Another Old Polaroid

Here are two images from some night shooting I did last summer. I am trying to get pumped to explore more night shooting this coming summer. The first image was the result of a miss-feed of the Polaroid film that resulted in an unintentional double exposure. I did crop the messy part out and recreated a white frame in photoshop, but hey if you have the tools to rescue a great images (accident or no) then I say go for it. I know there are purists out there who feel different, but its my blog so there!

"Tree Sky"
Polaroid 180
Palaroid Chocolate

"Woodrow Wilson Bridge"
Polaroid 180
Palaroid Chocolate

A last goodbye

As I mentioned in my last post, I have lost both of my pets in the past few months. Living in a small condo I don't have a yard to bury them so I had them cremated so I could spread their ashes. This past Sunday, when the snow finally had melted enough that I could make my way to Tuckers favorite park I finally was able to spread both of boys ashes together. I am not one who is usually very sappy or emotional, the only exception is for my animals. So because I felt I needed to I took along my Holgaroid and shot my last pack of type 80 Polaroid Chocolate film. I'll miss you boys, I hope I did right by you both.

"A last Goodbye"
Holga w/ Polaroid Back
Polaroid Chocolate (type 80)

An Empty House

The past few months have not been very happy for me. Back in November my cat, Max, died suddenly and unexpectedly. There was no apparent cause. He was just 7 years old. I adopted him 6 years ago to be a companion to my aging chocolate lab, Tucker. As it turns out Tucker never seemed to show any interest in Max, but Max over time grew very attached to Tucker. I did catch them occasionally sleeping on the bed next to each other, but always as soon as I saw this Tucker would get up and go sleep some where else.

On February 1st Tucker turned 13, but he was really showing his age. His hind legs had been loosing muscle mass over the past 3 years and his ability to move has been slowly declining for that same time. Until finally this past Sunday he could barley walk and needed help just standing up. Of course this happened during the worst blizzard DC has seen. My sister and her husband were awesome in getting out to me and Tucker in their 4 wheel drive to help me take Tucker one last time to the Vet. I pumped him full of pain meds so that he could walk a bit, and he spent the whole morning outside eating snow. Snow was Tuckers most favorite thing in the whole wide world along with eating, treats, swimming, eating, having his ears scratched, eating, playing frisbee, and eating :)

So for the first time in 13 years when I come home it is to an empty house...

There will be other dogs, and maybe some day another cat, but for now I am going to travel a bit and see my sister in CA and maybe finally make some promised trips to visit old friends.

I'll miss both my boys, but I know they both had a great life and my life was definitely better for having them in it.

"Max"
Nikon FM2N
Afga Scala 200 (B&W slide film)


"Tucker"
Polaroid 180 w. close up lens
Fuji 3000B

New Toy Camera Book News!

"The book team is pleased to present you with the dust jacket design for the new toy camera book. First please note the pink and green lines, these are part of the design software and will not be present on the final print. They denote the text area (pink boxes) and the spine (pink vertical lines in the center) and the flap folds (green vertical lines). Our designer and illustrator took their inspiration from 60's/70's vintage magazines such as 'Which?'. The team wanted to really make this book stand out and have a different feel than your typical photography book. So we decided to stay away from highlighting the images on the cover. Trust us when we say the images take front row in the innards, and you will also find some of the illustrations floating around as well. We really love the design and hope you do as well. Feel free to send us your comments and thoughts, you can e-mail me at info@greenstphotography.com or comment on the thread in the forum section of toycamera.com."

To see a larger image click here!

Skate or Die 2!

As promised here are some more images of the skaters at city Hall. All in all I was pretty happy to get 6 fairly interesting images out of 18 shots with the Holga. It is a bit difficult to adjust focus on the fly and by feel with this camera. Though I think the slight off focus doesn't hurt these images, and actually I am pretty happy with the focusing I did. I wish I had thought to shoot in the opposite direction straight into the sun as I am thinking I could have made some fun images with some sun flair. Plus putting the sun in the background would give me essentially a blank background which would have been a nice change of pace. That said the flag on city hall in the background just works if you ask me.

All images shot w/ Holga w/4x ND filter
Holgamods Holga with waist level veiwfinder
Ilford HP5

Skate or Die!

This past weekend while walking around town working on my new photo project I ran across some kids skating in the dry fountain in front of city hall. I had only taken 4 rolls of film with me and at this point I only had 18 shots left. So I made a mental note to start taking more film with me (I really should know better). I tend to prefer to take as little equipment as I need because I often find myself carrying around cameras and or film I never use. A few extra rolls of film is always a good idea though. So here are some of my images of the skater kids. These are all double exposures. I'll post the other images later this week.

Holga w/4x ND Filter
Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5

Holga w/4x ND Filter

Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5

Holga w/4x ND Filter
Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5

My digital work flow and a first look at Silver EFEX Pro

I often get asked exactly how much do I do to my photographs in Photoshop. The answers is basically it depends. When I am post processing my film scans I tend to limit myself to what you might call darkroom techniques; dodging and burning, curves, and levels. Basically contrast control. The wet darkroom pretty much limits you to these adjustment and since I started in a wet darkroom I most often fall back to those basic techniques. I have run across many photographers who either boast that all they do is print in the traditional wet darkroom or only use traditional techniques in Photoshop. If that floats your boat then fine, but personally I like to use what ever tools I can to make my images better. More importantly I contend that regardless of how the final print is made the art show stand on its own independent of the technique used to create it. Photography is a unique art form that seems to attract people who are more interested in the technique, and find value in it more than in the quality of the final product.

