The 52 Project, Week 37: UF Animal Day

Less than one week from the events of Week 36, the University of Findlay hosted its annual, badly advertised "Animal Day". Each year, the day it's held on seems to change, so this week's roll was reactive, to the degree of, "Oh shit, exotic animals! Better get some snaps in."

Chinchillas, so soft they'll make your head explode.

There's not too much to say about cute, cuddly chinchillas that hasn't already been said. Their softness knows no bounds, they're fantastic pets, and within our generation will most likely become extinct in the wild. But millions of fluffy domesticated chinchillas are still ok too, right?

Now we're getting slightly more uncommon...

 Next up, we find the always-ready-for-a-picture-girlfriend, Lauren, carefully holding onto this little sneezing ball of spines we call the hedgehog. This little guy was great for holding one on one, but really starting whining and crying out when he realized there were a lot of other people around him. Not sure how much I like the out of focus background in this picture, it's a little too painterly for me, especially in the tones surrounding the hedgehog. Cute shot, none-the-less.

Everybody loved staring at this guy's sharp teeth.

Not often will you come across a tiny crocodile without some sort of protective band around its mouth. This little guy was being held by a large number of students, with no incidents to boot! Don't be fooled by his happy smile and kind eye, give him a split second of an opening and he'll go for it. Photographically, this also meant catching him with a fast shutter speed. 1/250th of a second can often be too slow for these guys.

Loving the silvery tones on this armored armadillo.

Another high-speed handful in this bunch of visiting animals was this playful little armadillo. When not being calm and protected in ball-form in his cage, he was skitterring about all over the plastic tables he was being "demo'd" on. In this shot, I had to use the close-up filter attachment to the Hasselblad's 80mm f/2.8 T* lens, meaning focusing his high-strungness was a nightmare. This was the "sharpest" shot I ended up with.

Kids, don't try perching a Great Hornbill at home!

If this week's portraits are starting to remind you of last week's Toledo Cat Show, there's a good reason for that! Same nasty lighting situation, same need for high shutter speeds, same film emulsion, same exact processing regimen. The only thing different is that this week, Lauren is holding a 45 year old endangered bird on her jacket. Luckily, this bird was a very docile female, who was a complete attention whore, denoted by it's "smug" look seen to the right. As if Lauren needed another reason to get excited about the upcoming animated feature, "Rio". >__>

Something Good: I've really dialed in how to shoot TMax 400 @ ISO 3200 and get predictable results while pushing in diluted D-76.

Something Bad: The background was a little busy in many of the shots, and also the heavy "bokeh" or out of focus areas really highlight the grain of this 3-stop push.

Something Learned: From now on, I'm always carrying an emergency pro-pack, 5 rolls, of Kodak Tmax 400 with the Hasselblad kit!

Next Week: An epic road trip to NJ and NYC with Lauren.

The 52 Project, Week 31: Swanson's on Sandusky Street

What started as a quick practice in large format camera setup has suddenly become my most successful 8x10 B&W to date. 0__0 Here's the low-down.

It was about two weeks after my trip to New York, I was bored, starting to feel the winter weather creeping in, and really starting to miss shooting that big 'ole 8x10. There were still many prints to be made, as I was in the early test stages of fine-tuning my Pyrocat HD developing regimen; aka, the initial contact prints looked horrid. For those of you that follow the blog regularly, you can take this post as the big excuse why my posts started to backup throughout December.

So anyway, I had these god-awful contact prints on the cheapest fiber paper known to man, made under darkroom conditions unbeknownst to cause horrendous post exposure fogging ("Doh!"). I was taking them to my good friend Leslie over at Findlay's only photo-related shop, Imagine That! for some peer review. What I love about Leslie is that she's too nice a person to tell a bad photo off, unless you ask her for her honest opinion. Of course, I did just that and got the earful that was needed; my consolation prize was getting to pet with the "shop cat" Schmoop, a monstrous rag doll cat with enough fur to take out an army of allergic soldiers.  With my now low-hanging self-esteem, I sulked back to the car, when I happened to notice Leslie's next door neighboring business for the first time. It was a quaint little '50's style barber shop with a simple everyday scene occurring. I was so struck, I went in to ask Mr. Swanson's permission for a picture while he finished up yet another haircut. There was very little time for the setup and capture to occur before this haircut was over, and daylight was fading fast. This was the perfect opportunity to capture something meaningful with the 8x10.

