So I'm not sure that I mentioned but, Friday is my last day of work as our company is moving operations to Indiana. As I have been frantically looking for new work, the thought of how to continue this project crossed my mind many times. Well this is what I've got! A T-shirt silk screened by yours truly with professional grade screen printing inks. I'm not kidding these are the inks that we use for Nike garments. They are guaranteed to last and best of all, they're cheap! Just $13.00 shipped or $20.00 for two! Right now Mediums are the only sized available but I will have S/M/L/XL tomorrow in the standard blue, as well as bright green! Do me a favor and share this to show your support, and if you have the means pick up a shirt! These were printed in very limited quantities so if you are thinking about buying one, don't wait!

Click on the "BUY NOW"button to purchase!

Payment accepted through PayPal.

Quanitity

1 Shirt $13.002 Shirts $20.00

As if I wasn't tired of the megapixel race

Large photographic companies have decided that interchangable lens cameras will be the next big thing that pulls the wool over consumers eyes tricking them into thinking it will create a better photograph.

If there is/was one consitancy with film is that (for the most part) your sensor size was roughly the same. I know about 120, 620, 616, 110, 4x5, 5x7... wait what was I talking about? Oh yes, but I think we can all agree that since the 40s, 35mm really gained prominance as the film size of choice. A descision that only grew in the 60s and 70s once SLRs arrived. Followed by compact non-interchangeable lens cameras. This meant that over the course of 30 years, when you may have switched from 3-4 different camers, your images would reamain for the most part consistant in terms of look and feel. This of course provided that you didn't go from Kodachrome to Kodak Gold in the 80s. Either way, when you remove the sensor size as part of the magical equiation that creates an image you get far more consistant results.

However, now as we are in the digital age, (which by the way I dispise that term) we must keep coming up with excuses to get our images to look as well all fondly remember as children. There will be a point in time when all everyone ever knows is digital point and shoot images from Facebook, that reminds me if you haven't seen the infographic that compairs Facebook's image library to the Library of Congress's you need to look it up. The difference in size between the two is staggering.

For years then we were convinced that more megapixels would mean better quality images. Which in all honesty was true when cameras had 1.3 of them, but once we hit the 4 mark the differences were so neglegable that screaming "LOLZ OMG MY CAMERAS HAVE 18.3 MEGA PICKELS" didn't sell cameras anymore. Enter the Nikon N1. The latest camera jumping into the already overcrowded pool. A pool that is really one that nobody had asked for. But of course if the professionals use interchangeable lens cameras then it must be best for all of us right? Well if you are a true pixel peeper, sure you may get a few more lines per mm of resolution by switching from a long zoom lens to two smaller zoom lenses. But are the soccer moms shooting images of their kids at the park really going to do any of that? Of course they aren't, but it is another bragging point for them to talk about when compairing cameras with the neighboors.

I can understand completely that once you start to increase the sensor size the cost of producing cameras rises exponetially. Just look at the jump from a 1.6 crop, to full frame, to medium format digital sensors. Your MSRP jumps about 4 times with each step up in size. But if we could just start being honest with people and telling them that no matter all the bells and whistles that a camera may have on it, the quality of a photograph comes from you, not the camera in your hands.

I'm reminded of the old anecdone:

A photographer is invited to an upscale New York City party, filled with millionares and entrepenours of all varieties. As he walks into the loft the host stops him and says "I love your photographs, you must have a great camera." The photogrpaher nods and smiles and continues through the rest of the night without saying a word. When dinner comes to an end he stands up and politely says to the host "That was a phenomenal meal, you must have a great stove."

But then again all of what I was just complaining about involves work from the people taking the photos, something no one is interested in anymore. Shoot film, save lives.

Being nice pays off

This is my new (to me) Canon FTb, 50mm f/1.8 and 200mm f/4 S.S.C. (the lens hood I happened to have in a box of random gear. The price I paid? Well nothing really. About 4 months ago my girlfriend Jenny and I traveled to Boston to attend a wedding of some friends of hers from college. While there I ran into an interesting gentleman with whom I started what would become a length conversation about cameras. He told me he had a few older cameras lying around his house and if I was interested just would like to see them go to a good home. We exchanged information and I came home to Portland, he home to Alaska. Fast forward to earlier this week and I received a surprise email from him saying he had found the cameras and would love to send them my way! Well the package showed up today and I couldn't be happier, I can't wait to give these cameras a good workout after all these years. And just think, if I hadn't had a film camera or been outgoing at the wedding reception, these pieces of photographic art would still be in a closet somewhere! I will write more about the outfit later on. But I figured I would share my excitement (and get that image hosted somewhere so I can post it other places) with you!

The joys of scanning negatives

Recently I gave the website a small face-lift, more organized, better photo's and the other usual areas that I (in all honesty) tend to neglect. Part of that included digitizing some files that I had never used digitally for an engagement. As the shoot was done in digital, but I happened to have my trusty AE-1 program there as well. I plugged the strobes in and fired off a roll of Illford HP4 just for fun. A few weeks later I developed the film and one of the photo's ended up being one of the best of the entire shoot much to my surprise. I enlarged the negative into a pair of 8x10 prints for the couple as a small gift a few weeks before the wedding.

