Photo Class Portfolio

Last fall I took Photo 101 for fun. I learned a lot and got to refresh my darkroom skills, my main goal. For my final portfolio, I picked abstracts. I was happy to see, during the final class, that my portfolio was not the best. I can think of at least two that I thought were as good or, honestly, better. One of the better portfolios came from Erik Bender, whose blog you can read here.

Here's my final portfolio. I'll add some notes about how I made each shot. I decided to attempt abstracts created by abstracting subjects, using darkroom processes, through macro work, and by simply photographing unrecognizable subjects. I managed all four, which I was happy with.







These first four received pretty wild speculation about how I captured them. People noted the movement in the last one, and the abstract forms in the first two. To me, the third should have been a hint that something ordered had occurred. A lot of people asked how I did them and I agreed to show the class after my portfolio showing if no one guessed the method. That received some interest. After my portfolio showing, I turned on my cell phone and switched to my Electric Sheep live wallpaper. I used a macro lens and took about 13 rolls of film of the wallpaper's renderings to obtain these four shots.





I made these two with a pinhole camera. The first pinhole is a Monster energy drink (how do people drink that stuff?!?) can with five pinholes in an "X" pattern. The latter is a Brisk Iced Tea can with two pinholes oriented at about 75 degrees. 





These two were shots at the De Young museum that I manipulated in the darkroom. Prior to and during print exposure, I brushed very dilute fixers onto the images to cause a smoke effect on the prints.



This was a similar process to that above except with developer and a bright flash of light to solarize the image. In real life, it's actually kind of purple and green.


Just a photogram of nails. I set all the nails on their heads, so the different perspectives are from the angle of light casting shadows on the nails.

A macro shot of a white acrylic sheet resting on a beer stein back lit by a naked bulb. This was just a test shot, actually, to confirm focus, but it worked really well.


The bulb on my Repronar. I dodged the surround, otherwise it would have been black instead of gray.


This also stupified people, too. For this I used my Repronar and placed a plastic tray on the light plate and poured in some vegetable oil. I added oil-based paint and the different colors reacted and spread differently.




These two came from a stereoscopic pinhole camera. I've featured it on this blog before.




The first image was an accident created by exposing paper to light and then developing it in the light in developer being mixed and with a distinct temperature gradient in the fluid. The bottom is a contact print of the paper negative.

Microfilm, Motion Picture Film, and the Pentax H3V

About six months ago I won a 2,000-foot spool of Kodak 2383 on eBay. The film, however,  lacks any edge information, so I can't verify that it is 2383. It matches Kodak's description of the film's physical appearance quite well, though. The ISO is 1.6., which means that at f16 on a sunny day it needs a 1.6-second exposure. In bright light at f1.8, the shutter speed is around 1/30th of a second. At f2.8, 1/8th. That makes hand-holding the camera pretty difficult with this film.

But it yields a vintage look with nice grain. One limitation of this film, it has light damage, so the film HAS to be used in bright light or the images are unusable. Here is what an image taken in low light looks like:


What you're seeing along the edge is light damage caused by a pinhole leak in the film tin. The light has leaked in between the film's perforations. However, in bright light the new image wipes out the existing damage. Here's an example:


Fortunately, I lucked out and wound the film so that the light damage is along the top in the final images.

In addition to this microfilm, I also took some Kodak 250D with with me. 250D is a motion picture film that lends itself particularly well to monochrome work. The gray tones, when exposed correctly, are quite nice. Now, let me be clear that the images from the 250D roll were not exposed correctly. In fact, I only know how to expose the microfilm correctly because I accidentally screwed up the camera's settings. I thought the shutter speed indicator aligned with the cocked indicator, causing all my microfilm images to be perfectly exposed and all my 250D images to be MASSIVELY overexposed. It's complicated, just trust me. So here are some images from the microfilm roll.














You can see the vintage, high-contrast look. It's a nice film for selected uses, but not for action photography.

The 250 D results were less evenly toned and tended to all be high-key. In fact, only two of the 250D shots turned out at all.

A Geriatric Gets a New Life

I bought my Pentax H3V for $11.13 broken at a camera shop in SF with the specific intent of having it repaired so I could make sure that my Pentaxes, which I like a great deal, would be safe and well repaired by the repair shop. In short, the repair was perfect, the camera looks and works great, and I'll be gladly sending each of my Pentaxes to the shop for repairs and servicing. A lot of them would benefit from new light seals and such anyway.

So to fully test the H3V, I went to the Civic Center and ran three rolls of film through it. Foma 400, Walgreens 400, and Kodak BWCN400. My goal had been to photograph Henry Moore's 1973 sculpture "Large Four Piece Reclining Figure" which is outside the symphony hall. That accomplished, I walked around the Civig center photographing things until it looked like I may be stabbed.



