Project Updates: The Keegan Theatre and The Runner

The last few weeks have been a major shot in the arm for my film work, complete with the introduction of two brand new collections on my website and a renewed commitment to small format (35mm) black and white film. The main impetus for this latest step of evolution was a combination of a bad back and a new film scanner. In essence, lots of down time and a new toy to kill time with. 

Many photographers are utilizing film in these ever digitalizing days and my use of the medium has changed considerably while orienting myself in the professional commercial photography realm over the past year. In previous years, when I had a job and moonlighted from time to time, I shot mostly film. I didn't have extreme deadlines nor did my livelihood depend on nailing frames. Film's slower and more costly workflow has taken a bit of a backseat in recent months due to the nature of my professional work, except for my cherished personal projects. These projects reflect my interests as a person and exploration of how I utilize my photographic skills in an ideal world. Like most creatives, these are itches that need to be scratched. 

Two such projects were shot throughout this summer but the negatives sat untouched in their archive sleeves...

On Film, Part 2: Metering and Shooting Film

Picking up from where I left off last week's overview of the most abundant films currently in production is this sprawling ramble about metering techniques for film. Analog film and digital sensors capture various aspects of the color and light spectrum in very different ways, so it's good to know the different between the two and how to exploit their respective strengths.

Modern digital sensors can capture and retain an ungodly amount of useable information in the shadow areas of a scene and, generally speaking, color negative and true black and white film can do all sorts of wonderful things with highlights that are well beyond the reach of digital sensors. Keeping this in mind, I have two general approaches to metering any given scene, depending on which hammer (I mean camera) that is in my hands as well as the overall look and feel that I am trying to achieve. Film? I meter in the shadow areas to make sure all details in the darker realm of the light spectrum are captured before pressing the shutter. Exposing for the shadows usually pushes the highlights to near "unusable" realms, but color negative film has much more gradual transitions between highlights to blowouts that you can kind of let the highlights do what they want.

On Film, Part 1 of who knows how many; Film Stocks

Alright folks, here's part 1 of who knows how many blogposts about shooting film. These are basically a collective brain dump that have accumulated in my head over the course of the past few years of working with the medium. The vast majority of these posts are adopted from some info I recently put together for a brand new Facebook group geared specifically towards Washington, DC Film Shooters, but some of the info is pretty generic and should apply to film shooters located throughout the world. 

The thoughts, words & opinions that make up this series are of my own and should not at all be considered gospel. They are simply my general thoughts on a number of aspects of the film photography work flow, and should be looked at as a guide for avid film photographers as well as digital photographers that are looking into trying film for the first time. (It doesn't hurt, trust me!) 

The first installment of what might become many will be some general thoughts about the primary film stocks offered by what I will call The Big Three film manufacturers today; Kodak, Ilford & FujiFilm, plus some additional info about Lomography and Instant Films. 

Check Your Math: Happy Accidents with Kodak HC110 Developer

This is when I utilize my blog as a sort of confessional. A coming clean to the society of photographic study. "Our father, who art in heaven, Ansel Adams be thy name..." 

Confessions like "I have been inadvertently developing all of my Tri-X with an accidental 2 stop push since sometime in 2012." Luckily, this error has remained a happy accident and the idiot-proof nature of film may have lead to the growth of a unique personal style along the way. 

In short, it's a good thing Tri-X looks damn good when pushed to ISO1600 and souped in HC110. 

Read on to see how I discovered this error in my ways, how I might have gotten there and some lessons newcomers to B&W home developing might appreciate. 

#Warning# This post is going to get deep into the weeds!

Darkroom Days: 10+ prints in less than 7 hours

I am in the midst of putting together my first ever physical print portfolio and the "first draft" is just about finished. As with any presentation, ones work has to be carefully (and stringently) filtered down to their absolute strongest materials that best apply to the context in which they will be used. A portfolio is a presentation of who you are as a creative and the work you aspire to produce. The images included cannot simply be good pictures, they have to represent the realm you are attempting to work within. A collection of beautiful landscape images could be great but might not be the best fit for when applying product photography job. The images have to be sequenced in a flowing, logical manner and depict content that directly corresponds to its intended audience or viewer.

