i was walking down mission street (2600 block) when i turned around to see a girl and her mother next to a UPS truck. the girl was vomiting on the street while the UPS delivery woman was unloading packages. *snap*
i love these little moments. this is why you prefocus and stop your lens all the way down.
a couple weeks ago, i went out shooting in embarcadero/northbeach with some flickr folks. after lunch, reese and i made our way back through chinatown where we ducked into the wok shop. it’s an old family run business where you can buy hand-hammered woks. beyond the woks, there are a ton of other kitchen gadgets, tools, and other tchotchkes. when we saw this mirror amidst all the laterns, i knew i had to take a shot of the two of us….
part of attending the folsom street fair is attending my friends ted and emery’s annual folsom house party. this year, i did things backwards and different. i attended the fair first with photographer friends, then later showed up at the party. i had two cameras and a bag full of film with me once i got to the party, so i was in a shooting mindset.
i ended up with images that are pretty different from usual party photos. when i’m at a party or out with friends, i am very rarely shooting them with a camera. so this was a unique opportunity to do so. i felt fairly disconnected from the usual goings-on since i was in this different mode. i’m not sure i’ll do it again, for a couple reasons.
so here’s a glimpse into what i experience at ted and emery’s annual folsom party. enjoy.
a week ago i went to the annual folsom street fair, an event that draws a crowd of 400,000 people to vendor exhibits, food, demonstrations, live music, and dance parties. in the past i’ve gone to a friend’s house party, since he lives at the end of the fair site. this year, i had a very different experience.
i started my day with breakfast with a group of photographer friends, wandered through the fair with them with our cameras. i rendezvoused with my friends reese and frank, and later met up the party folks.
folsom is quite an eye-opener for the uninitiated. there is a lot of public nudity, bondage and leather, and spanking going on. it’s interesting in that private fantasy and behaviors are on display. you see a lot of extreme preferences.
i was out with two cameras, both loaded with arista premium. the 24×36 frames are from a canon ae-1 program shooting at iso 400. the wide frames are from a widelux f7, shooting at iso 200. all film developed in rodinal 1+50.
arista premium 400 at iso 6400. rodinal 1+50 for 45 minutes. shot with a widelux f7.
found in north beach, san francisco.
heading back from north beach with reese we photographed some of the bikes we saw along our path. this was my last 6×7 shot of the day.
pentax 6×7, 90/2.8 lens. shot on ektar 100.
in may of 2009, our friend jonathan decided to plan a trip to yosemite to hike up half dome. the time finally came around and six of us took a friday off and camped in the north pines campsite and eventually made our way up.
i’d never actually been to yosemite before and it had been a long time since i’d done any proper camping. it was so fun, and the park was amazingly beautiful in every way. on our first night, galen grilled up some steaks and veggie packets and corn. we had a large delicious meal before packing it up and going to bed early.
the next day we woke up at 6:30am and had another sizeable meal, and headed off on a 4-5 hour hike to the half dome site.
i won’t try to trivialize the hike. thousands of people do it every year. you start at a high elevation, and you go higher (a gain of 4800ft). you hike through the woods, up over two waterfalls, and up large rock steps for hours. then you can see the half dome site. that means you must again climb the last very steep rock steps up to the rock face. at that point, you need to make a go-or-no-go decision to actually scale the rock face.
at the base of the rock face there is a pile of gloves. you put on a fairly well matched pair because you will be slowly ascending the rock using cables that have been installed on the rock. it’s slow, because people are taking their time, or taking a break, or panicking and turning around and descending. it can take 20-25 minutes to get up there if you decide to go up the “outside” of the cables, or over an hour if you decide to stay within the cables like most folks.
once you are up the rock face, you are at the top of yosemite national park, 8842ft elevation. you have a panoramic view of the valley, and a chance to relax with everybody else who has made it to the top. i was so exhausted and breathing such thin air, that i was wheezing at first until i relaxed a bit. at several points along the hike, i didn’t think i could make it and was formulating back-out plans in my head. i’m so glad i pushed forth and went all the way. in light of foot/hip problems i’ve been dealing with over the past couple years, i feel very accomplished having done this.
at the top of half dome, you are cooling off from the breeze and taking in one of the most amazing sights i have personally seen. the bad news is, you have another 5 hours to hike back and are racing to get back to your camp site before it gets dark. i paused along the way back, wondering how the hell did i go *up* all of this??
hiking half dome was quite awesome and i’m so glad i did it.
notes:
all images were shot on arista premium 400 at iso 6400, developed in rodinal 1+50 for 45 minutes. shot with a widelux f7.
