Last rays of light

I take a lot of pictures of sunsets these days. It's a nice way for me to end my day, staring at the sun, and seeing how the light and clouds change from one day to the next.

traveling

I'm off to Texas for a class this week. I am planning on bringing my camera with me... not my usual 20D DSLR, but my rangefinder! It's actually one of my favorite cameras-- compact size for a film camera, but built like a tank (I think I could actually use it as a weapon if need be). It takes beautiful nostalgic pictures. The in focus parts are crisp and sharp, and the out of focus background parts are beautifully distorted.

The rangefinder was the camera of choice of photojournalists in the first half of the 20th century, before the SLR came onto the market in the 1950's. French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, known for his photos of "the decisive moment" on the streets of Paris, Europe, and all over the world, shot with a Leica rangefinder. Interestingly, HCB, who began as a painter, retired from photography completely for the last 30 or so years of his life and went back to painting and drawing. He viewed photography as simply an instantaneous method of creating a drawing (NPR).

cool shot: British Museum by 2plus2isfive

different cameras

This is an assortment of photos I've taken with the different cameras I have. It's not a comparison per se, because the pictures aren't identical obviously. But I just thought it would be fun to look through and see how different cameras see the world. One interesting thing to note is that these cameras run the gamut from very cheap (toy camera, $16) to very expensive (digital SLR, $1,600 new). My personal opinion is that your eye takes the picture, and that that matters more than the equipment in your hand. It all comes down to what you want and what you like. Doing whatever makes you enjoy photography and life the most (without having to sell your car or your dog) is way more important than abiding by any artistic standard, quality standard or other standard that people may set.

Links to images/info about the cameras:
Sony DSC-V1 - point and shoot
Canon A-1 - film SLR
Rolleicord - film TLR (twin lens reflex)
Olympus 35-RC - film rangefinder
Holga - film toy camera
Canon 20D - digital SLR

Click on each pic to see it bigger @ my flickr.


afternoon light, c2005 -- Sony DSC, digital point and shoot


contact prints, c2005 -- Sony DSC, digital point and shoot


marble in sidewalk, 2005 -- Canon A-1, film SLR


industrial building, 2006 -- Canon A-1, film SLR


windy, 2006 -- Rolleicord, film TLR


grass and sidewalk, 2006 -- LG 8300, camera phone


bottle, 2006 -- Olympus 35-RC, film rangefinder


waves, c2006 -- Holga, film toy camera


streetlight, 2006 -- Canon 20D, digital SLR; Photoshop CS2 (minimal post-processing)


torn paper, 2007 -- Canon 20D, digital SLR; Photoshop CS2 (minimal post-processing)

ambivalence

I started taking pictures probably around middle or high school. I fell in love with photography unexpectedly in high school for sure, when I took a class for the pottery and ended up spending all my time in the black & white darkroom. I shot film, color and eventually spent a good chunk of change to buy a Canon 20D, which I still own and use. I've gotten pretty decent at the basics of RAW editing and image processing in Photoshop, nothing fancy shmancy, and I know that I only know the very surface. There are a lot of things that I like about digital photography, not the least the fact that I can see what I shoot immediately and shoot an almost infinite amount of photos without breaking the bank, or even denting it really.

But I admit, I have to admit.... I've always had a strong ambivalent thread running deep down my spine about digital photography. I think after working in a commercial photo lab where I spent my day in the darkroom, where I knew every inch of my enlarger by feel in the pitch black, looking at negatives, touching the paper, feeling it come out of the processor warm from the heat, scanning negatives and making contact sheets, looking at slides, just being around images and photos and their tangibility, I'm spoiled. From the moment I wound the film onto my manual Canon A-1, firing off the first two or three "trash" shots, each photo I took I was a part of the process except for the actual film development. I took the photo, I made the contact sheet, I chose the negative and I printed the print. At the end of the process I held in my hand a tangible print.

Maybe the steps aren't so different from digital photography, but I feel something different. I had to choose what film speed I used depending on what I was photographing. I discovered that if I bought the professional line of Fujifilm, my photos looked a lot better. And using the Delta 3200 b&w film for indoor or night photography gave me beautiful film noir-ish black and white grain. There is nothing beautiful or aesthetic in any degree about digital noise. And I have to admit as well, I am in love with the look of color prints. I think maybe I am too used to their smoothness to be attracted to any inkjet print, no matter how high the dpi.

