The 52 Project, Week 11: Back in Black...and White

 This week, after an absurd three week hiatus/disconnect from the internet, I'm going to start by doing something different. Before seeing the scans, I'm going to go over what I learned, not about film, but about the digital workflow/lifestyle.

Something Good: I backup my data bi-weekly. In the event of a total system meltdown, I still have my bare necessities. Also, my film scans from Millers come on an archival DVD, so no worries on color film; oh, and it's film, not a digital file, I still really have it. :p

Something Bad: My laptop hard drive was fried, one of my backups failed, and reformatting the system and re-importing, installing, and setting up preferences was a bitch.

Something Learned: Though it may take only a few days to get a system up and running again, life tends to get in the way of the regular blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr posts.

Next Week: Though it's over two weeks behind, should be up tomorrow. The last week of July, I accompanied my grandfather to a Toledo Mud Hens game. We had a blast, and I got a few cool expired color film images.

Now let's see some B&W scans:

I honestly had no idea what it was...Scan 1: Abandoned Chair

If the following series of images looks familiar, it's for good reason. This is that exact same, creepy house. I had a spare hour to mess around, so I grabbed some Tmax 100 and made a trip back. It was about 4:00pm, and I probably could have benefitted from some higher speed film, but this along with the next three images turned out sharp (enough). Processing was pretty standard, D-76 @ 70F for 6.5 min, regular agitation. Oh, but this time my fixer wasn't exhausted, so the scans have some extra "kick" to them.

Shaky floor boards are shaky. >__>Scan 2: Abandoned Kitchen

I'm never walking deeper into this house again, period. The floors appear old, rotted through, and they are. While snagging this view of what looks to have been the kitchen, my right foot started to sink through some shaky floorboards.  I managed to recover from the near miss, but also managed to miss-wind the Hasselblad and mess up my next frame. It's alright though, you can squeeze a 13th frame out of a 120 spool if you're careful while loading.

Too much development, this image has it.Scan 3: Abandoned Hallway

Somewhere between Scan 2 and Scan 4 resides this image. There's some cool old wiring sinking down from the second floor, creating this stark contrast between it and the far window. Oh, and note the floor closer to the bottom of the frame, it's even more precarious with a few intact boards to walk across; looks like I got lucky with these ones.

The title should've included "abandoned", I know.Scan 4: Toilet Humor

Probably my favorite of this week's images, this scene of an abandoned bathroom is powerful and contrasty, but without being overly shocking or disgusting. What you see in the toilet bowl is nothing more than wood scraps, dust, mold, and dirt. Interesting what well over ten years of weathering and neglect can do to the room of the house dedicated to hygiene.

The 52 Project, Week 10: My Big Fat Jewish Wedding

About a month ago, I was carousing Craigslist for some last minute gigs to fill up my weekends (like the pro I am :p) for the end of July and early August. About ten minutes into my random browsing, a particular gig in the Columbus area struck me as a unique opportunity. "Photographer Seeking Assistant for Othodox Jewish Wedding" was the headliner. Considering I'd never even attended one of these ceremonies, experiencing one on the photographic side would be a real learning experience.  And oh boy was it an experience. A 9am to 9pm kind of experience. An I'm-not-sure-when-the-next-time-I'll-have-a-break-to-eat experience. But overall, much was learned, and there are a few interesting shots to commemorate that day. 

A short warning before going through these photos with a furrowed brow; I was a lighting assistant who wasn't supposed to be taking photos. Through a little sweet talking of my main, Abish, I convinced him that a few shots of film wouldn't hurt, *wink*.  Now onto the show, ^_^.

Pre-Ceremony Shots

 Abish shooting the bride. The big lighting setup.

The bride with niece and nephew.  A closeup of the bride.   

Kids with their Grandparents. Baby needs his Cheerios. The groom with rabbi minutes before ceremony.

The pre-ceremony shots aren't that varied for the simple fact that they all took place within the same 100 feet. We started setting up the lights at 10:00AM, moved to two different locations, and finally ended up at a large, sky-lit stairway, adorned with fake foliage. Awesome backdrop? Not really; but it beat the hell out of whatever white, green, and beige walls were lined up to begin with.

