The 52 Project, Week 20: The Longest 20 seconds of My Life

It’s a giant stack of straw bails, how hard of a picture could that be to take? With an 8x10 camera, it was quite the daunting task. Let’s go to the play-by-play.

I blame the focus weirdness on the V700
Searching around for something to shoot that definitely cannot move, I find myself driving over to one of my dad’s many straw barns. Lugging the 50+ lbs. of gear into the barn, it’s fifteen minutes before I even have the lens cap off and am ready to begin focusing.

“Oh man, it’s really dark even on the ground glass wide open,” I say to myself.

I pull open the barn door at the far end of the barn, letting a weak, but soft light source fill the front of the image. By thirty minutes, an image is really coming together, sitting upside down and backwards on the ground glass. Now it’s time to meter.

“Shadows are 1 min. at f/32” as I jot down notes from my light meter.
“Underexpose three stops pushing them into Zone II while adding 1/2 stop bellows factor. Now I’m at about 20 sec.’’

I hook up the 2’ cable release to the lens, close the lens, cover the ground glass with dark cloth, and now it’s time for the film. Taking the film holder out of the bag, I’m quick to attaching it to the back of the camera, placing the holder between the ground glass and the bellows. I hear a heart-wrenching “snap” as the holder slips into place. I carefully withdraw the dark slide, and “click”; of course this click lasted 17 nerve-racking seconds.

And so ends just another “simple” 8x10 exposure. Maybe someday later I’ll come back with some “Tales of Tray Processing” and “Film Loading Follies” to accompany this story. But for now, this week’s wrap-up.

Something Good: It looks like a stack of straw bails, and my word is it SHARP!

Something Bad: Light leaked in during the course of loading/unloading/exposure. Still not sure which, but I’ve since exercised proper precautions and have had little troubles.

Something Learned: I need to get much faster at setting up and tearing down this camera. This one exposure clocked in at just over an hour when all was said and done. The last time I took a similar shot (link), that “process” was about five seconds worth of composition. Is the larger negative worth all the trouble? I guess that’s for each of us to decide.

Next Week: Taking the 8x10 to the streets. Good times, good times. ^__^

The 52 Project, Week 6: Fourth of July on the Farm

Egad, it's already been a week since the last post?! There is more content than The 52 Project coming, I swear. Most of the articles just need to be posted, and tagged, and meta tagged...

Anywho, onto this week's bunch from two rolls shot on the 4th of July.

P.S. They're not fireworks. XP

It was a good thing I didn't get any closer... 

Scan 1: Berb's Barn Cats

So for the 4th this year, I went with a few friends to the Berberick homestead in the big burb of Attica, OH. Everytime I goto Matt's house, I find myself snapping a shot of everything I see on the farm. And even though I grew up on a farm, there's just something quaint and cozy about the Berberick farm that ours never had.

I couldn't have posed a fake chicken better.

Scan 2: Chicken Drinking from Pool

To be completely honest, I barely even remember having shot this image, but boy am I gald I did. The juxstaposition of color between the chicken and the background, the pool and the decrepid water, all spot on. There's even a sweet, broken down tractor in the background; bonus! I foresee 3'x3' enlargements of this shot in years to come, oh yes.

These chickens are creepy as hell!

Scan 3: Chickens in a Tree

Somewhere between a barbeque dinner and dusk, my attention was drawn to the fact that the number of chickens running around on the ground had decreased. To my surprise, many of the Berberick chickens had foregone their coop and decided to perch in a tall pine tree for the night. These chickens you see to the left were about 8-10' up in the tree.

Thank goodness I didn't have to stack these... 

Scan 4: Simply Stacked Straw

Taken a bit of time prior to the 4th of July, I couldn't turn down the chance to capture the staw bailing process. For years I'd helped my dad out in the sweltering heat chucking bail after bail onto a tight stack in the barn. This year, bail profits are low, therefore my dad hasn't been bailing as much. Luckily, a fallen economy translates into a barn I can fit into to take this shot. 

Something Good: In slightly overcast, lower light conditions, Fuji Pro high speed films reign supreme. These four images came from two rolls, 400H and 800Z. Scans 1 & 2 are 400H while Scans 3 & 4 are 800Z. The saturation and contrast in 400H is ridiculous, I think I'm in love.

Something Bad: If you can think of a situation in which flare is even remotely possible, 800Z will be sure to reward you with supreme loss of contrast in the final image. This annoying property is most visible in Scan 3, where the camera is pointed upwards, towards the inside of a pine tree during an overcast sunset. Perhaps I should suck it up and use 400 speed color films with a tripod of off camera flash.

