photo. I’m just so exhausted by the paranoid times we live in.
November 16, 2025 at 9:27 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
North Beach, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of the side of a building in one of the narrow alleyways that is common in the North Beach/Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco. The building is sided with wooden planks that are painted a puke-yellow color, which matches nicely with the shit-brown colored framing around the building’s windows. In front of the building is an extremely narrow sidewalk, with two metal bollards which are obviously there to protect people’s property more than they are to protect pedestrians. Leaning against the building is a NO PARKING ANY TIME sign. This photo was taken around noon in bright sunlight, usually the least interesting time to take a photograph, but I somehow managed to capture something interesting with the shadow of the no parking sign, as it casts its shadow acutely along the vomitously-colored wall.
November 13, 2025 at 8:33 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
North Beach, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a garage in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco. The garage is painted red and white, and it is next to a wall of green bricks, signaling the Italian-American heritage of the neighborhood. On a red section of the garage are a pair of white handprints, which look somewhat ominous.
November 12, 2025 at 12:31 AM
heyscola.bsky.social
Golden Gate Park, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX #BlackAndWhite
The first of a diptych of black and white photographs taken on a foggy morning in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. This is a grassy field, surrounded by trees, with a pathway meandering up through the frame. There is a sign planted in the field, that says “NO DOGS ALLOWED ON BALL FIELD”, so I guess this is the outfield of a baseball diamond, a fact that will be confirmed by the second photo in this series. I’m a self-taught photographer, and I never learned the Zone System, but if I had, I think that this photo would be an excellent illustration. The trees in the photo are arranged in layers, and because of the fog, their tone drops by about 1–2 stops for each layer. So, the trees in the far background are at Zone VIII, in front of them, the trees are at Zone VII, and the trees in midfield are at Zone V. I think. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. This photo really has nice tonality, though. The second of a diptych of photos taken on a foggy morning in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. This is a photograph of a backstop of a baseball diamond, with bleachers behind it. Sitting on the fence are two corvids, who look ominous. In the background are some trees that look especially spectacular in the fog.
November 8, 2025 at 12:41 AM
heyscola.bsky.social
NoPa, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a planter in front of a home in the North of the Panhandle area of San Francisco. The Internet tells me that this plant is asparagus densiflorus, an asparagus fern. The plumes shoot out like green flames in front of the gray and white background of the house it sits in front of. This photo was taken late in the afternoon in September, after 6pm, so this is the closest you will likely ever see to a “magic hour” photo from me. The sun is low in the sky, and the beams of light paint the scene at a near-horizontal angle. However, this photo was carefully graded so that the light looks neutral; the twilight color shift to red and yellow is not perceptible. Magic hour photos just seem so cliché to me. There are plenty of photographers who hate shooting in direct sunlight; those photographers are cowards.
November 2, 2025 at 7:04 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
NoPa, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of an agave plant in front of two homes in the north of the panhandle area of San Francisco. The buildings, in the background, are sheathed in shade, while the plant, in the foreground, is bathed in the California sun, and looks like an explosion of green blades.
October 31, 2025 at 11:43 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
NoPa, 2019 #SF #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the garage of a home in the North of the Panhandle area of San Francisco. The panels of the garage door are white, while the framing is painted light blue. Atop the garage, a window bay juts out over the driveway, which is painted the same blue and white colors. Next to the driveway stands a tall bright red flowering plant, which the Internet informs me is a bougainvillea. The sun reflects brightly off the red flowers, so it looks like a tall red flame is blazing up the right side of the photo frame. Or it would look like a flame, if fire was something cheerful, instead of ominous. You may be asking yourself, is it too red? Can the UltraMax handle all this red? Is it up to the task? Yes it is! UltraMax *loves* the sun, and it *loves* the color red.
October 29, 2025 at 5:16 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
NoPa, 2019 #SF #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the front stoops of two homes in the North of the Panhandle area of San Francisco. The focus of the photo is not the stairs themselves, but rather the plants the homeowners have placed next to their respective staircases. On the right is some kind of red-leaved shrubbery that I am far too ignorant to identify, but looks quite spectacular. I don’t know if this plant has red leaves year round, or if they turn a fiery red color in the fall, as this photo was taken in September. On the left, hidden behind a decorative concrete sphere, is a green grass plant, serving as a perfect complement to the red plant on the right. The two buildings have similar architectural styles, but are painted different colors, the building on the left is a light green, while the right is a light blue. The left building’s stairs are covered in slate blue tiles, while the right’s stairs has brick red tiles.
