Moods

I am feeling "bleh" today. I am sure there is a better word in the English lexicon, but it eludes me due to a) my ignorance; or b) my mental fatigue. Most likely choice a.

Friday evening, on my ride home from work a cough formed, but still only in intervals not to aggravate me, or other riders on the subway (I believe), and thought little of it. Grand plans of doing absolutely nothing filled my head, and I had no other desire but to indulge such fantasies. Problem was that my little cough developed into a throat scathing hack that persists to this very moment.

At some point last night I thought it to be a good idea to take a little nap around 8:30pm that ended up being 3 hours long. Oh, I woke up after my alarm informed me of the 30minute interval I had set, but I turned it off and went back to sleep. My rationale? Not the usual self declaration that is often followed through rarely, "I am just going to sleep a little bit longer. Promise. Then I will be up and productive." It was more like, "This sleep is different from the sleep I am going to have later and it will not interfere."

I felt worse: completely awake, but exhausted and achy. My best friend suggested that I use my condition to take a self portrait for my assignment.

Let me now give some additional backmatter: I started my black and white photography class and felt quite humiliated on a few different fronts. 1) The instructor asked us to use our cameras in the class and the OM-10 was being extremely finicky. The meter was not working initially then the instructor took a look at it and it started to function. 2) I thought I had film in the camera and thought I had made 15 shots. Apparently I forgot to load the camera and did not notice the tell-tale signs of an empty camera.

I want to use this camera for the class because I love how the Zuiko 50mm lens renders images. Just look at this praising post. Frankly, I am tired of how the Nikon 50mm looks.

The instructor gave us a couple of assignments 1) Bring in a print of a picture that you really like. Largish. 2) Shoot half a roll of film on self-portraits and the other half on very deliberate shots focusing on composition.

I ended up not doing my self portraits during my sickness.

*edit* I notice now that I did not publish this post - so here is an old entry.

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Erections Guaranteed

The other day I nabbed my film back from the developer, eager to see the result from the Holga 120N (a medium format camera) which I have not used in about a year. Let me tell you: I love the results. The images are generally sharp at the center, but gradually fade and vignette toward the peripheries. This is the dreamy effect that so many people love on the Holga, but it is the bane of so many photographers who are too into their gear and too into sharpness of their lenses. Yeah, the camera is super limiting with its fixed aperture and shutter speed, but you have to figure out how to work around the issues.

A way to get around the limitations are not surprisingly to work with the available features on the camera, some of which are criminally underused.

1) The aperture is fixed around f/13. The obvious thing is that not much light is let into the camera, but the upside is that the depth of field will be greater, giving a little more leeway on the inexact focusing. The way to fake shallower depth of field would be to set the shot up more towards an edge of the frame, but you need to have the cropping and composition of the final image in mind beforehand. This takes advantage of the nature of the lens becoming more blurry at the edges.

2) The finder is not that good. What you see is definitely not what you get, so it will take a little practice to "see" the image beyond its scope. The benefit is that you will sometimes get surprising and pleasing composition happy accidents which really add to the picture.

3) The shutter speed is fixed around 1/100, slowing down as the camera gets older or if is heavily used. The spring is pretty cheap and wears out. Good thing the camera is under $30. There are no inherent benefits to the speed except that relaxed action will be sufficiently stilled. There is also a bulb mode which is neat for experimentation, but you will have to hold it down with your finger as there is no cable release socket.

4) The focus works. Really, it does. Do not listen to the guys who say they just keep the focus set to infinity. They are the ones with blurry all over pictures. Practice estimating your distances and you are way ahead of the game; this even helps when using the fancier cameras!

5) The inclusion of a hot shoe is an amazing feature. Play with light. Learn it. It will help you overcome nearly all of the camera's shortcomings.

6) There is no real benefit to the cheap construction, but other people like the fact the camera can have light leaks. I do not. I tape up the seams. It can be fun to be a diy'er after little things start to break and you have to figure out how to fix it.

7) Choice of 6x6 or 6x4.5 - it comes with both masks. I always pick 6x6, but there is the option to choose the different format.

8) The lack of meter makes you learn the relationship between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed - another lesson you can apply to other cameras.

All cameras, lenses, and systems have their limitations and the people who know how to work with their gear are usually the ones who churn out great pictures. I am not saying that I do great work, but I guess I think highly of it enough to share my images and words :)



I took this shot at Figment where people are especially encouraged to express themselves. I liked this guy a lot and he reminded me of a cartoon character. I believe I set the shot up with cropping in mind, but even if I did not, I felt the 8x10 ratio really suited him.



Hands. I love hands. I should photograph them more often.



I will sell all the college boys 11x14 prints.


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Color and its Conversion

I was pretty harsh on my photos last time because I was very unhappy with the results. I fiddled with a picture or two because I liked the composition and negated the color in a simple editing program. Check out the results:



The weird color cast is caused by a mixing of halogen with a daylight balanced flash - one of the things that must be taken into consideration when shooting with color in mind. If shooting digital the fix is easy - take a test shot with daylight balance, adjust your white balance and gel the flash to match the ambient light. On film you need to use a filter (which will affect the exposure by some stops), then gel the flash to match the ambient light. On this picture the overall cast is greenish, so I would use a magenta tinged filter on the lens (to balance the green) and gel the flash with green. The gel will also take some power away from the flash so that must be taken into consideration as well when calculating exposure.

However if you want to make a color conversion, you can easily use a program do something like this:



I personally like black and white more than color anyway.

So I guess my lesson is that if a picture does not work for you in one way look at it again and think of other possible options. But please, not too many obvious changes: such would be garish.

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Outside My Norm

So, like I mentioned earlier, I was shying away from my comfort zone on my latest set of photographs by trying to incorporate more of everyday life.

Most of my shots included people, so I am not going to post them, but here are some of my other favorites which are still outside my norm:








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