Something Learned: As much as I try to separate myself from "the middle of nowhere" Ohio, I find myself becoming more and more intrigued with things pertaining to this area. For example, I hated raising chickens for 4H, but they make for interesting photographs. Maybe I'm just trying to record things that remind me of my childhood, but who knows. Perhaps if I lived in a big city I'd be doing a series on street vendors or bums?

Next Week: I'm switching my film gears back to Kodak color films, as I've got 30 rolls of recently expired Kodak Portra 160VC to rifle through. Still not sure what I'm going to shoot, but probably something close to this week, seeing how much fun it was. See you then!

The 52 Project, Week 4&5: Wedding Edition

Wow, it's already been a month and I'm still excited about film. Something must being going right for a gearhead like me to go analog for longer he typically plays a new video game. Just before we get to the meat and potatoes of this week's post, I'm going to change the structure a bit from previous weeks. Instead of just a few images, there will be about a roll's worth of them; this is because there were four rolls shot instead of the typical one or two. Thereby, top choices were harder to make, and besides, I just love shooting weddings*.

*couple getting married must be awesome like those you'll see below ^_^

Color Division

1) Katie's Gorgeous Dress

2) Just a touch of makeup

3) Moments before the wedding.

4) The cliche bouquet shot.

5) Meet Mr. & Mrs. Tomas Menec.

6) The Radl sisters, yes, Katie has a twin.

7) Baby with a Mohawk, nuff said.

8) We were all glad to see this cake go >__<

 The color shots were a little risky, IMO, because I'd never shot in the films used. To some it's not a big deal, but I like to know exactly how a film looks in a given situation. (See Week 1 and Week 2 of The 52 Project for examples of Portra 400VC vs 400NC) I even explained to this cool couple how I'd occasionally pop a film shot during downtime of digital (filled buffer, etc.). To my complete surprise, they were ok with it! Onto the mini-critique.

Shots 1-3 are shot in Fuji Pro 800Z and 4-8 are Pro 400H. I like the look of both, however, I noticed a lot of flaring issues with the 800 speed film in a lot of the getting ready shots. Compare the grain you see in shot 1 over shots 2 & 3. The main difference? Positioning from the window/main light.  This flare doesn't appear to be a lot, but that's about a 60 degree turn away from the window. Trust me, you don't want to see what the shot into the window exposures looked like. x__X And what about the 400H? Beautiful, accurate skin tones, little grain, and fantastic exposure latitude. I shall be working with 400H much more in the future.  My only gripe about shots 4-8 is that shot 4 shows the Aquiles Heel of the Hasselblad closeup filter; excessive, excessive vignetting. Sure it's not much, but it muddles Katie's skin tone in that shot; thank goodness the focus is the bouquet.

B&W Division

10) Copy & Paste the aforementioned.

9) Simple, elegant, and outdoors!

12) During the ceremony

11) Rings in a flower, who'da thought?

13) Dancing with Dad

 Not too much going on here that couldn't have been covered with the color film. Live and learn, I guess. Overall, the B&W came out great. I shot one roll Tmax 100 and one roll Tmax 400. They were hand-developed in D-76, and came out just as envisioned. The scanning, however, is a different story. I'm getting there, but there's still a long way to go with this Epson V700. Notable traits about Tmax 100 vs 400 were that 100 seemed to pull a much wider dynamic range while the 400 tended to yeild a very narrow band of midtones that needed to be "fluffed up" in Photoshop.

Something Good: I got paid to play around with my Hasselblad, and managed to score some real keepers for the album.

Something Bad: I took a HUGE risk in playing around with film during a wedding that was supposed to be delivered digitally (though permission was granted). Also that nasty flare thing with the 800Z.

Something Learned: Millers Professional Imaging, aka MPIX, aka the best print company EVER, are rediculously fast and good at what they do. They provided me with postage paid priority mailers to deliver film in. The package was mailed 7:30am, the Monday after the wedding. Once it got to them, rush processing with FedEx overnight, I received it on Wednesday afternoon at 2:00pm, processed, proofed, scanned, cut, and sleeved.  All this for ~$10 per roll. This was a very good thing considering Katie and Tomas were leaving for the Czech Republic the next day for ceremony number two and their honeymoon. If you're reading this and thinking about adding a touch of film to your next event, seriously consider Millers. No, I don't get a kickback from them everytime you check out their site, I'm just very impressed with the speed and quality of their work, coupled with top notch customer service.

Next Week: Slowing down back to the normal posting pace, but get ready for a LOT of the same film. I just scored a ton of recently expired 120 film that's basically carrying me through to the end of The 52 Project. Oh yeah, and 4th of July pics, whew!