print study, fall 2005

This shot is a little muddled tone wise and i think I can burn those the sky a little, maybe play with filters, 3's and 5's. More later. I love this shot.

Next Morning:
It's funny how the shot you thought was the "one" sometime isn't and how the shot that wasn't even in the running turns out to maybe be the one.

That Maybe the case here. I have a shot further back that shows the fence and the KEEP OUT sign that might be better. I need to make a contact sheet. That's for sure.

I love this shot. Not sure about the flash on the right.

I took a lot of pictures in the graveyard and frankly I chose this one to print because it looked the best on the negative. I may very well have better shots but I won't know until I print. I like this one. No real thoughts on what I might do differantly. I like the flowy nature of the shadows, draped but not concealing.

I liked this shot in the negative. I think I imagined it beofre I saw the negative. I'm going to dodge that palm tree a little bit or a lot. The scan doesn't do it justice. I think it's frame worthy.

Okay this isn't my favorite shot. Everyone was taking them. We had gone to this closed down railroad bridge. You know it's the bridge to infinity shot. I took one but I didn't really want to take one. I like that mine isn't even with the bridge dead center but that's all I could think to do with it. I wish I did more.

These are two posts from a forum I'm on. I thought to re-tell the story but it's just not that interesting to me. There was a photo meet-up in Tampa which was cool as hell. Everyone else has posted already and they rocked so I gotta throw down with some work and here's what happened so far.

Post One:
Okay this is not a slam directed toward people who do this regularly or to people who Photoshop or anything like that but today I did a thing that might actually keep me from eating my lunch:

Some of you know I am without a darkroom since the summer semester ended. Okay I just bought one, a darkroom, from the someone who bought up the University of Tampa's stuff earlier this year but between getting the space cleaned out and being a lazy bastard it hasn't come together yet in the actual form of a darkroom.

This is where the shame comes into play. I have like ten rolls of film I shot on the meet-up. I did get the rolls processed. I figured, it's my least favorite job in the lab and it'll protect my images so okay, good rationalization, I feel absolved.

Now it's been over a week.

I found out the lab won't open til Sept 10th, dear god in heaven have they no mercy, plus I'm still a lazy bastard so I went and uh, boy this is uncomfortable to say, paid to have some of my B/W printed, only like 21 shots out of a 120 but still I feel sooo dirty, soiled actually. I'm scum right? Oh I feel gross.

Anyhoo they tell me by noon tomorrow I'll have them back and then by Friday evening I'll post.

I think now might be a good time to cross a few more debauchery type items off my list of things to do before I die.

Mike

This really is just about me and not directed toward anyone else. And actually debauchery and food mix well. I'll be eating Thai.

Post Two:
Yeah I'm a little worried about that too. Where I might take some time to build a print, I'm pretty sure those bad boys are hitting a scanner at about 90 mph and headed straight off a printer.

I figure I can use them as a sort of baseline experiment, you know, here it is untouched; now let's see what we can make of them into. My plan is to post the best shots tomorrow but then to maybe re-post once I've worked on them.

It's just that Dave and Erika and the Rev, one badass mofo of a photographer, have posted and now the board needs to see what the face of true incompetence looks like.

Seriously, everyone has posted such great stuff. I'm a little afraid. It's the planet Mars presentation I gave in the fourth grade. I shouldn't have waited til the end, way to much pressure.

Mike

By the way, if anyone is interested, I had a curry/coconut soup with chicken and shrimp that probably wasn't strictly speaking a Thai dish but was hot.

I had really wanted to go into the lab with virgin prints but no dice, vanity and a calender contest got the better of me and so we'll see, I just hate to let other people have my negatives. Why not just let them fuck my wife and kick my dog. I really feel worse about this then the posts even say but I need hang with my boys from Tampa (Did I really say, "...hang with my boys"?). I mean come on Rev busted a foot and kept shooting.

I have a tendency, when I shoot, to use a lot of cameras. With 12o, loading can be pretty slow outside: bag it up, break it down, unload, load etc. so I load at least two Dianas, two Holgas, the clack and any vintage peice I'm using like a my Duaflex II or the BlueBird plus I try and pack the Pentax, the pano and the occassionally an action sampler. I have two rolls of Spectra left and one Time Zero so I imagine not so much Polaroid in the future unless I start taking out the RB 67 or the Crown Graphic...

Sorry, I got carried away.

The point I was trying to make was that usually the Holga is easy to sort at the end of the day (I didn't mention that I use 120 canisters to protect my film so if I don't mark it then and there than no telling until I process the negatives.) because it's size and lack of leaks but the Diana sometimes gets muddled with the vintage plastic which leads to the actual point of this post, I will try as hard as I can to tel you the film type and camera used for each shot and contact sheet. Some people like that kind of information. It helps I suppose if you see a quality you like and you can tell how it happened. Right now I'm debating a switch to Agfa since Kodak is ending the PX 125.

It's tough all over.

I have thirty four negative pages and counting. My plan is to go into the lab and shoot contact sheets for everything. Actually there are a few choice shots I'll probably get first just for shits and giggles then I shoot the proofs. Next I will methodically as possible pull out the best images and print them. I'll post my work here. for both the sheets and the prints. The idea is that people can view both and decide when I made good decisions. My other thought is to see how my ratio improves (of shots taken versus those worth prining) and how often I "blow" a whole roll as there are those rolls that are my carrying a camera everywhere I goo rolls that I think my be mostly wasted film.