i shot both of these last month on a small excursion with gordon and cindy. gordon showed me his recently acquired horizon perfekt swing-lens camera. it had been so long since i shot sheet film, so i had my shen-hao 4×5 with me and shot a set of hp5+ sheets.
both images on hp5+ 4×5, with a nikkor 210mm lens on a shen-hao camera. rodinal 1+50 for 11min.
last week i attended vmware’s annual conference, vmworld 2009. since i am doing so much shooting this year, i decided to bring my widelux f7 camera with me to the conference. by carrying it with me, i managed to meet a lot of photographers there, including many who shoot (including one 4×5 guy!). the conference ended up being a good venue for shooting, despite the low light levels.
after registration, you walk down moscone center’s wonderful staircase down to a long line of shiny new infrastructure that is running the show.
the keynotes were large productions. giant projected video screens. the large video cameras looked quite sophisticated. i took a peak in one that was near the stage. on the screen it artificially marked all hard edges in the scene.
the camera operator and the attendee behind him both noticed my camera, and i talked to them both about my widelux. the attendee had a horizon camera (also a swing-lens panoramic) but didn’t think of bringing any film cameras to the conference. i don’t blame him. it was at this point that i realized i must be the only one of 12,800 conference attendees carrying a light meter.
the first lab session i attended was vSphere 4 – New Features, Best of, Advanced Features. there was quite a hiccup in the lab infrastructure and a lot of time was wasted. this of course started a flurry of bad things being said over twitter and blogs. vmware managed to solve most of the problems and had late-night repeat sessions for those who wanted to repeat labs that had broken. the gentleman i paired up with for the lab was a manager and didn’t seem to be interested in much hands-on experience, so i was able to drive and go pretty fast through the material.
this is dan chu, vp of emerging products and markets, from vmware. he’s about to start a panel discussion about extending information technology beyond the traditional data center (the cloud). a bit too high level for me.
the scale of vmworld was pretty immense. this is the self-paced lab room, a huge room full of thin clients with a row of supporting infrastructure up front. the conference staff was nice enough to let me in specially to take pictures.
one of the meal rooms. i estimated about 1,500 seats in this room.
these guys are david baldwin (our technical account manager) and martin klaus (my speaking session owner). they’re stationed at the lab manager kiosk in the vmware booth. in the evening, the expo area was catered as people scatter around learning about new products and getting their badges scanned to receive more information (in exchange for gifts like tshirts, stress balls, and ball-point pens adorned with logos).
by the end of the conference, there was a day/evening of relaxation. retro game stations, air hockey and shuffleboard, food and drink, and rock climbing. the conference ended with a live performance by foreigner.
i’d never imaged taking a picture at a concert with the widelux. i had a few frames left in the camera, had my light meter with me, and thought.. what the heck. meter the stage, hold the camera pretty high, and burn the rest of the roll and see what happens.
all images are taken with the widelux f7, on arista premium 400 rated at iso 6400. developed in rodinal 1+50 for 45 minutes with agitation every 3 minutes.
next week i am giving a presentation at vmware’s annual conference, vmworld 2009 (breakout session VM1461). it’s a pretty big thing for me. i’ve done presentations for user groups but not like this: audio/video crew, session owner, audio recording, wireless microphones, session feedback surveys. this conference will have about 10,000 attendees. the speaker staff is overseeing 400 speakers. there are hundreds of breakout sessions. ya.. *exhale*
one thing i’ve found that has helped me is going through my presentation out loud by myself in a conference room. the proverbial speak in front of a mirror trick. i did this once, gave my presentation to an internal group at work, revised my speaking notes, then gave the presentation to a group at vmware (which was a great opportunity). i tried to do the solitary/room thing once more, but i wasn’t feeling it. my biggest thing right now is being over my allotted time. i have rough timings for each section of my talk, so maybe if i just put those down in my notes and keep a timer….
anyways, the conference is next week. my breakout session is “full” at 70 attendees. i’m not sure how big the room is yet, i have a feeling it larger but full with walk-ins. luckily, i am attending other sessions before mine, then after mine a few others. it will be over before i know it.
image taken with a canon ae-1 program, 24/2.8 lens. arista premium 400 at iso 400, rodinal 1+50 for 13 minutes.
i’ve shot half of a twenty roll order of arista premium 400. it is said to actually be rebranded kodak tri-x, but sold at nearly half the cost. i’ve been shooting it at iso 3200 in the widelux, and just developed it in rodinal 1+50 for 33 minutes. the rolls have also been deliberately overexposed by at least a stop. so far, i am really liking what i’m seeing, despite some emulsion scratches i need to track down from the camera. i feel each set of rolls is better in quality than the previous, from a technical standpoint. testament that you really do need to get to know your camera.
