The 52 Project, Week 30: All About Amherst

The large format adventures continue with more from my trip to Amherst, MA to visit my good and long-time friend Katie O'Neil. During the very brief visit, we had quite a few adventures, including but not limited to: (you can pm me for the entire scoop)

• Painting horses
• Bailing someone out of prison
• Visiting an insane asylum
• Meet Dr. Suess' nephew
• Losing cell phones and Polaroids deep in the woods

Fun times indeed. Now here are some scans:

Preceding the Halloween party on the Lone Birch Farm, this is my failed attempt at a group shot. Note the lack of people. >__<

This is Katie O'Neil. She loves horses, Ireland, good movies, and climbing trees. The first three are hard to photograph, so here she is.

Ah urban decay, you photograph on large format so nicely. Well, at least when there's a contrasty scene; here, not so much. >__<

 Just covering the bases again here, all of the above were VERY quick contact prints made onto Oriental RC VC paper, developed in generic Dektol replacement for 1:00 min. The prints were then scanned onto a trusty Epson V700 with some level tweaking in post.

Now a for this week's closing words.

Something Good: For my third overall batch of Pyrocat HD negatives, these guys all came out equally dense. Print times were all within 5 seconds of each other. When printing from a 20x24 equivalent height (for consistency's sake), that's actually pretty close.

Something Bad: These images as negatives were all equally over-processed. When over-processed negatives come out of a staining developer, the overall film base (usually clear) becomes stained/tanned itself. Not necessarily a bad thing, this side effect can be corrected by either reducing overall density in farmer's reducer or by printing longer...way longer. >__>

Something Learned: The more dense a Pyrocat stained negative becomes, the more filtration it will need to obtain proper contrast on VC papers. Remember, brownish-stain acts like a yellow SUPER-low contrast filter to VC paper, so this must be countered with yellow's compliment, purple light.

Next Week: Back to only one image, but a big one, with a great story and some great impact.

The 52 Project, Week 24: Ned

Today’s image means a lot of things to me, and I hope it shows. ^__^

Despite the creative mess down there, somehow knows where everything is... 0__0

Meet John Edward Lenhart, affectionately known by everyone else as Ned, my grandfather. Born to a large family in the middle of The Great Depression, Ned’s lived through a lot of ups and downs. Recent years especially haven’t been kind to him. He’s had to tackle a stroke, learning to walk again, losing most of his left lung to cancer, and continuing a silent battle with skin cancer. But as you can see in front of you, not much gets in the way of him doing the things he loves, namely woodworking and baseball.

Since I’ve already captured his baseball loving side HERE, I thought I’d address his other love, in the heart of his basement workshop. Space was tight and light was terribly dim, but I did the best with what I was given, here are the details.

Early one Saturday afternoon at my grandparents’ house, I started to feel the urge to take a picture with the 8x10. And this day, it would be a special one, the day I would finally cave and take a proper portrait. So, as soon as my grandparents were down and out for their afternoon naps, I sprang into action. Grabbing the mass of equipment from the car, I rushed it down to Ned’s basement workshop to set up the entire shot, “Just add Ned”.

Framing up the shot was a little tight with a 50mm lens equivalent in space about the width and length of a college dorm, but I made the best of what time and space I had. Knowing my limitations, the shot was setup expecting about a half length, seated portrait. While focusing and metering the entire scene, I noted a difference in highlight to shadow values of approximately 18 stops! For you non-Zone System users out there, a normal scene has 6-7 stops difference. To say this was a high contrast scene was a gross understatement. Worse news, even wide open (a whopping f/9 on my lens), the Zone II/III shadows in my image were reading 30 seconds. I needed some major light here, and fast.

Luckily for me, I was in a workshop, home to some of the most cost-effective light sources known to man. Two shop lights and a flood-lamp flashlight later, I’ve got my key lights set up and aimed towards the chair that Ned would be sitting in. My exposure now is about 8-10 seconds on Zone V, meaning I needed to underexpose that two stops to Zone III, but then compensate for my bellows draw and movements. Let’s say 4.5 seconds (I did :p). Down came Ned, got set up, and we took the above shot.

Not too shabby eh?

Something Good: For a long exposure, Ned’s looking pretty sharp, and nicely isolated from the surrounding workshop clutter.

Something Bad: The negative itself is a little thin, even for having soooooo much dynamic range. It could have handled another minute or two sloshing in the tray. Live and learn.

Something Learned: Give your subject no excuses to get out of the picture, aka having it all ready for them, and they’ll usually agree to the portrait. On the technical side of things, I learned having a wide SBR, subject brightness range, can be tricky when printing on silver papers; more on that sore subject in later weeks.

Next Week: The 8x10 hits the road on a two week end-of-fall vacation, who knows where it’ll end up!

The 52 Project, Week 23: I Think There's a Pattern Here

On yet another seemingly boring Sunday afternoon, which may after today be called “8x10 Day”, I took to the streets of Toledo, OH looking for an image. Not feeling adventurous enough to go all the way downtown, I started at the Toledo Museum of Art and started working my way east, in hopes of an interesting image. Having the same kind of photo on my mind as taken in Week 20, I knew this kind of image might take a while to find; two hours to be exact.

I still need to work on scanning these contact prints.

Finding the patterned building leading against the sloped street was the easy part, filling it with somebody was much harder. Quite hard to tell in the photo, but I was on the opposite side of a four lane, very busy highway. So even when someone/a group of someones were coming into the scene, that doesn’t mean a semi, school bus, or sedan wasn’t. >__>

After about an hour and a half of queer looks, honked horns, and explaining this camera outfit to passers by, I was done; something needed to happen quick. Just then, a small pickup truck pulls off the road, nearly up onto the sidewalk, which would have simultaneously ended my loaner 8x10 and this project. Turns out, it was the owner of the building that the Eastman Commercial had been staring at for nearly two hours.

“Oh crap, here we go,” I thought.

Judging by the manner with which he pulled in front of the shot, I wasn’t expecting anything pleasant. Fortunately for my optimistically paranoid self, he was a fan of all things antique, AND willing to “pose” for shot with his building. He pulled away, only to come walking back into my shot 15 minutes later.

That brings us to this week’s key issues.

Is this image too much like Week 20’s?
Is the feeling of the image compromised by the fact that the person was encouraged to participate? Is it still Street Photography?

Why are there no answers here? Much like anything else art, the answers to these questions are entirely subjective. But that doesn’t mean you out there can’t weigh in. I’d welcome your open and honest opinion, as comments and critique only serve to help the artist. Thanks for playing along.

Something Good: Having well over an hour to meter the shot, compose, recompose, etc., etc., the shot and its processing were more than controlled, even with a red filter on a directly sun-lit scene.

Something Bad: Aside from the drama llama that comes riding in from the aforementioned issues, there’s some obvious dust spotting on the negative itself. This is the result of a dust being trapped on the darkslide and migrating to the unexposed sheet prior to exposure. Drats. >__<

Something Learned: There’s really nothing quick about the large format process, and I think I’m really starting to like it.

Next Week: A deliberate and very personal portrait.