I am building this portfolio for potential editorial commercial & event clients, so the photos selected (and printed, in this case) have to not only be technically superb but also sell my abilities as a commercial photographer and demonstrate how the techniques deployed throughout previous assignments can translate to whatever scenario envisioned by the potential client that is reviewing the portfolio. A pretty tall order for any major edit, personal or otherwise, especially when put together in a week's time.

Rita Moreno, July 2014

As I started to assemble small sections and ideas it dawned on me that I need a collection in this portfolio of strictly personal work. The work that gets me out of bed every morning and not the commercial work, or lack thereof, that keeps me up all night. The work that's made simply because I'm driven to do so. For me, that work is found on the streets of nearly any city while roaming around with a simple 35mm rangefinder camera and Tri-X B&W film.

Daily Carry, regardless of where I'm going

I joked last week that I am completely obsessed with taking pictures no one will ever purchase on a medium that no one will ever publish. That was right before the Veterans Day Concert for Valor on the National Mall. Those photos will be ready sometime soon, well after anyone has any interest in seeing them but that's just the point of personal work. Photographing something because you simply can't imagine yourself not doing it. No deadlines and no expectations other than my own, coupled with the flexibility to experiment with my own vision and interpretations. It's like a proving ground for new techniques, new compositional experiments, new concepts and it all seems so very selfish, really, when you think about it. Just doing something because you yourself are driven to do it and the only real benefactor. Interesting concepts.

So, the images that made up the heart of my portfolio were identified, culled, touched up, sequenced and sent to the printer. 40 of the 48 images that will make up my first portfolio were of a digital origin, most likely taken on an assignment of some kind, so printing from digital archives did not present much of a problem. But the B&W film stuff? Different story altogether.

My personal work, which involves shooting, developing & scanning 35mm Tri-X film at home and sharing the results via the web has created a pretty efficient hybrid workflow that involves a V500 scanner, Kodak HC110 developer and fleeting moments of free time. The V500 provides relatively adequate scans of my 35mm negs for use on the web but would not be able to produce files large enough for 8.5x11 portfolio prints. So what's an entrepreneurial hipster photographer to do??

A trip to the darkroom! I gave myself the insane goal of producing 10 prints (from scratch) within a single 7 hour session. Oh, and it was only my second time printing in the darkroom. An INSANE endeavor for sure, but people like to hear of that sort of drive and motivation in a person, right? Maybe.

In any event, it was a fantastic experience and I think I kind of pulled it off. I did learn just how difficult my recent photographic tendencies are to print though. Most of my B&W film work from the past year involves harsh, contrasty, heavily backlit scenes that lead to my negatives being pretty cooked straight out of camera. Those take a while (and quite a bit of paper) to work through.

Another lesson? These are some of my favorite photos in my portfolio and should be printed much more frequently. If only for continued education, posterity and experimentation. Final lesson: keep relatively logical deadlines! YIKES!

Street Critique: DC Street Festivals

September is Neighborhood Street Festival season in Washington DC and I hit two of its premier weekends pretty hard. Festival days are some of my favorite days of the year. Loads of people out in the streets celebrating their neighborhood and city, and providing roving street photographers with ample opportunities to make some real work.

It's Just Like Music - Playing a Show at The Pinch!

I recently started playing with a band and last Friday was my first show with them. I think it's pretty safe to say that we killed it (which was made more impressive by the fact that I didn't totally believe I knew how most of the songs ended) and I can't wait to keep playing with them. I also had a chance to grab some photos of the opening acts, so check out some words about the band and photos from the night after the break.

