A Year in Photos: Week Thirty-five

It's been a long hiatus due to work, changing jobs, my old commute length, and a number of other factors. But, the blog is returning. The frequency will likely be a bit sporadic, but this week at least we have five posts. I also have enough material to keep this blog daily until almost the end of September. So, this week we'll be looking at a project I call The Chicago Project. Earlier this year my girlfriend's father gave me 5,500 slides or so to can for him. A few months later, in April, my girlfriend and I visited Chicago. I grew up there so I recognized many of the places in his photos, so we set about recreating the images. This week we'll see five location shots that comprise The Chicago Project. Each project installment includes the original photo, my re-take, an Adobe Photoshop image blend, and my manual image blend. The image blends are intended to merge past and present, create a bridge between photo taken 41 years apart.

The original photos were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic SPII and Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 with Fujichrome film. The new photos were taken on a Pentax K-7 with a Sigma 35-80mm lens and an APS-C sensor. The crop factor complicated the image captures because the focal length was different. Because of the APS-C sensor's crop factor, the Sigma behaves like a 52.5-120mm lens. So the focal length is close, but not exact.

Here are the original images we'll be looking at this week along with their updates and blends.




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