Colorful

May 11, 2009 – 12:56 pm

film fingers
I finished a roll of Fuji Provia last Thursday and dropped it off for processing on Friday. Too bad it’ll take a week and has to leave town for the job to be done, but oh well. What can you expect for E6 processing in this digital age? Anyway, I have quite a few PAD’s on that roll, all shot around town using the Olympus Trip 35. I can’t wait to see how the shots turned out. I’ll post a few after I get them scanned…

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No One’s Looking

April 28, 2009 – 12:50 pm

Been busy at work and at home of late, so I’ve neglected this blog…

I loaded some film into the Olympus Trip 35 this morning; Fuji Provia 100. David has been shooting some in a new camera he found on eb*y and it gave me the itch. I had a batch in the fridge from a few months ago so I loaded it up this morning and stopped on my way to work for a couple shots.

I’m in a quandary when shooting film these days. I find myself trying to change the way I shoot and my subject matter. I don’t know why, but when I’m shooting color, I start looking for bright colorful scenes; when shooting b/w I look for contrast-y scenes. I completely avoid my usual thinking and I shoot like I have someone watching over my shoulder. I think I see some style surfacing from my last few years of shooting digital, but when that film camera gets in my hands I lose my perspective. Hmm… They say you should dance like no one is watching, I say you should shoot that same way, too. I’ll try to keep this in check.

Here’s a few of my favs from my PAD since my last post:

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A New Year

January 28, 2009 – 3:56 pm

It’s been a while since my last post. I guess I got caught up in the holidays and the hullabaloo of the election. But it’s a new year and I’m trying to get back to posting on a regular basis. Likewise, I decided to return to Photo-A-Day, or PAD, after a nine month break. In case you don’t know about PAD, it’s where you commit to taking a picture and posting it every day. At least, that’s how I practice it, others are a little more loose with those rules, sometimes banking shots or skipping days. I like shooting and posting each day and composing in camera. It’s not always easy to follow through with with the daily grind but it’s good for the discipline of picking up your camera every day and shooting. The results aren’t always pretty, either, but that’s not the point. The saying is “Dance like no one is watching” and sometimes PAD has to be approached the same way.

Anyway, here’s a few of my favs so far:

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The World Changed

November 5, 2008 – 3:50 pm

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I thought it would be a struggle. I thought there would be shenanigans. I thought it would be days before we knew the truth. But last night, promptly at eight o’clock Pacific, the media announced to the world that the people of these United States had elected a new leader. We chose reason over fear. We chose hope over cynicism.

I don’t have the words to describe what I feel today, but over at Deus Ex Malcontent, Chez says it better than I ever could: Wide Awake In America

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Paws on The Beach

September 13, 2008 – 7:50 am



Teddy takes a break

We took a couple days off and headed for the beach. Really, it was a short vacation for us compared to how long we usually stay, but we weren’t going for ourselves. The trip was really to take the dogs for some sand and surf. Though Jack and Sophie have been before, this was a first time for Teddy. For fun, Cathi’s mom came along with her little dog Mo. On thursday we spent the better part of the afternoon letting the pack run loose on the beach. All the dogs ran until exhausted, after which we checked into our rooms, cleaned everyone up and had a short nap. Friday morning we walked to breakfast on the patio at the Sea Shanty. The staff was fawning over the pups and being rather free with the dog biscuits. I was pleasantly surprised at how well behaved the dogs were considering this was their first visit to a restaurant. We spent the rest of the morning on the beach before checking out of our room and heading home.

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It Was Over In A Flash

September 8, 2008 – 9:35 pm


Vivitar 285HV
I had a little photo job this past saturday night. The Wife asked me to take pictures at her 30 year high school reunion and, being the husband that I am, I gladly stepped up to the plate. I needed to get some things ready first, though.

I decided to put to use several of the e-bay strobes I’d been collecting, all Vivitar 285hv’s… I’d seen these mentioned in various places as a good choice for off-camera flash, most notably over at the strobist. Since I don’t have any wireless triggers, I needed to work out some type of wired-setup to use these strobes. I did a couple internet searches and found an article by Nathan Kerr over at shuttersnapstudios.com with a mod for adding 3.5mm plugs to the 285’s, effectively bypassing the proprietary Vivitar connector included on the flashes and the need for expensive adapters and cables .


Closer Views…

This mod wasn’t too difficult, but it did involve opening the shoe, drilling a hole and doing some soldering in a tight space. If you’re not comfortable with that, avoid the mod… I chose not to goop up the cable with epoxy where it leaves the shoe. I may pay for that later but I’ll take my chances with my soldering and careful handling. Ideally there would be room for a zip-tie inside the shoe, but it’s just too crowded…

I wasn’t going to need all the strobes at once, but decided to do all of the mods at the same time while I had the tools and parts out and ready… After working through all six of my 285hv’s, I made a few connecting cables with male 3.5mm ends and a four-way Y to join everything together. A few tests with the strobes and my wiring and all was ready.


The Funky Clamp: The screw turns, the clamp misaligns as it tightens…

Next I needed a couple of umbrella/shoe mount multiclamps. I’d seen some on ebay while looking for the 285’s and ordered a couple from some shop. These arrived and I found them to be less than perfect. The way these were designed left much to be desired, the shoe was funky with a clamping mechanism that didn’t clamp straight and didn’t offer a very secure foothold for the strobes.


The Photoflex Multiclamp. So far no problems…

After more research, I opted to purchase a couple more adapters from Adorama by way of Amazon. These were by Photoflex and much nicer: a better build and a far more secure shoe. I won’t hesitate to order more of these later. The others? I’ll chalk that up to the cost of education…

The night of the reunion went well. The affair was at a small restaurant with a lot of atmosphere… a great place for a meal, but awfully tight for setting up light stands. I did my best to wedge the lights in among the aisle and chairs, trying to keep any of my wires out of the way. The only downside was all of the memorabilia. Almost everything was in glass-fronted picture frames and securely mounted on the walls. With the tight space I couldn’t get my umbrella stands up high enough or at enough of an angle to avoid seeing the strobes reflected in all the glass. I decided to just live with that, having been assured by The Wife that my chimping-shots already looked better than those taken by the photographer at the last reunion. Aside from the reflections (I’m still unhappy about that!) the pictures turned out decently and the folks were happy with the results.

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The Good Old Days

July 8, 2008 – 7:39 am

Thorpe Family 1940's
I spent much time last night on the phone talking to far-flung members of my extended family. All part of my current project, scanning old family photos and posting them on my photo site. Many of these pictures were from when dad and the aunts and uncles were kids and I wanted to let the family know the photos were up and could be viewed now.

Most of these photos have been in an old, crumbling album that was in the family for who-knows how long… After both mom and dad passed away it fell into my hands. A couple years ago I was concerned about the safety of these old pics so I transfered them all into a new album with acid-free paper and so on. Not an easy task, as somewhere along the line someone had either taped or glued many of the photos onto the pages. How does one recover from that? I looked everywhere on the net for some advice but found nothing directly related to what I was going through, so I opted to leave well enough alone and simple cut each pic from it’s mount and slipped them into the new sleeves.

Over the fourth of July weekend, with the bad air (I live in California and the forest fires rage nearby) and the heat (we’re looking at 100’s!) I opted to stay in and start this project. I probably got about a quarter of the way through the black and white photos, scanning each at 300 dpi. I probably could have gone higher on the resolution, but I don’t think it would make much difference. After that step, I opened each in Photoshop and started a restoration process: Duplicate the image onto a new layer for spotting and cleanup, then duplicate that onto another layer for levels adjustment and any burn and dodge to even out the photo. I saved that and then exported the photo to a jpg for posting on the net. This step showed me that the brightness of each photo was exporting too dark, so I added an additional step of adding a brightness adjustment layer in PS to compensate. I’m assuming that exporting from the original file in 16 bit gray level to jpg in 8 bits was the culprit here. No problem, adjusting the brightness by 10 or 15% lighter seems to work and saves the original at the best quality for the time being.

Almost every photo showed signs of wear and time. Many had scratches and spots, wrinkles or cracks and the evidence of fingerprints and the aforementioned tape. I chose to deal with these in Photoshop by using the spot-healing tool on the spots in the open areas and the stamp tool in the tight spots. I tried to be very careful not to change the the feel or look of the original image. My levels and burn/dodge were done to even out the faded places and the poor printing of the original.

All in all, I’m happy with the results so far. The scans look good, the old photos are safe, the family are getting to them and we may even figure out the who/what/when/where of a few of them. I’ll be adding more photos to this gallery as I get them scanned and cleaned up…

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Not So Quiet

June 22, 2008 – 12:08 pm

It’s been quiet around here, but I’ve been busy.

Last weekend I processed a roll of HP5+ that I’ve been carrying around with me since March in an Olympus Trip 35. The camera was a gift from my pbase friend DM, who’d found it on ebay and cleaned it up nicely. I’ve been slowly shooting the roll ever since the camera arrived and finally finished it off here a couple weeks ago. Last saturday evening I spent some time scanning the negs but I was unhappy with the results (I don’t like the software’s automatic crop feature) I was getting with the Epson software that came with the scanner. So I downloaded a trial version of Vuescan ,which then gave me WAY too many options, but I liked the control it offered. Ah, there’s always two sides to a coin, no? So I purchased said software and proceeded to re-scan these same negatives multiple times during the past week, working late into the evening. Each time I was unhappy with the results but each time I learned something about the process. I let all that ferment in my head for a couple days and last night I scanned the negs yet another time.

A couple things I learned. First, I was rather excited about Vuescan’s ability to output a raw file straight from the CCD on the scanner. Very cool! I could put this right into Lightroom and tweak it there. But I was unhappy with the fact that the Mac OS wouldn’t give me a preview of the file in the finder. If you wanted to see what a photo was you had to open it… And, as my usual work flow on film scans is to open it in Photoshop and do a cleanup/despot, the raw didn’t really afford me much as I then would end up with a psd or tiff file, thus doubling my file storage for each picture. So after all this, and teaching myself the Vuescan software and interface well enough to get a passable scan, I opted to go with a tiff file, like I was doing before Vuescan, and then stay with my original workflow: scan, tiff, photoshop for cleanup, then import to Lightroom for any levels adjustment.

At least, that’s where I am this weekend…

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Sinaloa

June 5, 2008 – 10:23 am

If you’ve been around here for any length of time then you know of my affinity for old signs. Today’s pic is from a local restaurant I frequent, an old family establishment that is a local institution. The sign really captures a different place and time. As so many things like this are disappearing fast, I didn’t want to take it for granted that it would always be here. I thought it best to get it now before it’s gone from our local landscape.

 

And yes, the food is excellent!

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Carisso Plain along Hwy 58

May 25, 2008 – 9:51 pm

It’s one of my favorite drives.

It’s long and desolate. There’s rarely any traffic. I mean to say that there’s rarely another car on the road to meet; indeed, make certain that you’re car is in good condition as I’ve rarely even seen another soul on the drive. There are faster routes, and certainly there are busier routes, over to the central coast from the San Joaquin Valley. But for a quiet drive, a drive for when you’re in no hurry, this is the one for me. There are curves a plenty while climbing up into the hills from the valley and descending out onto the Carriso Plains. Then the road is straight and long, built as if for a roller coaster with their rises and drops. In the middle of nowhere, the road makes a very sharp right angle turn. The warning sign says 15 mph and it means it! For a short stretch you drive along past a little country school, then it turns again, just as sharply, and you head off again in your original direction. It’s as if the builders of the road started on opposing sides of the plains with a plan to meet in the middle but all their calculations were off and, instead of fixing the mess, they decided to just build a short road connecting the dots and be done with it. The road takes you back up off the Carisso Plains, into the hills of the California coast and then dumps you quietly into the little town of Santa Margarita to connect with the coast’s Highway 101.

I’ve driven it many times since college days. Every car I’ve owned I’ve taken along this drive, sometimes when I shouldn’t have. I have fond memories of introducing people to the road. Almost every time I travel along this way with someone new I make a point of stopping near this spot in the photo. It’s near the halfway mark across the Carisso Plains. I pull off the asphalt, shut off the engine and get out of the car. It’s deathly quiet, with just the ping of the cooling engine and sometimes the sound of the breeze in the grasses. Every step is a decided *crunch* in the gravel, a step back in time when the world sounded this quiet, when the loudest thing ever heard might be the rumble of thunder or the crash of a wave on the shore. The ears ring with the silence. You’ve heard of ‘deafening silence’? This is it.

The vista is just as staggering. There are hills in the distance and vast grasslands laid out before you. Sometimes there’s a tractor tilling a field, sometimes there are cattle grazing. Off to one side you can see the ancient lake bed. You’re never really certain if you’re seeing water or if it’s just an optical illusion played by the heat waves rising from the floor of the valley. Overall it’s a thing of beauty and, if you’re lucky enough to have a few clouds in the sky, it can be dramatic.

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