Author: johnmeadowsphotography

An amateur photographer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Enjoying the Evening

Back to the Toronto Beaches, but this time in the evening. This man was enjoying his surroundings.

Enjoying the evening

 

Pentax 67 camera, 105mm/2.4 lens
Kodak Tmax 400 film developed in Xtol 1+1 for 9.25 minutes

Reflections

Old architecture reflected by a modern building. I love the distortions.

Window reflection

 

Nikon F4, 80-200mm/4 Nikkor zoom lens
Svema Foto 200 film, developed in Xtol 1+1 12 min @ 20 C

Plus-X

In 1976, when my father let me use my first “good” camera (his Voigtlander Vito B) he sent me to the store to buy film, with the instructions “Ask for Plus-X”. Decades later, here is an image from a test roll of Plus-X I shot yesterday — expired since about 1983, but still perfectly usable!

Fire Station #17

 

Olympus XA, 35mm Olympus lens
Plus-X, developed in Xtol 1+1 for 7.5 minutes

Behind Bars

Photograph from recent Open Streets Day in Toronto. The title “Behind Bars” comes from a question as to whether we are urban prisoners in Toronto, slaves to the gods of endless construction.

Behind Bars

 

Nikon F4, 28mm/2.8 Nikkor AI lens
Svema Foto 200 film developed in Xtol 1+1 for 12 minutes @ 20 C

Holly I: Personality

I had the fun of working with a new model named Holly earlier this week, doing a retro pin-up genre shoot. The key ingredients for pin-up are personality, personality and personality! 🙂 And Holly had all three, a great sense of humour and a true understanding of the pin-up genre on her part made for a fun, productive shoot!

Holly

 

Nikon D7100, 50mm/1.8 D Nikkor lens
Post work with LightRoom and Nik Efex

Worth Waiting For

I’ve been holding onto today’s image for a while, waiting until my good friend Katherine Matthews had released the knitting pattern featured here along with my other good friend Jennifer. I am normally primarily a black and white shooter but I just love the vibrancy of the colour Katherine chose for her pattern here, and of course Jennifer completes the image :-). If you’re a knitter, you can get Katherine’s lovely pattern here.

Knitting

 

Nikon D7100, 18-200 Nikkor lens

Grace III: The Dance Never Ends

The final post from my shoot with Grace was made with my Rolleicord Va Twin Lens Reflex Grace shows a dancer’s grace, and in a sense my old Rollei is part of another dance — over fifty years old and still going strong; its dance never ends either. 🙂

The Dance Never Ends

 

Rolleicord Va, 75mm/3.5 Xenar lens
Kodak Tmax 400 developed in Xtol 1+1 for 9.5 minutes @ 20 C

Grace II: Character

In this post, while Grace is amazing in showing character in her posing/expression, I am actually going to talk about the character of a film I have tried for the first time: Svema Foto 200 film, made in the Ukraine, and available from The Film Photography Project. What I like about this film is the grain structure: it’s not fine grain, but it is organic, it just feels right, and it has a lovely tonality! Now if I could only get it in 100 foot bulk rolls!

Grace

 

Nikon F4, 85mm/1.8 Nikkor lens
Svema Foto 200 film
developed in Xtol 1+1, 10.5 minutes @ 20 C

Grace I: Expression

I have said before that a successful portrait/model shoot is part dance and part acting: dance skills allow for relaxed and beautiful poses, and acting ability allows for expression and emotion to flow unhindered from the subject. Grace (with whom I worked with yesterday) has both, and I think we got some good results. All I had to do was suggest a scenario and she found an inner dialog and a real expression to go with it.

Grace

 

Nikon D7100, 50mm/1.8 AF-D Nikkor lens
Post processing in Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2