Truth be told I find myself ignoring my wet darkroom these days and using my digital one much more. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is convenience. I like many photographers have a day job so I don't always have the time to spend hours in my darkroom. The luxury to be able to start and stop working on an image and start up right where you left off makes it so much easier to work through my images. As you may know you can't quite do this in a traditional darkroom. Plus using a wet darkroom requires a certain amount of setup and and clean up time. Finally scanner software allows us to make great prints from previously unprintable negatives. Some may argue that this allows us to be more lazy as photographers. That may be true, but I look at it this way, anything that allows me to spend more time creating a good image and less time on the technical aspects of photography the better. I should note that I am an Engineer so while I do like the technical aspects of photography I am much more interested in creating art and having photography be my break from my day job.

So after getting my start with film cameras and a traditional darkroom I have, like many others, started moving over to the digital world. Well at least a little bit. The first steps I took was a scanner, printer, and Photoshop so I could start printing my images digitally using scans of my negatives. Then last year I got my first digital SLR. I made the plunge mostly because I teach an intro to photography class on the weekends at The Art League. I don't very often encounter students who are still using film equipment so I needed to be able to speak their language. One consequence of coming from a film background is that I find myself wishing I could add grain to my digital images. Though I also love the fine detailed editing I can do digitally. So here is an example of an image captured on my digital camera and a look into how I went about creating the final image. This isn't really meant to be an instruction manual, I am sure there are better ways to achieve what I did. I freely admit that I have allot to learn about Photoshop.

So first here is the basic image after some adjustments in the RAW editor. In a very real sense this is my digital negative (or positive if you will). The image is nice and neutral, which is always a great starting point. Much of the sky and dock are on the white side of the grey scale which will mean that any adjustment to a higher contrast will push them further to the white end. This will be my main issue to deal with. Obtaining the correct contrast for the couple and maintaining an interesting sky.

Image straight out of RAW editor

It is clear to me that I am going to have to work the contrast on the couple and dock area separate from the sky and water area. So the first thing I do is use a Levels adjustment layer and a Curves adjustment layer to adjust the contrast of the couple.

After Level and Curve Adjustment

As you can see by adjusting the contrast so that the details of the couple stand out I have washed out the dock and sky. So the next step is to bring back the sky and water. I use a layer mask. I make the couple and dock portion of the mask to be transparent allowing me to keep the adjustments I made. The rest of the image is now back to its original state. I could have gotten here using just a dodge and burn layer, but since I have more in mind I need to basically create a new starting point for contrast adjustments.

After Layer mask

Now I am going to add another Curve and Levels layer to once again bump the contrast. Focusing on getting the pop I want in the sky and water while keeping an eye on the dock and couple. I want to keep them in a range that I can dodge and burn back to what I want.

After second Curve and Levels Layers

Now all I need is to dodge and burn certain areas. Mainly I need to dodge the couple and wood pylons to bring back the detail. I will also dodge the highlights in the sky and water to create a bit more contrast. Finally I will burn in the dock to help accentuate the grain and texture there. Here is a look at the naked Dodge and Burn layer I created show you the areas I lightened or darkened.

Dodge and Burn Layer

Final Image after Dodge and Burn Layer

Now that looks pretty good right? I sure think so. That was until I got a new piece of software called Silver EFEX Pro. I bought this software because I had seen a friend use it and was intrigued by the grain engine. Basically it is the best grain filter I have ever seen. It has quite a few film profiles, now I can't tell you if it accurately recreates specific films, but I can say that I would bet many people would not be able to tell that a print wasn't created from a scan of a film negative. On top of that there are some basic filters that recreate some pretty cool printing techniques. The really cool part is you can fine tune these filters and just use them as a starting point. This tool is also great for converting digital images to B&W. Actually I edited this image before getting the software so it was already B&W. You should also be aware that this software is only intended to create B&W images (thus the name Silver EFEX). So here is the image after running it through the software adding the grain profile of my fav film Ilford HP5 and the High Structure contrast filter.

Adding HP5 grain and High Structure filter using Silver EFEX

Close up of final image before Silver EFEX

Close up after Silver EFEX

all images taken with Canon 20D

I'll let you be the judge on how good the grain is. I am a fan! This certainly won't make me drop my film cameras, I love them too much. As much as I complain about time spent developing film I really love everything about film. I am just happy to have an alternative for those times when I have to shoot digital or that time in the future when film may no longer be available. I don't actually think that will happen in my life time, but you never know.

Maine Ave. Fish Market

I thought since I just started this blog I'd once and a while dig back through my archives and bring out some photos from the past. Today I'll post some images from my first trip to the famous Maine Ave. Fish Market in Washington DC. I have lived in the area most of my life yet never been to this spot. It is within a 20 minute walk of the National Mall but most tourists (or me apparently) have no idea it exists. From all the talk I expected quite a large bustling market, but in reality it is rather small yet busy. After passing through some industrial looking office parks and a small neighborhood you'll find it tucked along the Potomac water front. You can smell it before you get there! I took alone a Diana and my Polaroid Big Swinger 3000 (is there a better name for a camera?) all the images below were taken with the Big Swinger using Fuji FP-3000B. Enjoy.

(All images) Maine Ave. Fish Market, Washington DC
Polaroid Big Swinger 3000
Fuji FP-3000B