print study, fall 2005

I need to look at the contact sheet for this one. I think there's a better picture on that sheet. I really ought to have done sheets for all pictures. This sis apretty good example of why. The backgorund should be white for this. It should be sky. It's a case of seeing something interesting and not finding the human story.

I hate this shot. I have this problem, no problems a) this negative was shite and I worked pretty hard to get this image so that b) when my teacher said he liked it, that overrode my natural gag instinct on things like this and c) this is toy camera photograohy and I am trying to filter all of the toy out a my shots. I need to run contact sheets, get some persepctive and spend more time looking at Beck's work. Not the surrealist white hip hop rockstar but the Beck from TC.com. Here work is close to what I want. I need to trust my aesthetic sense. Maybe I am a painter taking pictures and not one of ANsel Adams nads.

No thoughts yet. It needs work. See the flag shot. I need to let the dark be were it's at andclean up the middle. I need filter #5.

Sleepy, so sleepy.

This scan bites and it's one of those my teacher liked it pictures. Maybe if I blow it up, dynamite or nitro...?

I like this. No one else does and there are more from differant angles. This one needs the contact sheet. Otherwise, more sky and a hard black.

This is the shot that I submitted to the Age Vs Beauty collaboration on TC. com. Not sure what to think.

I like it's dreamy quality and I actually had to dodge and burn quite a bit to get this. I think the fact that I know how differant the real thing was and how this was more a happy accident than a controlled event, bothers me.

I do like though. I'll try and get it into 8 x 10 and see what happens.

This negative was massively over-exposed. I used Tri-X 400 in an agfa Click I. I had to expose the paper for 60 seconds at f8 to get this detail. I like the Avedon-ish quality that the burnt sky has. I think it has a silly/grotesque nature. I'll re-do it at 8x10 later.

Dave's comments:
My biggest beef with this one is the fact that we can’t see his face. I love everything else. Exposure is good. Framing is good. I just wish we could see his face. Even just peeking between the jug and the apple.

My thoughts:
I have other versions of this. I'll try those on Thursday and see if I can get that face in.

Gordon's comments:
This doesn't work for reasons both perspective-al and technical. Might be a good picture to be made of that image yet but this isn't it.

londonhair's comments:
coffee guy-I actually kind of like this one for some reason, I think its that I like the plain background and the subject is just kinda weird and obscure ( but in a good way to me) i think that it is very hard to take pictures of statues and other peoples artowrk in any case so this angle works for me because it is not too obvious.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

This scene is what you see coming over the railroad tracks from the black side of town to the white side, I think, as some kind of warning.
I feel bad even working on this but I need more range which means lightening the trees and darkening the flag.

Dave's comments:
This one is a touch dark. The flag has the same zone of gray as the trees, so it gets a bit lost. It would have been cool if you had kneeled and put the sky behind the flag so it stood out. I like the line of the flag poll.

Overall, what is it you are wanting us to see here? Don’t forget your rule of thirds, even in the square format. The biggest issue is that I am unsure of focal point. Is it the flag? The trailer? They compete for my attention.

Dodge in the trailer to give it some detail. I guess overall, I would like to see your images have more punch. Some pure white, and some pure black. The flag at a nice midtone to make it stand out.

mtbbrian's comments:
This one kind of has a Sally Mann quality to it.

Gordon's Comments:
The Confederate Flag is an icon that has legs but this seems like an image that has been collected. Not much to say about it but there's a flag. The surrounding information is almost interesting. An actual human might help this one. I keep trying myself to get a confederate flag image that works but I haven't managed myself yet after many attempts. It is a potent symbol and I see it quite a bit around here.

londonhair's Comment's:
flag-too dark and see the one step rule from no.1 (see the vw shot)

Not much to say here. I like the angles. It needs stronger tonal range but more as time passes. It's a little flat. Not sure where to fix it though.

Dave's comments:
I love the moment captured in this one. The balance of the three men works. I do wish one of them was dominate. Maybe looking at the camera to give us a personal connection to the scene that is unfolding. Wait for that decisive moment.

Guy on the left merges with the building, and I find that distracting. Lean to the left, and get him out of the trees. Then the lighter gray will frame the darker gray and give more separation.

Biggest issue… the connection. Pull the viewer into the picture by waiting until that human connection is there.

mtbbrian's comments:
I like the this one becuase of the interesting action going on with the three guys on stilts. The building kind of keeps your eye down towards them, Iam not sure if it's the lines, it's size or position in the frame.

Gordon's Comments:
I kind of like the tall guys loping around too but more because the subject has the circus sort of appeal kind of gets my attention than any type of particular sophistication of the image.

londhair's comments:
Stilts- This I think I would like better if shot form a slightly lower angle so that they and the building seemed taller- like exaggerated more than beingon stilts already is. Also it would be better with hte current picture if you tried to bring the subjects out a bit more, they kind of blend into the building.

Note to self: Try Dave's #5 filter idea set but then try other negative for more detail. I'm not convinced there is more detail to draw on at the bottom of the frame.

Gordon's Comments:

I like the second image, mainly for the crusty claustrophobic sense of things which is in keeping with the subject. Very nicely framed in fact. I like the thin negative vibe on certain images. The whole sign would have been giving us the whole rucksack full of shoes, the suggestion of the sign however, right on top of us, is teaching us how to squash bugs with those shoes.

londonhair's Comments:

This is probably my favorite of them all but it is a bit dark. If you have a really tricky negative have you tried using a higher filter or are you maxxed out on 5? If possible it needs to be a bit lighter. I do like how the private property sign dwarfs the house. Its kinda surreal and makes the house look like a toy to me.

I'm happy with this one.

Dave's Comments:
Dave had no comment.

Gordon's Comments:
The image to me is boring.

londonhair's Comments:
I just do not find this one all that intersting of a subject to be honest, but to each his own, and one of my photography teachers said this- most photos could be a heck of a lot better if you just tried taking one step forward or one step back. So maybe if it was a bit closer to be abstract or a bit farther to show the whole van- I dunno

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.