Archive for January, 2011
Day 30
Overall not a good day for photography.
It was only a couple degrees below zero, and the sun was out. I decided to take the kids to the zoo, and figured that I’d get in a photo there somewhere as well. Declan didn’t want to come, but that was OK, since Mommy wanted to stay home as well.
I was going to put Callum up in a backpack so he would have a good view of the animals at the zoo, and we wouldn’t have trouble moving through the pavillions, which are often tricky with a stroller. With Callum on my back, a diaper bag on one side, my large format gear on the other side, and my tripod in hand, it was quite a load.
Now, you know when it is cold out that you won’t see too many animals outside, but there are still many advantages to winter visits to the zoo. I’ve gone to the zoo during the winter many times in the past, and always enjoyed it. There aren’t any crowds, there aren’t any lines, and nobody is in your way when you are trying to see the animals.
But this time wow, not only were there almost no animals outside, the pavilions we went into weren’t that great either. Half the Africa Pavilion was closed, and you had to double back to get out. And in the Americas pavilion it stunk of paint, and Gemma couldn’t stand it.
At the end of the day we headed to the “Tundra Trek” section, as we figured there must be something there outside. But when we got there the disappointment continued. Maybe the Arctic wolves were out, but we couldn’t find them. The Polar bears were certainly absent from the open portion of their enclosure.
At the end of the day we had been walking around the zoo for 2 1/2 hours, and I never once saw anything that caused me to want to set up my camera. I could have taken a picture of the cheetahs, but it didn’t look like much of a photo, and I really figured something better would present itself later.
In the end it was a pleasant hike, but when you add up the costs it wasn’t worth the trip this time.
Gas $15
407 Tolls $15
Zoo Admission $36
Lunch $17
———-
Total $83
Oh, and the photo of the day, it isn’t from the zoo. After I got home I figured I’d just try something silly with some of Declan’s toys. This photo was supposed to be backlit by flash, with everything in silhouette, looking dark and mysterious. But alas I cannot go more than a couple days without making significant bone headed mistakes. So the mistake this time: the camera lens was still set on time exposure mode, when instead it should have been set to 1/60 of a second. So what we ended up with here is the room light revealing the whole scene, and the presence of the flash isn’t even noticeable.
Sentinel, 30/365
Day 29
Today I hooked up with my long time buddy Craig Gross, and we headed out to the Dundas Valley Conservation area to photograph some waterfalls. Craig was shooting with his brand new Sony α850, and I had the Bender. I had brought my Minolta 7D, but decided to leave it in the car.
We went to both Tiffany Falls, which were frozen, and Sherman Falls, which had water flowing. At Tiffany quite a few ice climbers were gathered around, and taking turns trying the ascent. I moved back down the creek bed and took this picture with my 150mm at f16 1/15s.
Ice Climbers, 29/365
Another lesson to remember, when using Post-it notes to mark your holders with which film is in which holder, please remember to remove the Post-it before inserting the holder in the camera. Having a Post-it note inside of your camera is not conducive to capturing a good image.
Post-it note
At Sherman Falls I tried my B+W ND3 (1000 times) filter to shoot a long exposure of the falls. I think it turned out OK. Using this filter my exposure which had been a thirtieth of a second without the filter became two and half minutes, given the falling water a nice blur.
Sherman Falls
[click for a larger view]
Days 26,27,28
Okay, so there is no photo for day 26. I had to work all night, for the second time in 3 days and decided getting some sleep was more important than getting a photo.
For Day 28 we have a Droste effect picture of Gemma. Gemma didn’t really want her picture done, so this was a little rushed, and not quite what I was looking for.
Gemma, 28/365
And For Day 27, another office portrait. I had to go in to our Orbitor Drive office for a presentation, and afterwards ran into the most excellent Mike George. So after I gave him a few minutes to peruse my blog to see what I am up to, I asked him to sit for a portrait, and without hesitation he agreed (Thanks Mike!). So here we are in an unused office, with natural light coming in from the left, and a handheld flash to the right.
There seems to be a theme of laughing in these portraits, and if you know Mike then that is how it should be. Mike has one of the biggest laughs of everyone I know. Curiously he introduces himself as, “The quiet one”, and only if you meet more of his family does that make any sense.
Mike, 27/365
Day 25
Just fooling around with this shot. Taken just before the end of the day. I was playing with my 90mm wide angle, and took a shot of the floor to see how narrow a depth of field am getting with the lens wide open.
Shot on Fuji FP-100C45.
Days 23,24
Another post with two photos, and I better hurry up and shoot today’s photo. I only have 30 minutes left.
So first we have another portrait of a co-worker. For this photo I convinced Kevin McGouran to sit for me during lunch. Kevin was reluctant, and says he doesn’t like looking at pictures of himself. I said, “You don’t have to look at it, you just have to sit for it!”
