Southwest Photography - Arizona Treks Blog

Wednesday

10Mar2010

Florals Continued

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 6:47AM

There was no way I could stop with this plant with the 8X10. The 8X10 still feels huge and cumbersome and that tends to inhibit the creativity. When you have equipment that is not totally comfortable the context is changed to one of working with the equipment rather than working with the image. The 4X5 was that way in the beginning but now it actually feels like a compact camera and is very versatile and easy to use. So I spent a couple of hours shooting the flowers with it and am very pleased with the results.

All of the series is quite pleasing but these are my favorites. They are busy but not cluttered and appear to have good cohesion. I used the Adox CHS 50 film and I am thrilled with the results. I am getting along quite well with the film so far and am looking forward to shooting it in the field and comparing prints with the TMax.

For each of these shots 2 lights were used. One to the left was a large soft-box, the one to the right was a bare reflector. I seem to be using that type of configuration frequently now. Partly for convenience and partly because I like the results. Use the soft-box to provide overall illumination and soften the shadows and the reflector for providing highlights. Frequently though I will add barn doors or a snoot on to the reflector to provide more control. Bit for these, just a bare reflector.

One thing I always keep in mind when working with artificial lighting is the closer the light is to the subject the softer the light. If you want to create strong shadows, move the light back, for softer shadows, move the light closer. When I first started using artificial light this seemed to be backwards but that is the way it works and can be used for creative effect.

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Tuesday

09Mar2010

Nighttime Storm -- How it was done

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 4:08PM

A reader posted a question about how the shot of the storm the other night was done. I was going to respond with a comment but the comment started getting a bit long and I thought it would be best to make another post with a couple more shots from the series.

Several previous attempts have been made leading up to this one negative, which os not the final one. Some of the attempts were strictly learning how to meter and guess about the exposure and some were failures. I have tried several of the walkways and this is the only one that has really caught my eye.

About 3 in the afternoon I set up the camera. Did the focusing framing, etc. Then exposed a couple of sheets of film to make sure it was all good to go. In retrospect it would have been better to use instant film, but that did not occur to me at the time. Once all was set up, I put a plastic bag over the camera to protect it from the rain. Even though it was under an eve, water can splash. The 2 photos here are from the afternoon.

Once it was getting dark, I metered the scene. It was dark enough that the brightest point was EV1 so I calculated it would take a 2 hour exposure with the ISO 50 film I was using. So I put a film holder in the camera, removed the dark slide and opened the shutter. The camera was left unmolested for 2 hours. About 15 minutes before the end I turned on the walkway lights. But unfortunately, the camera was moved during the exposure so the image is not sharp. The gate also moved so there is a ghost gate in that exposure.

After the 2 hour exposure I metered with the walkway lights on and decided a 32minute exposure was appropriate. That is the one in the first post.

Unfortunately, the shots with standing water all had sharpness issues. That is one of the things I wish to correct next time. The other is, the 32minute exposure should have been 45 - 60 minutes. Parts of the negative have very little texture and no detail.

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Tuesday

09Mar2010

More Florals

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 6:28AM

These days it seems my imagination is captured by flowers, it could be the season, it could be that it is less practical to go anywhere, it cold be simply that I love florals and and am going through a phase that florals dominate my vision. For whatever reason, I seem to have a lot of florals recently.

On Sunday as Mary and I were doing our weekly grocery shopping I walked past a potted plant in the grocery and it grabbed my attention. I got lost in the simplistic beauty of this plant and stood looking at it for a while, as Mary started the shopping. Many different possibilities were evident and the images were flying about in my head. When I finally caught up with Mary I told her I was going to buy the plant. As we were finishing I went back and it was still speaking to me so it was adopted.

Last night I set up the lights and 8X10 and began shooting. This also served to help me get more familiar with the Adox film. Out of the 4 negatives, this one is my favorite but all are quite nice. I am seriously considering shooting some 4X5 this morning.

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Monday

08Mar2010

Nighttime Storm

Monday, March 8, 2010 at 6:32AM

A lot has happened in the last week. There are significant challenges ahead for my business and that means change. It is at this time, too early to know the extent of the changes but I am hoping for an overall improvement over time.

One of the reasons for buying the 8X10 camera was to get back into some alternative processes. After working with the digital negatives I found them to be unsatisfying. The 8X10 analog negatives have their own set of challenges but I have been learning what they are and also trying to learn how to shoot for the alternative processes. I hope to have some examples soon.

I bought some different film to try and am happy with it. There are 2 reasons for using this film. One is cost, it is about 1//2 the price of TMax. The other is feel, TMax is a great film and I have no intention of abandoning it, but I want to explore other films and get a feel for what they are like. Last time I did that it was Efke 25 and the exposure problems were tremendous. I was shooting it at 2 stops below the rated speed and the negatives were still too thin. This film is Adox CHS 50 and 100. So far it has worked very well and I am pleased with it.

As seems to have been the pattern for a while now, we had storms over the weekend. Yesterday we had rain for a large part of the day. Our home has some nice brick walkways and I have been trying to capture them for quite some time. I have tried with digital, MF film, and 4X5 but none have been what I was looking for. however, as is the norm, with each failure another problem was eliminated until last night I got the one above, almost exactly what I am looking for. I hope to have a chance to refine this further during the next storm.

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Thursday

04Mar2010

Hot Air Balloons

Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 7:38AM

A few years ago I went on a kick of going north to the Lake Pleasant area to photograph hot air balloons. It was a real kick but after a while I lost interest. This was all done with a DSLR and some of the photos were pretty good.

Recently I have been hankering to get out and shoot hot air balloons with large format cameras. Last night I finally did it. Rather than using the 4X5 which I am much faster with and know the lenses better I decided to use the 8X10. Well, not saying it was a disaster but it did not work out so very well.

They set up pretty quickly, constant motion so blurs are going to happen. Once the balloon is upright it begins moving and you gotta work fast. With a small format camera that is much easier but with large format it is quite a challenge.

Of course, I realized that it would be very challenging and did not expect to get any useable photos from it. What I expected was to learn a little of what is necessary to shoot them with a large format camera. Some of the things I learned are:

Setup speed is critical, anticipate the shot and prepare for it in advance. But the preparations should not include stopping down or inserting the film holder. This is because the scene is changing and sometimes the changes are not what you expect so by leaving the aperture open and the film holder out you can reframe more quickly. I am much faster with the 4X5 but wanted to use the 8X10 to create a bigger challenge, and in that I was successful beyond my wildest dreams.

Shutter speed is very important. To avoid blur, the shutter needs to be as fast as practical. Those 1/2 second shutter speeds are to be avoided. After a couple of exposures I set up in the back of my truck to get further off the ground and thus have less ground in the foreground (without using front rise). This helped keep the aperture a little wider. Select more narrow DOF where possible. I only took ISO 100 film but quickly realized I should have taken ISO 400.

I hope to try this again in the near future and hopefully have some photos to share next time.

These photos are from several years ago using a DSLR.