A Year in Photos

Photography, fiction, and personal essays form my three primary creative outlets. For this blog's first 18 months, I used it primarily for photography. As I've returned to creative writing, I'll use this blog for fiction, too. Sometimes, when reality needs to be discussed more than truth, I write personal essays.

This blog will continue to showcase as many above-average photos as I can muster. Hopefully my written work will be as good or better than the visual. Whichever drew you here -- photographs or fiction, I hope you enjoy both.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Old Film, Not Great Results

I shot a roll of Kodak Tri-X that expired no more recently than the mid-to-late 1980s the other day. I exposed it as 320 ISO to give a bit more light to this old film stock. That, however, did not help the results too much as this post will show. The camera was my new (to me) Pentax 6X7 MU that I picked up in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago. This roll used the 55mm 1:3.5 lens. Today I took this same combo out with a half-used roll of Fuji Velvia 50, images that should be back from the lab in a couple weeks. This shot turned out, I think, the best from this roll from a technical standpoint. However, I thought I was metering the statue, not the background. A statue in Embarcadero Center. I forget which one of these similar statues this is. Let me correct that. I remember that this is the dude, but I forget who this statue depicts. The other of these similar statues Getting past this images obvious technical issues, this lens renders closeups at shallow angles with fast background drop offs in an interesting way that I need to experement with some more. Ghandi says 'sup.' California Street Canyon, a typical 'roll killer' for me. Just a shot of reasonable predictability with which to end a roll. Of course, I had one more shot after this, so I took it again. This image has a few problems. 1- I loaded the film a little further back than I should have, so this 6X7 image was more like 6X5. Therefore, 2- I didn't have any space at the end of the roll with which to attach the clothes pins for drying, hence the clothes pin damage along the bottom. Oops. Lessons learned: The 6X7 is a bit tricky for loading film, so I need to be more careful than normal.

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