I decided to start this new year shooting film. I took these at Scott and Andy’s house. It was our first Monday Night Dinner of the year, plus our friends Jonathan and Adrian were in town from Sydney, so they decided to invite a bunch of friends over. It’s always nice to catch up with friends you’ve known for a long time. Through our weekly supper club, Andy and Scott are getting better at cooking, especially for groups. What a great social tradition.

These images were shot on Tri-X 400 with my Rolleicord.

Meet Paul, he’s a film shooter like me. He approached me last weekend, saying he wanted to meet “the guy with the Crown Graphic”. He shoots street portraits in b&w and color and we had a lot to chat about. I tend to make a lot of film shooter contacts on the street.

I hadn’t shot for a long while, so the piece of tape and light leak are what I get for being out of practice.

This is 320TXP at box speed, souped in Rodinal 1+50 for 15 minutes.

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It was Travis’s idea to do a family portrait before their family increased by one. I’m glad he called upon me to do it; I’m always looking for portrait subjects. We shot this in the plaza at California/Davis streets. I don’t often shoot more than one person at once in Large Format because the focus can get a bit tricky, but I think this turned out pretty well.

This is again the Carl Meyer 12″ Apo-Process lens. I don’t have many 8×10 lenses, but the ones I do.. I really like.

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This is another portrait of Eva. We decided to try one on California Street on one of the cable car lines. In the distance you can see the cable car line going up a tall hill, though in this print you can’t see it. Still, I think the 12″ Carl Meyer makes a great environmental portrait lens. I’m beginning to like it a lot.

I had the privilege of photographing Eva a couple weekends ago. We met in the morning to do some family portraits downtown. I did a mix of LF shots, Ektar 100 with an old 210mm Tessar, 8×10 320TXP with a Carl Meyer 12″ Apo-Process, and my favorite portrait lens – the Gundlach Rapid Rectigraphic. I surprisingly love the CM shots, I hope to have one of those posted after I return from vacation. This one up above, though.. be sure to check out the larger version of it. It’s lenses like this that drive me to Large Format so easily. It’s the process of shooting Large Format that drives me to do portraits.

As always, I hope Eva likes this photo as much as I do.

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Reese and Jenny, on the corner of 24th and Alabama.

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One of the things I found charming about Bangalore was the signage. There were so many hand-pained signs, on wood panels and on the sides of buildings. I came across this sign for John Panter on a long walk. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Who is John Panter? I guess if I wanted to find out, I’d just follow the arrow.

Taken with a Widelux F7, on Arista Premium 400 (-1).

This is my first published scan produced with VueScan. I decided that since my old Epson’s scanner software doesn’t work on Lion, and I hate the built-in scanning software, I decided to take the plunge and try VueScan. So far I’m happy with it.

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Ryan, taken around the corner at 21st and Capp Street.

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Chitostyle is Chris Tong, a designer & front end engineer from Vancouver. Chris works for Pivotal Labs (San Francisco), largely for the Pivotal Tracker team. The last time Chris was visiting us, I took him around the corner to this dark brown wall that’s frequently tagged. I thought it would make an interesting backdrop for a portrait. As soon as the sun ducked behind the tall buildings on Mission Street, we went out and shot this.

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I met Chris at a going-away party for my friend Jonathan, who was moving to Australia. These types of get-togethers are interesting because you get to meet friends of your friend that you haven’t met. I had the Canon AE-1 with me, and Chris and I drummed up a conversation about shooting film. I asked if he’d be up for doing a portrait some time. He’s a former film student, now getting an MFA in cinema, so he’s no stranger to this.

We met up this past Friday in front of the Castro Theatre. It was drizzly, but the light was pretty nice right at the ticket booth. We did two exposures, the one above and another. The other shows more of the theatre, but frankly I like the close-up head/shoulders shots more.

Taking two shots seems to be around right. In every case so far (knock on wood), one of them has been just what I wanted. This seems to be the case for my 4×5 portraits as well.

The image is a scan of a contact print done on Ilford Glossy RC.