Sea Knuckle at The Pinch

Gear Rambles: The Olympus 35RC

The Olympus 35RC: Absolute Photographic Perfection. Or pretty much as close as it can get, in my opinion.

The Olympus is a smartphone size 35mm rangefinder, complete with coupled viewfinder, hot shoe, meter, solid metal construction, automatic flash metering, a self timer, dead quiet shutter, and a Zuiko 42mm f/2.8 lens welded to the front. It has every single thing I could really ask for in an everyday shooter, save for a slightly faster lens, but even then the shutter is so smooth that 1/15 can produce "close enough" results.

It's well designed features seem to be placed in such logical areas that even my gorilla hands can manage, and it simply stays out of the way when it comes time to work. The shutter is a mechanical leaf shutter, as opposed to one of those clanky focal plane shutters, so it's discreet and quiet, and syncs all the way to 1/500 when mated to a flash! Cool!

The 35RC comes with a built in, automatically winding film counter and uses a modern quick loading system for new rolls of film. I can change film whilst multiple drinks deep!

The annoyingly slim aperture ring is in the classic Zuiko position, right between the rear of the lens and camera body, so it can be pretty tough to adjust on the fly. A bit more girth in the aperture ring department is really the only item on my list of wants and I manage just fine 'as is.' If you want to use a flash, the lens is coupled to a Guide Number based flashmatic system, so you tell the camera how powerful of a flash you are using and the 35RC will automatically set the aperture of a given exposure according to how far you have focused the lens. Subject is 10 feet away? Cool, the 35RC will automatically select the necessary aperture needed to make a proper exposure out of the light produced by your flash.

You're pretty much set as soon as you learn the power of your flash and figure out how to focus the lens (a short twist of the lens barrel). I have no idea why camera companies decided to make on-camera manual flash photography more difficult than this system. Oh, and the 35RC can do this flash power automatic aperture setting thing without a battery. I have had my RC for a few weeks now and I have yet to install a battery. The shutter still fires at all speeds  so I either just guess using the Sunny16 or take a quick meter reading with my hand held Sekonic meter.

The viewfinder even has generic exposure information etched into the glass and a little needle moves to the aperture number you have set when you depress the shutter, so you know what aperture you are using for each picture. Without a battery! Science!

Now, my qualms…that have to do with my exact copy. I bought it on a whim from KEH.com for about $20. It was listed in Ugly condition and I have never gambled on a KEH Ugly before, so I gave it a shot and unfortunately, the lens is covered in scratches and fungus (see top pic). That means pixel peoples will most likely recoil in horror when they zoom into the 35RC photos I've included with this writeup. The images are, really not that sharp or predictably rendered. All bets are off when the sun enters the equation. Highlights? Goners. Mid-tones swirl around in some transitional clam chowder. Results left to the Tri-X gods to determine on some unknown evaluation and absorption process.

But that's just my copy. And I'm keeping it for special purposes when the ethereal results from  it's fungified and unpredictable lens could come in handy. The Bastille Day celebration photos that have been sprinkled throughout this review are a perfect example of such an occasion. I am already on the lookout for a clean copy of the 35RC and then I will be done with purchasing 35mm cameras forever. (YEA…..RIGHT)

International Kodak Film Photography Day 2014 and Philly Street

It's 2014 International Kodak Film Photography Day and as an avid Kodak shooter, I am going to celebrate with some initial favorites taken on a recent trip to Philadelphia with fellow DC street photographers Matt Dunn, Chris Chen, Bill Bramble and Mahan Talebian.

I packed two cameras for the trip; my BessaR rangefinder with the Voigtlander 35mm f/2.5 Color Skopar lens and Olympus EP1 digital camera. The BessaR served as my primary camera and the EP1 took care of random additional stuff. I shot 8 rolls of Tri-X over the two days checking out the city and upon initial review, it looks like I can group the few keepers into three general categories; Street, Portraits, and Places/Things.