October 27, 2025 at 2:59 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Haight-Ashbury, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400 #SF
Photograph of a dramatically-lit garage to a home in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. The building itself is clad in wooden planks that are painted green-yellow (I think; this is a hue that challenges my color-grading abilities). The wooden garage door is painted slate blue. Next to the home on the right is a wrought-iron gate. Cut into the garage door is a metal mail slot covered in an orange patina. And as mentioned, the whole scene is dramatically lit by the afternoon sun. The colors are serene, the lighting is serene, and the overall vibe is bougie as all fuck. This home has an estimated value of over $3M on Zillow.
October 23, 2025 at 5:08 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Cole Valley, 2019 #SF #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a bamboo shoe rack outside of an apartment in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. So my friend in San Francisco was at the time living in an apartment on the top floor of a building with a sunroof in the hallway, which provided me absolutely phenomenal lighting for this photo. This is the kind of light that all photographers dream about. And my friend’s neighbors kept a shoe rack in the hall outside of their apartment, providing me with a super interesting subject for this perfect light. The rack is absolutely stuffed with pairs of shoes, I count around 25 of them, and they spill out off of the rack onto the floor next to it. The shoes are well worn, as you would expect in San Francisco, which is a city that encourages you to get out and walk, and at the same time is quite rough on the shoes you wear. I never met the owners of these shoes, but they reveal themselves to be stereotypical Gen-Xers living in San Francisco. The shoes are mostly of recognizable brands; there are a couple pairs of Doc Martens in bright colors, a couple pairs of Blundstones, a couple pairs of Danskos, plus a pair of LL Bean duck boots.
October 21, 2025 at 2:50 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Cole Valley, 2019 #SF #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the rear end a van, parked partially in a garage, partially on the sidewalk in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. The van is a dull blue, and is a window van, but the windows in the back are covered in iridescent purple curtains that shine brightly in the sunlight.
October 19, 2025 at 1:12 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Cole Valley, 2019 #SF #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of the trunk of a tree in the sidewalk somewhere in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. The tree is surrounded by a tiny fence made of iron bars shaped into arches and stuck into the dirt in irregular intervals. The tree is planted in a base of hundreds and hundreds of similarly-sized cobblestones carefully arranged in rows, and then stuck in the dirt so that they are sticking up vertically. What a tedious project that must have been! Imagine sitting on the sidewalk with a wheelbarrow full of silver-dollar-sized stones and carefully arranging them in rows half-buried in the ground for an hour or two.
October 16, 2025 at 3:19 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Boerum Hill, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a corrugated metal fence attached to a building in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. The building, on the right side of the photo, has several graffiti tags. One of the street artists seems to have an interest in geometric shapes, and drew some fascinating looking colorful cubes and circles. The fencing on the left is old and dented and painted brick red to match its surroundings. The morning sun strikes the metal ridges at an acute angle, making an interesting visual pattern. On the sidewalk below, some weeds spring out from the seams between sidewalk panels, but they are starting to die out, as this photo was taken in the early fall.
October 14, 2025 at 2:06 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a window to a bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Right inside the window is a vintage sign that says CANDY CIG[ARETTES] MAGAZINES BOOKS, but do not be confused: this is the San Pedro bar and taqueria. The sign is a bright yellow, the trim under the window is brick red, and the window is has a rolling gate, the frame of which is green. A nice color palette. Interestingly, the area under the window is coated in stucco faux brickface, which is starting to fall off in places, revealing that underneath the brickface is... ordinary brickwork. Weird.
October 10, 2025 at 6:26 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Photograph of a wall of an industrial building in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The wall, which has two shades of brown stucco, is covered in pipes: There are four electrical conduits clamped to the wall, each one has an oval access port where the electrical wire enters the building. There is also a fifth pipe clamped to the wall labeled “NATURAL GAS”. You would think that due to the risk of arcing it would be unsafe to have a natural gas pipeline right next to your electrical supply, but what do I know? I guess the people who assembled this knew what they were doing and that this is safe enough. The natural gas pipeline snakes around a mailbox. Taped to the mailbox is a faded, handwritten illegible note giving unreadable instructions to the mail carrier. Resting on top of a horizontal section of pipe is a 20oz cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. This photograph is one in my series of “abandoned beverage container” photographs. It’s hard for me to walk around these industrial areas, and *not* find cups of coffee or other drinks lying around in perfectly composed positions. If I go to Red Hook, or Bushwick, or East Williamsburg, I can count on getting at least one photo in every roll of film that I take.