So as I needed to get a few digital files for the website I figured it would be a good idea to get the whole roll digitized. Now one of my favorite parts of darkroom work is the contact sheet. There is something so true and real about seeing 36 small little prints laying out in front of you. And we can all be honest, there is a large bit of nostalgia from seeing contact sheets used in photo shoots back in the day. Yet a lot of that is lost unless you have a negative scanner with a transparency unit large enough for 8x10... which many of us don't. Yet you do get a small single line sample when scanning on the scanner I have (which by the way is an Epson V330 that I am very happy with). So while scanning these negatives, there are occasions where you get lucky and the few images that scan onto your one line contact sheet tell a story. This is one of those times.


It encompasses everything that was the shoot. An image close to what we were trying to achieve as the end result is first. The peck on the cheek second. And the giggle third. Finally we come to the end, where the giggle has become a silly time and the couple was truly relaxed with the camera in front of them. It is little surprises like this that keep me enthralled in the world of film photography. Surprises that pop up that if I had a lab scan I would never have noticed, or had these been digital they would have all been deleted. Yet here lay 4 images that together tell a wonderful story of love and fun. By the way we would go on to get the shot that ended up on the wedding invitations from that roll of film that was shot on a whim.

I still don't know how to feel about cheap film

I find it all the time, like my life follows a treasure map that I am unsure of how I feel about the treasure underneath the "x". So often now are professional photographers clearing out their stash of film as they move to digital and finally give up on a tangible workflow. I many times have come in at the opportune moment to take advantage of some cheap 35mm, 120, and even some Polaroid film when I get lucky. But that's not all, I keep an eye out for sales as well. Walgreen's recently had put single 35mm rolls of their (it's actually just re branded Fuji) 200, 400 and 800 speed color films on sale for a buck a roll. I bought 15.



And as my fridge sits now I have around 60 or so rolls of 35mm film. A few 120 is still left over but as I find myself shooting less and less of it, I have little need to buy more. Regardless of the price. Also as I said before, a fourth of that belongs under the Walgreen's brand. I have been shooting a lot of black and white lately and with Vancouver's Sausage Fest coming up this past weekend (yes it is a real thing, and no there are an average number of guys there) I thought it may be a good time to try out some color in combination with some fast lenses. So I threw in a roll of Walgreen's 400 and one of 800 color 35mm film. I actually only got to the 400, and a few exposures of the 800.


Either way, a few days later I decided I wanted to see how they came out. The lighting at carnivals is always a whimsical one, dark shadows thrown about in the midst of bright colorful lights. Plus carnies make for very interesting subjects. But when I got the roll back, all I thought to myself was "meh". There were some shots that I enjoyed, yet I was never blown away. Even though the film has accurate color reproduction (and without getting into lines per mm resolution) a decent grain structure and good enough latitude. It's obvious counterpart in the world is Kodak Gold. Although there is something interesting about that film in general. I guess that can be said about all films though. Each has a very unique look to it, each one reacts differently as they start to go bad and each just wants to be shot.

Although in the end I think for now at least I'll skip the sale, walk past the Walgreen's and pay for Portra.

Nick and Starla's engagement photo's.

They've been done since early yesterday, but I wanted to give the couple time to take a look before posting them here. And well since they loved how the photo's came out I figured it would only be fair to share them here. We took a late afternoon walk through the Eastbank Esplanade and over the Hawthorne bridge into downtown Portland. The weather was absolutley phenomenal and the lighting, while stared out a little harsh softened up rather quickly giving everything a warm summer glow. For fill flash in some images I used an off camera Canon 430exII with Pocket-wizard triggers, as well as on camera in downtown with a diffuser. I don't do planned shoots like this often. My last engagement/save the date shoot was well over a year ago. So when they come up it provides a nice change of pace.

However as I said earlier I really would like to do an entire shoot like this on film. It would take a lot more planning on my part in order to compensate for different films in conjunction with off camera flash. But the end reward could really be worth it, and the thought of me not having to sit in front of Photoshop for hours sounds pleasant as well. I hope you enjoy them as much as they did, see you at the wedding!

Engaged to be married... to film.

Today was an interesting day, I did an engagement shoot with some good friends of mine that went extraordinarily well. That is aside from the fact I used a digital camera the entire time (aside from the one shot posted below). This means that tomorrow (as it is far past my bedtime) will be spent going through and editing 300 photos. Rather than dropping off 4-5 rolls of film and getting back images that I know will look fantastic... provided I didn't do anything to mess them up.

Either way, I would love to announce my engagement to film, hopefully at some point in the not so distant future I can have the confidence to have a non-digital workflow. One can only dream.

Here is my photo of the day from my Polaroid based 365 project (found at www.the-365-project.com). Taken of the couple while on the East bank esplanade in Portland, At least I have one image that I like and requires no editing. I'll have more details about the shoot as well as more images later this week. Enjoy!

A useful tip for Polaroid 600 users

I don't know how many are aware of this little tip. It is one that I did not know up until a few months back and thought I would share the information. As it has completely changed how I use my Polaroid OneStep 600 camera.

The shutter button that we are all familiar with is actually a two stage trigger. The first outer part that we are all used to pressing manages the flash, while the inner one manages the shutter. However, you are able to use the camera without flash (for shutter speeds up to one second) by only pressing the button as pointed to by the arrow in the image below!

I hope this helps anyone out there using one of these cameras, because they are everywhere and a practically free way to get a camera to use with Impossible Project film! Happy shooting!