the widelux is proving to be a great street shooter. the aspect ratio of the format (roughly 2.4:1) really makes the image more cinematic.
i went out on a neighborhood photowalk with armand, who does photography for missionlocal. it’s great to meet other local photographers. we got along really well, and it was fun walking around our neighborhood together talking about our favorite places and about photography.
this bike we can across embodies the colorful nature of the mission.
taken on fuji portra 400vc, with a pentax 6×7 and 90mm/2.8 lens.
i recently dusted off my lomo action sampler camera. i put a roll of fuji 100 speed film i got for free into it. i took it to a party. it’s a pretty awesome camera, even though mine appears to have a light leak now.
it’s yet another camera that reminds you that photography isn’t always about the technical aspects. sometimes it’s just about the pointing and the shooting.
this was my view while i cleaned up a scan of a 6×7 image. it is repetitive work and tiresome. what’s interesting is you spend the entire time looking at one image at this level, working almost on a single pixel basis. it’s so easy to spot flaws at this magnification, and to think about what’s wrong with the image after spending so much time on this mind-numbing part of the process. i usually forget to zoom out and regain the perspective of the entire image, the view that everybody will be seeing it from.
view the resulting image, scaled down to 640×506. the full size image is 8724×6896, or sixty million pixels.
it took me a little while to realize that the viewfinder on the widelux f7 is only accurate at infinity. i was wondering why my closer-up shots were misframed. duh, the thing is just a simple fixed lens on top of the body.
so my last few rolls through the widelux have been studies of two concepts at once. first, framing. with the widelux, you aim lower the closer the subject is. i’m still getting used to it but as you can see, it’s not impossible at all. one thing i am trying to do is, as i look through the viewfinder i imagine i am looking all the way to inifinity. i’m using that to help me readjust where i point the camera to hopefully frame the image to something closer resembling what i was viewing initially through the viewfinder.
the second study, shooting moving subjects. the widelux has no proper shutter, it is just a vertical slot that opens as the lens turret begins its rotation which pans the film. so i’m not sure how it really shows motion on the film. there are basically three rotation speeds, “1/15″ “1/125″ and “1/250″. these approximate shutter speeds. the above shot was taken at “1/125″, so you can see that motion is not really stopped because the film is exposed sequentially from one side to the other. i should push one more stop so i can shoot more at “1/250″ to see how that works out.
always a process.
boarding bart at the 16th and mission station.
yesterday i was shooting in the 24th/mission station when a guy and his buddy asked about my camera. he seemed to know a thing or two about film and cameras, but had never seen a swing-lens panorama before. from a distance, he thought it was a stereo camera. i love san francisco!
from my first roll of color film in the widelux f7. i’m loving this camera more every week. this was the 1/15 speed, which is a bit of a misnomer since the camera doesn’t have a regular shutter. it’s also said that ektar is “easy to scan,” but this is the first frame that i’ve considered easy. i just scanned on auto, resize, and posted. not bad, huh?
ektar 100, widelux f7.
this is the stairs/escalator at church street station, on san francisco’s underground muni system. the escalator has been broken for what seems like weeks now. this is where i ascend to reach photoworks.
kodak tri-x 400 rated at iso 1600. shot with a widelux f7.
staring out the window from vesuvio, a bar in north beach, san francisco. this was the night i took the chinatown at night shot.
fuji pro800z, shot at iso 1600. pentax 6×7, 90/2.8mm.
i recently went out shooting with a large group of flickr friends in northbeach/chinatown. i mainly shot with my pentax 6×7 using the 2.8/90 lens and fuji 800z pushed a stop and a half.
but as a second camera i brought my widelux f7. so far, every time i bring it into a new situation it turns our wonderful images like the one above.
photographers always joke that it’s not about the camera at all but the operator who is creating the images. the widelux is like one of the many niche cameras that existed. but it has a unique signature in the images it captures, something that doesn’t really seem to come from the photographer. it challenges the notion in that joke.
widelux f7, kodak tri-x 400 at iso 1600. rodinal 1+50 for 22 minutes.
this is my brother tom and his wife clare.
i travelled to indiana last week to reconnect with family, meet clare, and be there for their wedding.
tom and clare were married at the hamilton county courthouse on friday. after the ceremony, i took pictures of everybody on the lawn behind the courthouse. we found a nice shady spot and were able to take some pictures before everybody got too sweaty.
i have a good amount of film to go through, mostly portra 160vc and 400, but also some of the new kodak ektar 100.
this was shot on portra 160vc. camera is the pentax 6×7, 80/2.8. negative scan, dust clone-out, auto-curves, resize.