THis is the sculpture. I didn't see the reclining figure, either, until I got closer.


Just a reference image with the sculpture name, artist, and year.


Taking this shot, which was number 21 of 27, was when I first began to see the sculpture as a reclining figure. Either I took a while to learn, or the sculptor did something wrong. You may decide for yourself.


A closer version of the previous shot. One of my two favorites from this trip.


Inside the sculpture.


From this angle, it looks like the reclining figure is smiling. I'd be smiling, too, if I could recline all the time.


My other favorite photo.


One nice thing about this piece is that because it's so open shadows move around and through it freely. This presents interesting photographic possibilities.






After finishing the roll, I decided to meander around the area. Not too far, mind you, because it was getting dusk-ish and I look like a victim.




Rendered in color, this moving, inflated flower sculpture is interesting. It's not my favorite, so I'm glad it won't be a permanent addition to the area. It doesn't quite fit the area Zeitgeist, which is all metal and such.


I also walked up to the San Francisco Public Utilities Corporation Building, which opens soon. THis will be a LEED Platinum building. It's gorgeous from any angle (except up close, at least until the construction crews wash the windows of the construction dust.)


I actually used almost the entire Walgreen 400 color roll on this building, but figured you don't want to see 18 variations on the same shot. So here's a different one.


And another different one.

After finishing the color roll, I decided to try the BWCN400 on the inflatable sculpture and see if maybe some up-close shots would change my opinion. Well, not so much. I should have done these shots with color because the sky and the red rendered too close to make the images truly dramatic. They may have been dramatic had I had a deep red filter or more color film. I did have my K-7 on me, but, as I stated above, I look like a victim.



See, in monochrome it just doesn't work, not without some special handling, which I lacked the equipment for.


This sculpture I get and all, but I'm no fan. My take on this piece is that it strives to show life through movement in sculpture. Additionally hinted at because it's a flower. And it's bright red which makes it very noticeable. And it's quite, which is nice. But I can't get into it even though, I think, I like the purpose and intent.


Lest you assert that I dislike kinetic art -- I admit I think it's a bit gimmicky sometimes -- here is a piece of kinetic sculpture that isn't on my thumbs-down list. It's across the street from where the flower is. It's two "L"s and they move in the wind. Nifty.

In short, what did I learn this week? The H3V and Sears Focal 28mm works very well together. I'm not sure who made the Focal lens, but it was made in Japan. I read some posts online with speculation as to who, therefore, made it, but I'm not sold on this being a Tokina. Sun Optics, maybe. Anyway, it's a fabulous lens and cooperates with the H3V quite nicely.

Also I learned not to carry extra film with me. It takes about two minutes per image to scan these. So multiply that by 25 for a normal day and you'll see it takes me about five hours to scan all the images for a given week. Then I have to edit them and downsample them for Internet hosting. These images you see are about 150-225 kilobytes each. The originals on my hard drive are 3.6 to 6.5 megabytes each. I'd run out of Picasa space in a month! So, it takes about another 30 to 45 minutes to contrast balance, sharpen, and remove developing flaws (e.g., a piece of hair) from the negatives before uploading them. So when I do something like take two extra rolls of film, it adds about three hours to my weekend scanning and editing routine. That doesn't make my girlfriend or my dogs happy. So, lesson learned, stick to the one-roll-per-day thing.

New Camera and New Lens to Test

Last summer I picked up a Focal 80-200mm with macro function at a garage sale for $15. I've listed it on eBay twice, it being far heavier than I can carry, and no one has bought it. So I decided to test it and see if it's any good. Coincidentally, I had a new M42 body to test, my newly repaired Pentax H3v. In short, I'll be keeping the lens. It's fantastic. I'm ecstatic no one bought it. The camera is also great and I'm pleased to have some great shots to share.

One interesting thing, the macro mode changes the way the images appear. This isn't a macro mode where the user simply keeps turning the focusing ring, no, this is a separate, dedicated third ring. And when the macro mode kicks in, the depth of field shrinks and the background becomes a swirling mass. It's a nice effect that, in portraits, could have a good deal of use.


This photo shows the swirling background effect. People pay stupid amounts of money on eBay for Russian-made lenses that have this same effect.


Even at greater depths of field, this would have been deeper than the f3.5 I used for many exposures because her whole profile is in focus, the background is still suitably blurry.


This was not, I don't think, in macro mode.Just a close-focus.


This one likes having his picture taken, unlike the other. That makes getting test shots much simpler.


Here his muzzle was a bit overexposed, so I grabbed a magic wand sample, pasted the sample as a new layer, dropped the gamma, and then made it about 50% transparent before merging the layers. This yielded some detail in his muzzle.