October 8, 2025 at 2:22 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Vertical photograph of the doorway to a residential building in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This door is bright red, and is illuminated by the midday summer sun. The red is captured beatifully by the UltraMax. Above the doorway is an old, misshapen aluminum awning, colored a much duller shade of red alternating with black. The sides of the building are clad in what looks like asphalt roofing shingles, an unconventional application of the product which amazingly looks better than it ought to. However, using roofing material for your building’s siding is not without its issues. You can’t see it here, but the areas around the building’s windows have undergone many retrofittings to prevent leaking. Next to the building’s stoop is a planter filled with bright red flowers that match the door. Also next to the doorway mounted on the front wall are two electric meters, indicating that this building is a duplex. Next to the building on the left is a fenced off lot that has sat empty for at least a couple of decades.
October 6, 2025 at 4:58 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Ridgewood, 2019 #BlackAndWhite #BelieveInFilm #400TX
The first in a diptych of vertical black and white photographs taken underneath the elevated M train in Ridgewood, Queens. This shows one of the steel columns holding up the structure; it’s old and rusted and covered with ivy. Behind it is a sad-looking chain link fence, and behind that are some parked cars. The second in a diptych of vertical black and white photographs taken underneath the elevated M train in Ridgewood, Queens. This is taken from a different angle; there’s still a chain link fence, but behind it is a small brick structure, probably a garage, covered in graffiti. Above is the elevated train structure, it is rusted, and is crying out for a new coat of paint. The ground is covered with weeds.
October 4, 2025 at 11:05 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Ridgewood, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #BlackAndWhite #400TX
Black and white photograph of the front window of a bodega in Ridgewood, Queens. The window is chaotic collage of posters and stickers for stuff that it sells; mostly lottery tickets, beer, and tobacco products. In front of the store is some kind of barrel whose purpose is unknown to me. Next to it are baskets of some kind of cheap product that it sells that the owners don’t seem to be too concerned if they were pinched by some passersby. In front of that is parked a scooter.
October 2, 2025 at 9:07 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Ridgewood, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #400TX #BlackAndWhite
Close-up black and white photograph of the façade of a building in Ridgewood, Queens. The building is clad in my favorite siding material, Inselbrik. The asphalt here is probably over 60 years old, is quite weathered, but is otherwise holding up quite nicely. On the top left is a window with an air conditioner mounted in it, encased in an iron cage. There is, inexplicably, a power cord hanging off the AC unit, but it can’t from the AC itself, since it is a two-prong plug The siding has several generations of posters adhered to it, with instructions from DSNY about how to sort recycling. There are also outlines of glue on the wall where other posters once were.
September 30, 2025 at 4:41 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
Close-up photograph of the façade of an industrial building in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is where the building used to have a window, but at some point in the building’s history, the owners no longer wanted their employees to be able to look outside and see the sun, so the building’s windows were closed off with brick and plaster, and painted a uniform brown-orange color. A single strand of ivy creeps down from above; its intense green provides a perfect complement to the brown-orange. In the center of the frame is the window’s wooden frame, which when originally built, was carefully grooved by the craftspeople installing the window, to give the building an architectural flourish. But over the years the wood has warped, and pieces have broken off, revealing the grain structure of the wood underneath the veneer. A simple photograph, but a fascinating one. I keep staring at it and find myself getting lost in the details, like a Mandelbrot set. This photo is already pretty close-up, but I want to keep zooming in more and more.
September 26, 2025 at 3:38 PM
heyscola.bsky.social
Red Hook, 2019 #BelieveInFilm #UltraMax400
The first photo in a diptych of close-up photographs of a very rusty wall in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. (As in the last photo I posted, this is technically located in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood; Red Hook is on the other side of the street. But these photos have more of a Red Hook vibe than a Carroll Gardens vibe, so I labelled them as such). This is a section of very old, very rusty corrugated metal siding. This was once galvanized, but the thin layer of zinc has almost entirely peeled and flaked away, and the remaining metal has acquired a thick patina of rust. Over the years, the siding has been painted many times, by the building owner, and a legion of street artists. But the paint, too, has succumbed to the rust, and what remains is a faint, ghostly image etched in the patina. On the top right is another sheet of corrugated metal, patched over top the original siding, that has acquired its own unique patina, a different shade of rust, because this is a different alloy of steel that has its own oxidation properties. Attached to this sheet is a sign, warning potential street artists that CAMERAS ARE IN USE, which obviously was not the deterrent that the building owners wished it was. The second in a diptych of close-up photographs of the side of a very rusty building in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is the same building as in the first photo, but this is of a doorway. On the top right is a NO TRESSPASSING sign affixed to the door, and on the top left is another CAMERA IN USE sign. Affixed to the door is another strip of metal, bolted to the wall haphazardly with screw holes every inch or two. The owner of the building really likes to attach pieces of metal to his metal siding, and doesn’t seem to understand that he is only increasing the amount of rust his building is accumulating, as the different metals in contact with each other cause galvanic corrosion.
September 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM