The Slideshow

Well, I am indeed back from my vacation. Before I left, I purchased a pair of 8 GB cards to go with the ones I already had. I started slowly in Holland but by the time I was a couple of days into our stay in Scotland, I was snapping shots like crazy. As such, I had to get another card when we were in London. And did I get another 8 GB card? Nope. 16 GB friends. Go big or go home...without pictures.

So a consequence of this is that I came home with a lot of pictures. Over 2600 of them in fact. I usually like to make a slideshow of some of my images and with the mini-essay contest for the Foothills Camera Club coming up shortly after my return I set to work figuring out how to cram three weeks of images into a 6 minute presentation.

I toyed with a few idea before I came up with the idea of selecting images that would work in monochrome. Simple and a nice way of show casing some of the sites.

So after a long effort I finally put it all together with music, nice transitions and heck maybe even a little bit of flow. Sadly, when I uploaded my video to YouTube it made me replace my carefully selected and well timed music.

Study in Self-portaiture

This is one of about 40 shots I did of myself this morning. The lighting setup was simple. Flash though an umbrella set about 45 degrees to the right of my face. (Or that was the goal anyways). There was also a bit of ambient light from the basement window.
Processing was also simple.
In Capture One Pro:

• Auto correct exposure
• Auto white balance
• Default sharpening (100)
• Export to TIFF
  

In PSP XI

• Channel mixer adjustment layer to convert to B&W (60,30,10)
• ResizeUSM (1.00, 100, 10)
• Export to JPG
  
  I like the composition. Its hard to actually compose when you are trying to get seated in 10 seconds after hitting the shutter release.
  
  I really like the catchlights in the eyes. One of the articles I've read recommended the 45 degree angle for the lights to help create the catchlights and I am glad I tried it out. Too bad I hadn't shaved yet. Oh well. A portrait is supposed to capture the essence of the person. I typically don't shave often enough so this is an honest portrayal anyways.

Going Through the Viewfinder

Line up your shot. Make sure its composed perfectly. Now take another camera and take a picture of the view finder. That's the premise behind Through the Viewfinder (TtV) photography.

http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/3526

The thing about TtV that I love is that the pictures end up looking like nothing else I've seen. A little Holga mixed with a bit of Diana and a pinch of Lomo LCA with a little Lensbaby added for good measure. I get consistently remarkable lo-fi looking photographs from a combination of old school and high tech. Ghosting, grime, flip, trap, bubble - the medium has spawned a whole new set of words and phrases, too. It's so damn quirky, it's cool.

Sounds like something I'll have to try out

Prince's Island Park and Bow River

So a quick entry before bedtime. More infrared. I returned to where I did one of my first IR shots, Prince's Island park and took a few shots during lunch today.

Transition...to film???

Yesterday I went out and purchased a Holga medium format toy camera. The thing is made entirely of plastic including the lens. With it I purchased a roll of Ilford ASA 100 black and white film and so far I've taken 10 shots which leaves 2 shots on the roll.

http://holgamods.com/what/what.html

Its really quite a different way of thinking when you shoot with film especially with this camera. Being film naturally you don't get the instant feedback that you get with digital. There's no metering system on this camera so exposure is entirely guess work. Actually that's not really a concern because you can't change shutter speed, working with film you're locked into the speed it has and the aperture only has two settings: f/8 and f/11. (Apparently f/11 only works on about 50% of the Holgas unless you fix it.)

Focusing is mostly guesswork and really, you aren't going to expect super sharp shots from this camera anyways. Infinity will pretty much get everything in sharp focus provided the subject is about 30' away from you. One of the shots I did was of the bus stop sign where I grab the bus from Brentwood to home. I am guessing that if I am standing underneath the sign that's a little bit less than 30'. In the digital world (heck even with a decent point and shoot film camera) it will actually focus for you. With the Holga you have to figure out your focus. Scratch that one up to experience I guess.

An interesting point to note. My red filter with the step up ring fits nicely over the lens of the Holga. I'm quite curious how it affected the shots since the whole point of a red filter is primarily for black and white photography.