Posts tagged ‘Pulled’
NYC Walk About
Plus-X, N-1, HC-110
A few more from that roll shot in NYC with the RTS II and the C/Y 50mm f/1.4. It’s hard to see in this JPEG but the street sign says “42nd Street”
After I took the last one, I turned around and saw this . . .
That old C/Y 50mm 1.4
Plus-X, N-1, HC-110
Developed on older roll shot with the Contax RTS mounting the C/Y 50mm 1.4. Like the look of this lens; just wish the camera hadn’t given me the fits. Liked the camera a lot, too.
Glowing Bag
This look of pulled Plus-X I will miss a lot once I’m through with all the rolls I have stashed.
Love the reflection in the window
This roll, for some reason, had a number of abstract images on it. They surprised me quite a bit when I looked at them.
Still working on the transfer . . .
Plus-X, N-1, HC-110 (H)
I’m still working on the transfer of the blog to this theme. I’m moving the folders on the web site around so the whole thing will work, and in the process broke the RSS feed a bit. So please let me know if you see this post in your feed.
This image was from a roll of pulled Plus-X, shot with the short-lived Contax RTS II. Loved that camera, but it couldn’t be fixed after it broke.
If a Day Goes by . . .
Tri-X, N-1, D-76, Studio City, California
“And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence . . .” — Richard Avedon
While I would love to accomplish this, and indeed share that feeling, the undertow that is my life ofttimes intrudes. This image is a sort of cousin to the image of the sidewalk a cigarette stub a week or so ago.
Still scanning, and more to come.
Making Visible
Tri-X, N-1, Bessa + Biogon, Venice Beach
“Art does not reproduce the visible. It makes visible.” — Paul Klee
“What reinforces the content of a photograph is the sense of rhythm – the relationship between shapes and values.” — Cartier-Bresson
Part of the reason I’ve been putting quotes about photography in my blog l,lately is to make me think about process. In the last year, as Mike Peters has gently and appropriately pointed out, I’ve been distracted quite a bit by equipment. Partly to push myself beyond that, and partly because I think about artistic process quite a bit (I teach it in my coursework) I have been reading a bit lately.
Venice Beach boardwalk
When I come across an image in my scanning where I am reminded of a quote, or am reading and I come across something that I think is appropriate, I have been putting it in the post.
Venice Beach
Not that I agree or disagree with the quote, per se, but rather that the quote made me think.
And I hope it makes you think, as well.
A simple shot
Tri-X, N-1, D-76
This shot looks simple. It was, however, deceptively tricky (for me, anyway). The following things challenged me about it:
- The bright afternoon sunlight, the dynamic range
- White flower
- Shadow detail I wanted to retain
- There was a wrought-iron fence between me and the fountain, and I was shooting a rangefinder, which meant that I had to manually position the lens through the bars and guess at the framing, because in front of my viewfinder was a vertical bar, making it impossible to see accurately.
Luck saved me in the latter case, and pulling the development saved me in the former. Especially on very sunny days, the advantages of N-1 development (which I am now a huge fan of) gives me a look that I just love in b&w film. Those who have followed me know that I have long sought a ‘look’ in b&w that digital just, for me with my limited Photoshop skills, anyway, cannot give me. I dabbled with HDR for a while, and I’m not against it, but the kind of feeling images such as the one above deliver I’m just entranced by.
I used to use the Nik Silver Efex (v1) ‘pulled preset, which I loved, but they eliminated it in v2 (don’t know why). The look above really gives me what I want. As good as the Efex p[reset was, it only approached this feeling, it didn’t nail it.
More to come this weekend.
The Destination of Photography
Santa Barbara, CA; Fuji 160s
“The destination of photography is to reveal what something or somebody looked like, under a particular set of conditions, at a particular moment in time, and to transmit the result to others.”
Bill Jay, On Being a Photographer
I have been reading a publication called Lenswork for about four years. It is a high-quality bi-monthly periodical centered on black & white photography, mainly but not exclusively digital. The editor, Brooks Jensen, has a Podcast and seems like a very articulate, well-educated photographer/publisher. I enjoy the issues quite a bit, and have listened to 90% of the podcasts over the years. Before passing away, Bill Jay was a columnist, and a wonderful one, within that magazine. Loved his insights into photography.
Venice Beach, California. Pulled Tri-X.
As you have noticed, of late I have been quoting Susan Sontag from her series of essays, ‘On Photography.’ I have been reading with great interest your responses to the quotes, but have not been responding to your thoughts. The lack of response is intentional, and my choice to quote from Sontag is also intentional. Other writers on these questions and issues will be quoted in the future, as with Bill Jay today.
Enjoy
Another Habit of Seeing
Bessa R2a, Zeiss 35mm f/2, Tri-X, N-1, D-76
“Insofar as photography does peel away the dry wrappers of habitual seeing, it creates another habit of seeing: both intense and cool, solicitous and detached, charmed by the insignificant detail, addicted to incongruity.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography
The Consequences of Lying
Bessa R2a, Zeiss Biogon, Tri-X, N-1, Venice Beach
“The consequences of lying have to be more central for photography than they ever were for painting, because the flat, usually rectangular images that make up photography make a claim to be true that paintings never make.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography
Blog-related
I used to put up one image per day. I got into a habit of doing that, and one result of that practice was that the act of scanning one roll might result in a half-dozen posts. Anyone who advises ‘bloggers’ will tell you that you really can’t post too often; seven days a week isn’t really enough if you want to grow your audience.
Then for a while I got into a habit of multiple images per post. This was mainly for comparison’s sake; looking at multiple images from a roll, say. But my posting frequency dropped.
So, now I’m going towards a hybrid approach. We’ll see how this works.