After some further pushing he agreed to be a subject in my photo of the day series. I am glad he did, because as you can see he is really photogenic. And it was fun to do as he has a great laugh, and eventually let one out, and I managed to capture it.
I am still working on developing a rapport with people in front of the lens. Somewtimes I think my blather makes sitters more nervous rather than less. But this one went well as Kevin is a great friend, and was quite patient with my stumbling.
From two days ago we have my old Yashica TLR, which regretfully doesn’t work any more. I shot an awful lot with this camera after I first picked it up at a pawn shop on Queen Street. But it had already been well used before I acquired it, and after a year of hard use it decided to give up. I fixed it once, but I don’t think I’ll try again.
Days 21,22
So two photos in today’s post.
From Friday we have #21 of 365, A lovely friend of ours came over for some dinner and between dessert and a game of Catan we squeezed in a quick portrait. This is in the living room, simply using the bay window curtains as background. I used a single flash shooting through an umbrella to camera left, and should have put in a white bounce to camera right.
And yesterday I felt like playing with something really high key and tried a simple glass of water on a white background. Nothing exciting here, it mostly worked out the way I wanted it. Practise more….
Day 19
The choice of subject matter for today’s photo was an easy one to make. Callum is 10 months old today, so he was the obvious choice to be the subject of the photo.
Setup was not so simple, it took me an hour to get the backdrop, lighting, and cameras setup. I was setting up two cameras, for myself the Bender with 400iso black and white film, and for Jenn my Minolta 7D DSLR. The exposure for the Bender was f22 at 1/60th of a second.
Shooting an APS-C DSLR at f22 would not have made for a sharp image. So to get a nice digital image I had to drop the DSLR iso to 100, and then also put a 2x ND filter over the lens so that we could shoot at f8 at 1/60th.
Once the cameras were ready to go, I had to load some film holders as I only had one holder left with anything in it. And the last step: crank up the iTunes with some Raffi to keep the talent happy.
You can really see the difference in exposure latitude between film and digital in the backdrop. In the film version it retained detail, but in the digital version it went to pure white. In fact in the film one I dodged a couple bits that were distracting.
And one of the DSLR shots:
Callum 10 months old!
Photo by: Jennifer Haynes
Day 18
Today’s photo of the day is another photo of a co-worker at our down town office. Since Adrian now lives in Vancouver, but was in town for the week, and I was down town for more training, I wanted to have his portrait for the PoTD today. I figure I can get other people sometime over the next 347 days.
I have been finding some of my negatives a little thin and hard to scan. This seems to have been old developer and not an exposure issue.
I’m using HC-110 working solution B as my developer and mix up my working solution from stock solution on a regular basis, in fact I often use it as a one shot developer. I was getting low on stock solution, and bought another bottle of concentrate, and had been planning on finishing my existing stock solution before mixing more. But after trying to remember when I had mixed the current stock from concentrate, and being unable to do so, I decided to chuck it, and mix up some new stock.
Well today’s photo is the first negative made using the fresh developer, and wow, the negative has so much more density, and the scan looks a lot better. So yet another reminder to myself to keep better track of developer age. Now that I’m currently shooting a few sheets everyday that will be pretty easy. Previously the stock solution I had been working through was from when I was only occasionally shooting a few sheets or a roll.
One of the fun parts of taking these portraits is other people love to take pictures of you when you haul out the big camera. So here is a photo from Adrian taking a picture of me taking a picture of him:
BTS, 18/365. Photo by: Adrian Felea
Day 17
I managed to haul my Bender and tripod along on the GO train when I headed downtown today for a training course. Weight wasn’t bad, but size was tricky as there is not much room to put stuff on the GO. I had my backpack under my seat, the tripod between my legs, and the Bender bag was on the edge of the aisle.
I managed to get three people to stand for portraits. Bill was actually the first to step up, so here he is for today’s photo. My lighting was done by hand holding a Vivitar 283 over my head, as you can see my aim was a little off. a diffuser would have helped but I was afraid of the 2 stop loss that my omnibouce gives. I think tomorrow I’ll try it anyway.
And here is a behind the scenes shot by Roger Si:
BTS 17/365. By: Roger Si
Days 15,16
There are two days of photos in today’s post. I spent some time digging out all my paper printing and developing gear last night, so I didn’t get around to developing yesterday’s shot until today.
Yesterday’s shot is a high contrast rendition of the snow piled on our patio table at the side of the house. Jenn pointed out that it had an interesting look, and it certainly to my eye had some strong graphic characteristics. I shot with my 300mm lens to compress space, and get a nice tight collection of elements. In the rendering of the final image I cranked the contrast up, and made sure that there was a lot of black in the image.
Today’s shot is another story. It seemed that I was doomed from the start to not get anything worthwhile. And in the end I have a very under exposed negative you can barely discern. I decided to try something risky, so I knew there was a good chance of a poor result, but in the end my failings were not in the nature of the image, but rather in a series of boneheaded mistakes.