Some people love the sound of vinyl, the analog sound. They mourn the digital revolution of sound. I don't mourn the digital revolution of the image, because film is still here (and film itself is the newcomer to wetplate and other photographic processes). But I realized recently that photography is what I am passionate about. I will always love the look of the analog photo. I can almost always tell if a photo was taken on film or digital; they see the world differently, and although neither is more right or wrong than the other, I do love one more.

Photo Links

Photographers
Zeb Andrews on flickr - stunning photos, lots of Northwest landscape in 6x9 format slide film.
Bud Green on flickr - master of b&w, develops @ home (Rodinal) and scans the film (Tri-X).
The Library of Congress on flickr - supercool random historical photos!
hiron - Japanese photoblog w/ lots of photos of stray cats & food
Vivian Maier - amateur photog in the 50's/60's, recently discovered.
Andrew Sanderson - British b&w photographer
mineisnodisgrace - lovely photoblog

Photo Resources
DPReview - digital camera review site
Photo.net - comprehensive forums, user galleries, reviews, classifieds...
Digital Photography School - has tips and techniques, user forums
Rangefinder Forum
APUG (Analog Photography Users Group) - very technical. film is still alive!

last days of fall

more fall leaves... the bright colors are the trees' last hurrah before the monochromatic shades of winter.

red leaf

This photo summarizes fall up to me: bright clear sky, color, and shape. The sun is actually hiding behind the leaf in the composition. I love back-lit fall leaves because they really glow.

catch your breath

I really enjoy the moment when I step outside and walk down my street, breathing in the chilly air and relishing the remaining days of fall. It's a good reminder that wherever I am, I need to sometimes pause in what I'm doing and just take a breath and enjoy the present. One of the houses a little ways down has some fantastic rose bushes growing almost onto the sidewalk. On one of my walks an old man walking in front of me completely stopped in his steps to smell a rose, then took even more time to go out of his way to smell another rose deeper in the hedge. I had never seen someone do that before. It seemed almost gutsy in this age where we have to seem busy and productive and always going somewhere. But this man was completely comfortable and unself-conscious in interrupting wherever he was going to enjoy the beauty and scent of the flowers.

fall is here

This photo is a bit quirky... it's just some of the dry leaves in focus, not the pot or the windowsill. It's a bit like an unkempt room. But it's one of those photos that although it doesn't grab you instantly, I find myself liking it the more I look at it.

Fall is here. The air is cold, the heaters have started hissing and spitting like cranky cats, and the sunbeams only have the memory of warmth in them. But I love it when I step outside and breathe in the fresh fall air. It makes me happy to walk and look at the leaves turning or starting to turn.

the outdoors

I went up to the White Mountains with my cool roommate and my cool pastor for a foliage day hike. Mt. Willard is supposed to have the best view for the least amount of effort. Since we didn't want to be there too long, I went for it, and I think it was a good decision. The hike itself was very easy; it was a slowly ascending trail with no climbing necessary, and we made it up in about 45 minutes or so. I slowed the going with my stops to take pictures of leaves on rocks. The end was on a ridge looking out over a large valley. It wasn't really panoramic, since we weren't on a peak, but that one view we had was pretty spectacular.



I really love going into the outdoors. It feels great to get away from the city for a while and breathe the fresh air (which makes me wonder what kind of air I'm breathing normally) and just see grandeur in nature. Living in the city, your eyes tend to focus on short distances, often just the distance to your computer screen. So it's nice to be able to give them a bit of a break and much larger vantages to look at. And it can never hurt to have reminders of how you and your daily life aren't all that there is out there.



more pics at my flickr.

shoes

I don't usually like photos of people's feet, but I was waiting for the T and snapped this one with my cameraphone. I like the bright yellow bar framing the top, the geometric intersection of the sidewalk cracks, juxtaposed with the more organic shapes of the shoes at the bottom. The composition might have been a bit better balanced to have the shoes in the bottom right corner, but for what it was it's not too bad.

foggy morning

This morning at around 6:30am. It really feels like fall now, with summer just a dream before. I can't say I'm completely ready for winter, but I like fall a lot. There is crispness in the cold morning air, the fog, even the England-like rain, a kind of spark of energy before it all falls dormant into snow and ice.