With a vast majority of all my previous weddings being Catholic, prior to this shoot I was used to only one hour before, and up to two hours after the ceremony for any kinds of group pictures. This day, however, had allotted two and a half hours before, and nearly two hours after for the group pictures. "Uh oh," I thought, "this is going to be a long one." Every possible combination of relative between both the bride and groom's sides were captured, no matter how irrelevant certain said combinations were.

Post Ceremony Shots

Blessing the bride & groom, and the meal. The bride's big happy family.

Rabbis in downtown Columbus.

Did I mention this day was long and still at a fast pace? Anyone who's familiar with the Hyatt Regency Columbus and Greater Columbus Convention Center knows they're HUGE. And amongst this huge complex, this wedding's party moved between not one, not two, but seven, that's right, SEVEN banquet rooms. So aside from sweating my butt off in full black suit and tie, I was also the kid responsible for juggling a four light strobe setup between five of these seven rooms. This didn't leave a lot of time for candids where I was expecting to get them, namely the ceremony and reception. I was lucky enough to manage a few post ceremony shots that give a unique feeling to the day's events

Something Good: I learned A TON about Jewish ceremonies. And even though I thought I took in a lot, all that knowledge is barely scratching the surface of what I'll need to know before claiming that "I also do Jewish weddings"

Something Bad: There's some pretty nasty flaring and loss of contrast throughout these shots. So what went wrong? I was using Fuji Pro 400H & 800Z; not that this is the entire issue, but these are Daylight balanced films that don't respond well to mixed lighting and/or uncoated lens flare.

Something Learned: I need some "Jewish terms" flash cards, seriously. Maybe after three or four more of these weddings will I feel comfortable enough to go through shooting a Jewish ceremony without embarrassing myself or offending anybody involved.

Next Week: I'm revisiting B&W in a big way. More work in Tmax 100 and 400, with better handling, processing, and scanning.

The 52 Project, Week 3

Wow, so the past week has been quite a bear. I've spent most of my time: hunting down a "lost" package of 120 film,  gearing up for a big wedding, and scrambling to finish a photobook for the Hancock Historical Society. Luckily for me, shooting film was just the prescription for a stressful week. The scans below represent some fun experiments with Kodak Tri-x 400 B&W, hand developed in D-76, scanned on an Epson V700.

Ruby giving a big "dumb guy" smile. ^_

Scan 1: Ruby the American Bulldog

If it's not already becoming apparent, I have an affinity for pets. I like them, they stay still, I take their picture, simple as that. Though I don't normally like medium/large sized dogs, the two you can see in this blogpost are dosile, happy young dogs. This particular pup is Ruby. She's just under two years old, and an American Bulldog mix. She reminds me a lot of Chance from "Homeward Bound".

Twiggy barely ever sits still, especially hard w/ manual focus.

 Scan 2: Twiggy, the Mutt

Oh Twiggy, such an innocent little wire-haird dog. She's just over a year old, and I have no idea what combinations of dog are in her, but they sure give her a distinct look. She lives with Ruby, seen above, and they couldn't get along better. 

Beehive or not, this is some BIG hair!

Scan 3: Big Sexy Hair

Having set the "great hair" bar a little high with last week's bearded beast, I had to find someone/thing with equally impressive hair. Then, while dining at the Panera Bread in Westlake, OH, I came past this lady with some truly original hair. Certainly if you lived during the '60's and earlier you've probably seen a "do" like this, but to me, this was a new thing that was truly awesome to behold in person.

Something good: I particularly like the "look" that Tri-X film gives when processed. There appears to be deeper blacks and more blown whites, especially so in higher contrast, outdoor areas. 

Something bad: Hand processing the film is going well, but my film is just curving way too much during drying to make for good scans. Note the horrid light "falloff" on the edges of scan 3. The negative does NOT look like this; if only I could get the hang of the Epson V700.

Something learned: Even though I'm working with significantly less data, 16 bit B&W vs. 48 big RGB, each film does really have its own unique look. And from what I've been reading thus far, each developer leaves its own unique "mark". I intend to exploit as many combinations as I can throughout this project, starting with all films in D-76, then working my way to other developers.

Next week:  The more I play with B&W films, the more I like them. There's just something about not having to sit in Lightroom for hours playing with the file to get it to look like it does out of the darkroom. Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights, simple as that. I'm going to keep shooting different B&W films and post their results.