Scenes from Portugal

More photos from our last trip abroad - I present you with a set of black and white Holga shots I took while in Portugal this past May. It's looking like our plans to go hit up Chile and Easter Island this year are fading (much sadness), so I guess I'll have to continue mining my current collection of shots for inspiration... click to view the large versions on flickr.















More Portugal photos here.

Transmission Incomplete

I recently heard someone ask the question, "Why would anybody shoot film?!"... The irony of this was that he was deciding on which framed print to buy... from a photographer who shot film. It was hard to restrain my derisive snort at his idiotic comment.

I shot the following series using my Diana Mini on 35mm Fuji Provia 100 in Budapest, Hungary. The Mini has a loose switch for bulb and N modes, and often moves to bulb without me knowing it. I have blown out many a shot as a result, but occasionally, a few do turn out kinda interesting. And as more and more folks pick up dSLRs and similar larger sensor digi cams to produce noise free tack sharp images of blah, I find myself increasingly drawn to the allure of flawed lo-fi analog imagery. I especially love the scratches, dust, and imperfections in the first shot.

Polaroid SX-70 Test Shots

Photos from my first pack of 600 film in my recently acquired SX-70. I'm not sure if the film pack is really expired, or if there's something wrong with the camera, but I have a feeling the chemicals in each photo aren't fully mixing/ developing. But it's been said before, there has never in all of recorded history been a 'bad' polaroid picture. And these prove it. Decidely lo-fi, poor contrast, and horribly soft. Polaroid perfection!

Nikon FG Test Roll - San Francisco

Lugging along my new Nikon FG and Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 combination to San Francisco, I fired off a few test rolls. These few came from a roll of Fuji Provia 100 I ran through it, and I think the shots turned out great. Nice saturated colours, good overall contrast, and surprisingly sharp even at f/1.2. I think this has easily become my new favourite film camera. Oh the adventures we will have together...
























I saw a girl shooting with a Rollei f/2.8, so I couldn't resist snapping a shot of her rig. Analog forever!

Redscale Fail

I received my Nikon FG in the mail this week, and ran a test roll through it this weekend. I redscaled the film before shooting (ie: film was respooled upside down so that the emulsion side is facing away from the lens), and so the results were terrible - lack of tonal range as highlights were just plain red, and shadows were blocky black shapes. This was due to underexposure of the redscaled film (apparently, you need to overexpose by 2 to 3 stops to get a good range of red and amber hues, whereas I only overexposed 1 stop). Anyways, long story short, the redscaled version of these shots were horrible, so I converted them to black and white, which actually gave them an awesome lo-fi vintage look. These photos clearly are not representative of what this camera is capable of, but I really like b&w treatment. The grit and stains on the film are not digital trickery - the lab at Superstore is shit, and they clearly don't know how to process/ handle film, resulting in splotchy negatives that I couldn't be bothered to properly clean before scanning. Click to enlarge and see the grainy, gritty goodness in glorious detail.










3 days of work before we fly to San Francisco!
-G

Update (11-01-2010): View my first successful test roll here.

Fun with Closeup Diopters

In a weedy, overgrown ravine not far from our place, I have found a bit of a photographic haven for myself. In the latest adventure, Anita and I braved the mosquitos and set out determined to capture a large dandelion-like weed in full bloom, using the sunny f/16 method with my Kiev88, Fuji Velvia and a set of macro diopters. And then of course, my camera bag had my Holga with one shot left on the roll, so we shot a macro with that one too. I love how soft the Kiev shots turned out (colour), and I especially love how grainy the Holga one came out (B&W).

Wife on a Bike

When we hit up art museums, Anita and I like to play this sarcastic game of guessing what the title of some old world still life painting will be just by looking at the work... it's usually something extremely creative like 'Still life with fish' or 'Girl sitting in chair'.

And so to pay homage to such brilliantly named works, I present to you my own series entitled Wife on a Bike. You may have to spend a few hours pondering the deep philosophical metaphor behind the title, but I think eventually you'll get it.

All the bike images were taken with my Holga 120N on Ilford XP2 Super Black and White film, while I was riding my bike beside her, with the really blurry/ shakey ones set on bulb. They're all terrible, but I really like how they all turned out.












This last one is obviously NOT part of the Wife on a Bike series, but I thought I'd include it anyways, cause it's awesome.

The beauty of imperfection

As you can see, I've changed the colour scheme for the blog (unless of course, you're reading this as an imported note on Facebook). I was getting tired of the plain jane all black look, plus the white text on black background was hard on the eyes after a bit of reading. I'm actually contemplating migrating over to a tumblr photoblog, but not sure yet. I like what others are doing with their one photo a day type tumblr posts, and I think that would better suit me than trying to verbalize all the random idiotic thoughts in my head everytime I want to post a photo.

So without any rhyme or reason as to why I'm posting this, here it is. Some building in Budapest. Taken with the Holga on Kodak E100G slide film and cross processed. I like that it's totally blurry and poorly composed, and also has multiple massive light leaks as well as the splotchy yellow bits that I was too lazy to clean off the negative before scanning. For all my talk and scheming to eventually buy a D700 (or actually, whatever Nikon replaces that body with), I actually far prefer the flawed imperfections of this 30 dollar toy camera.


Anywho, I have to plug away at pp'ing another wedding shoot I did this past Monday, and so I might drop off the face of the Earth until I've finished it.

Out of sorts

I'm still feeling a bit out of sync with local time - mostly because I haven't gotten a proper night's sleep since we came back. And now I've got a few evenings of work ahead of me to process a wedding shoot from this weekend. I don't even know where to begin.

So while I really ought to be processing those shots, I took a break and scanned one roll of Kodak Portra 160NC that I ran through the Holga in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic. One of my favourites from the roll:


Will post more in the coming days when I need more breaks from this wedding thing. Okay, time for bed. G'night.

My fat fingers

While we were in Vegas, I bought a Superheadz Ultra Wide and Slim camera from Urban Outfitters for 10 bucks (STEAL OF A DEAL - they go for 30 - 40 normally). The only trade off was that it was bright banana yellow coloured. Whatever. Anyways, it took me forever to finish off a roll of 36 exposures with it - the lens is a fixed 22mm, and it has a fixed aperture and shutter speed combo that is ONLY good for bright sunny conditions.

So I finally get the roll developed, and the photos are totally rad (massive naturally occurring vignetting, vivid saturated colours). And for the first time in my life, I had managed to take a half decent landdscape photo. Except for the fact that I ruined almost EVERY FACCCKKKING SHOT with my fat fingers in them. Apparently, 22mm is SUPER WIDE. Like, so wide, that you can't even grip the little bastard camera without getting your digits in the shot!!! This is unfortunate, because the photos I took in Vegas were seriously awesome if my ham hands weren't EFFING in the corners of every shot. Seriously, FACCCCKKKK!! On the plus side, I did manage to squeeze 39 exposures out of a 36 exp. roll.