My first image was ruined when I went to expose the sheet for my second image and pulled the wrong darkslide from the holder, thus exposing the film to daylight. The next sheet was crumpled when I was re-inserting it’s darkslide as I had miss-loaded the film in the holder and only one side was under the rails. On the third sheet somehow I again pulled the wrong darkslide, and in the end, back at the house, when I finally turned on the lights in the darkroom I found I had under exposed every single sheet. But by my rules I gotta post anyway, so enjoy squinting in the dark.
Day 14
Not so much a great photo but it was practice in managing a young model during a photo shoot. I forgot to turn on some music, and she was fidgety at the start. So I put on the mini pops, she danced around the room while I changed filters, and then she was quite still for the focusing and exposure.
I used a blue filter to darken the appearance of her skin, maybe I’ll try the opposite next time and try a red filter to lighten her skin. In this case the darkening worked, but I’m curious about the white on white result expected with the red filter. On a black background red makes sense, on a white background it should be an interesting experiment.
And why the foot you are likely asking?
The girls went out to the nail salon to celebrate Gemma receiving a “Character Award” from school. So this is Gemma’s freshly pampered foot, with a flower on her big toe.
Commentary, a photograph or a snapshot
I often feel embarrassed to have people looking at my flickr photo-stream. It is such a hodgepodge of different things, where are the good photos, and what is all this crap?
There are an awful lot of snapshots in my photo-stream. People looking to see whether I am an OK photographer are flooded with:
Hunting trips and trips to the zoo.
Vacation snaps, and the first day of school.
Wedding snaps and trips to African Lion Safari.
Snaps of the kids birthdays, and Christmas concerts.
I could separate photos and mark some as for friends and family only, but honestly most of my friends and family don’t maintain flickr accounts so they wouldn’t get to see the family snapshots meant for them, so that doesn’t work.
Now with my ongoing large format photo of the day project sometimes there will just be plain crappy photos posted. Despite what a lot of photo bloggers may think, you cannot make a good photo every day. Ansel Adams was happy with 12 a year. So since the goal is to get out and shoot, the result is going to be a few good things, a lot of mediocre things, and a few bad things, if I am lucky there will be one or two great ones. They all need to end up posted, or else the framework of this motivation exercise fails.
So be warned, I am still learning, there will be rough spots in the road.
And if you want to skip the crap and snaps, don’t look at any of this year’s submissions or this blog, try some of my “Best of…” sets from recent years past.
Best of 2010
Best of 2009
Best of 2008
Best of 2007
Day 13
So no more pears, but a pair of people instead. Here is our young little Callum sitting in the lap of his Great Grandmother Kay. I managed to take a quick break from work while Kay was over watching Callum for a bit this afternoon, and went through 6 sheets in rapid succession.
Callum was fascinated by the camera gear, and the shoot through umbrella, so it was hard to get him to look at Kay, but a little patience paid off, and here we are:
And some out takes:
Commentary, Slow Photography
As we have now reached the end of the first month of this little exercise it is time to reflect and ponder some questions.
-What is the point?
-Is this costing too much?
-What about the Deardorff?
What is the point?
Well the point is to enjoy photography. And I have to say I am doing that. I am enjoying taking things slowly and trying to find good pictures, not just snapping away and seeing if I get lucky. I am enjoying the moments when I turn on the lights in the darkroom and start pulling negatives out of the fixer. I am enjoying the excuse of this exercise to get people to sit for portraits. I am enjoying working on a single image a day (multiple exposures) and trying to pull the most out of it with the tools at hand.
I am enjoying working with the simple/complex camera that my Bender 4×5 is. Taking time to focus, and shifting the focus around the way you want it. Pushing movements to see when things start to go wrong. Composing in colour, but shooting in black & white.
I may be making lots of mistakes, but I am learning. I am learning not to make operator errors with the camera, but more importantly I think that I am learning to take better pictures. Practise is the key, and practise is what I am getting. Practise in moving slowly and seeing the image before you snap the shutter. Practise talking to real people and getting them to laugh naturally before the lens.
Is this costing too much?
I have self doubts about this exercise, why don’t I just use one of my digital cameras? Or if it has to be film, why not a 35mm camera where 36 exposure only cost $4. I don’t think these doubts can be completely overcome. But I am taking steps to keep costs down, for example I am developing everything myself, and HC-110 is really inexpensive developer.
But ultimately I will watch my costs, and if this costs “too much” I will stop. But in the meantime the results are worth it. The pleasure I get from looking at the prints on my wall makes it seem very worthwhile.
What about the Deardorff?
The Deardorff is not forgotten. The ribs are ready for the Bellows. This exercise has not lessoned my desire to finish the Deardorff. I am looking forward to using the Derdorff itself for this project. To be honest I am overwhelmed by the next step in assembling the bellows. I need pause to practise it in my mind, and I need not rush what is a complex process.