And here's what I got:

It's great slices of Americana like this that give me hope for the continuance of Mom & Pop shops in the future. ^__^The exposure was quite a long one, 5-6 seconds, with a LOT of faith placed on the busy barber and his patient patron. I needed as much light hitting the film as I could possibly get, so a lot of swing was used to manipulate my depth of field while keeping the lens close to wide open. Only after processing the film did I realize there was MORE than enough light captured, I had in fact created the most dense Pyrocat negative I'd ever seen. >__< Just to get the "crappy" print on RC paper needed a low f-stop and a lot of Grade 0 time on the enlarger. Translation: I ignored protocol and consistency of calibration in order to get a cool shot, much paper would be wasted in obtaining a good print.

All in all, the severely diluted Pyrocat HD came through for me in preserving the highlight detail in the fluorescent bulbs while pulling out plenty of shadow detail towards the back room of the barber shop. No complaints in the image department, except maybe the overall framing (or frame within a framing :p).

When I started printing bigger, 20x24 fiber prints to be exact, you can bet multiple, multiple copies of this print were made. They're all pretty close to one another, with some softer in contrast than others. Dodging and burning gets a little trickier when dealing with split-grade printing; more about that insane process another day. So far, the prints have been doing incredibly well. It's three for three thus far, getting into:

• Art Space Lima's Annual Photo Show
• The Findlay Art League Photo 29 - Winner of Best B&W
• FAVA Biennal Photo Show 

So what was learned from this image?

Something Good: It appears to have an impact favorable to a majority of viewing audiences. Perhaps its the simplicity of the image, or the familiarity of the subject matter. Either way, it's doing quite well in the aesthetics department.

Something Bad: This neg is dense, like 5+ minute print times dense. I'm terrified to use reducer as I've heard horror stories about what it can do to pyro stain. The flip side is this makes a fabulous negative for Platinum/Palladium printing should I ever have enough disposable income to start "printing money".

Something Learned: Judging from the very few images I've taken which include other people, I'm starting to tell that I like environmental portraiture, a lot. Not that head-on portraits without context are a bad thing, I just feel they're a waste of the detail capturing power of 8x10.

Next Week: We're going back down to medium format, for some off-beat fun shots. Don't wanna get too serious for a personal blog. :p

The 52 Project, Week 21: The Large Format Candid

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when bored on a late September afternoon? No matter your answer, I’m positive nobody else responded,

“Take my view camera out on the streets, of course!”

I've taken to scanning 8x10 proofs, they're easier.

“Huh, this kinda looks like a candid,” one might say. Well, it most certainly IS. Here’s the long version.

Itching to see what the view camera can do with people in the picture, I loaded up the 50+ lbs. of equipment into my car, driving until I was struck by something interesting. Little did I know, that drive would be only about half a mile drive from the University of Findlay campus.

There it was! This poorly kept, icon of dilapidation just begging for an interesting photograph.

“Hmm, there’s still a little too much symmetry there for me,” I thought.

Looking down at my watch, it was 2:50pm, school was almost out. Somebody was just bound to bike/run/walk through my frame. Little had I remembered that my metal monstrosity of a camera is less than inconspicuous. >__>

Luckily, I had my handy dandy decoy tagging along with me. My first attempt at a set of subjects involved a brother and sister pair of school children. Lauren had them all but coaxed, until the little 1st grade girl, wise for her precaution, decided it would be better to not be in a picture taken by a stranger. About ten more minutes went by, and then, there he was. Overweight, wearing a cut-off shirt, and he even had his dog with him. This was it!

Removing the darkslide from the film holder, I readied myself to release the shutter. But just as my subject starts walking into the shot, he looks my way.

“What do I do? He’s looking at me!!” D8 “Quick Mat, think fast; do something, anything! Just DON’T look over at him.”

Having run out of things to do at the last second, I leaned in towards the lens, turned away, and pretended to clean the lens during the 1/15th second exposure. And there you have it, the large format candid, or as candid one can make an 8x10 camera.

Something Good: I got the shot I’d envisioned in my head, thanks to careful metering, pre-visualization, patience, and steady processing.

Something Bad: This shot took a while, again. About an hour in the field, and a little over a half hour in the darkroom; too bad the darkroom times can’t really be brought down too much.

Something Learned: It’s not impossible to go somewhere with a shot in mind, but very hard to get the shot you’re looking for before you get there. Any number of unpredictable things can happen, and it’s best to keep an open mind about what you want in the shot. If you don’t mind camping out a while, by all means, wait till the shot walks in front you; and at $10/shot, I’ve got all day. ;)

Next Week: We’re off to the races! This time capturing action with the 8x10...seriously.