GregRob: Large Format Photography

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.

Lettuce, 21/365

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….

Water 22/365

Day 20

Will have to try this again with a few corrections.

Blurry Pepper, 20/365

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.

Callum – 10 Months, 19/365

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.

Adrian, 18/365

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.

Bill, 17/365

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.

Table O Snow, 15/365

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.

Underexposed, 16/365

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.

Painted toes, 14/365

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:

Kay & Callum, 13/365

And some out takes:

Days 10/11

Today’s post has a photo from yesterday, and a photo from today. I didn’t get a chance to scan yesterday’s photo until this morning and it was really bad, so I figured I would try a similar shot again today, and post them at the same time.

Yesterday’s shot came out overexposed and blurry.

Today’s shot the exposure was pretty close, and it actually had too much depth of field.

I think tomorrow’s photo of the day will be another try at a pair of pears. I want to try a filter to separate the colours a little more. In today’s photo I used some burning to vary the pear exposures, but a filter should provide a more interesting result, along with showing the two-tone nature of the pear on the left.

Oh and if you are wondering why the pear on the right changed, the answer would be Callum ate one of yesterday’s pears.

Pears 11/365

Blurry Pears, 10/365

Day 9

When I was taking the apple picture on Friday night Declan came by the room, and when he saw what I was up to asked whether instead of an apple picture, could I take a picture of him eating the apple. he was quite excited about it, but at that moment I was already all setup, and told him maybe another time.

But shortly afterwards it occurred to me, that such a picture would be very suitable with the right caption.

The caption for today’s photo is, “I ate pepper #30″

The story behind the caption, is related to Edward Weston’s famous photo, Pepper #30″. His son Brett has often been quoted as saying, “I ate pepper #30.” So as the apple picture was originally inspired by Edward’s work, it seemed very appropriate that one of my sons wanted to eat it.

And no, I am not comparing my crap photos to Edward Weston. I’m just saying his work inspires me, and makes me try foolish things like taking a picture of an apple sitting in a colander, just to see how it might turn out.

I ate pepper #30, 9/365

Click to be taken to edward-weston.com