Today’s image of a new young model is from my Vintage 35mm project — using old rangefinder cameras for portraits with a vintage feel. For this photograph I used my 1939 vintage Leica IIIb body, with a 50mm Summitar f2 lens. As I was using a very slow film (E.I. 20 Adox CMS 20 film) even though it was a bright sunny day I was shooting wide open at f2, for a nice swirly effect in the background.
This picture was taken last week in Arizona; I used my Leica IIIb, with the Voigtlander Color Skopar 21mm/f4 super wide-angle lens. This picture was taken sometime after I had dropped the camera by accident on a rather unforgiving pavement. Ouch. Luckily, either than a bent filter ring (which I can likely fix), the camera survived just fine. I can’t help but think that if this had been a modern day plastic camera it would have broken into a number of pieces.
Pardon the cliche, but they don’t make them like the used to!
This is Danielle, a young model I had the pleasuring of working with in downtown Toronto last weekend. We were shooting at an abstract sculpture near Roy Thompson Hall, and she suggested shooting through some holes in one of the panels of the sculpture. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but now I’m pretty happy with the results, especially this image: the fact that so much is obscured really seems to focus what we can see of her eyes and expression.
It can be fun looking for interesting patterns and shapes in everyday mundane objects, and a bus shelter in Toronto is about as mundane as it gets. But today’s image was created by strong sunlight beaming through a bus shelter onto the concrete sidewalk, and the geometry seemed interesting to me.
(Contax IIIA, Jupiter 8 52/2 lens, HP5+ developed in HC-110 dilution B, 7:30)
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed;
he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
– Genesis, 3:15
Note: today’s photo is NSFW (not safe for work – partial nudity) so I am just posting a link instead of embedding the image: Karen and Penelope .
It was most interesting to work with Karen and her pet snake Penelope — I observed the complete opposite of the common aversion many women (and men!) have towards snakes. Penelope the snake emphasizes lines and curves on a model with a strikingly modern look, in a vintage inspired photograph.
(Photo taken with Mamiya M645 Pro TL, 80mm f2.8 lens, Fomapan 100 film developed in HC-110, dilution H for 7.5 minutes)
Today (the opening night of Man of La Mancha in which I play the Governor and the Innkeeper) seemed like the perfect day to post this image of model Léah, who wanted a portrait that pays tribute to her hero, twentieth century French singer and icon Édith Piaf. I have to admit I didn’t know much about Édith before working with Léah (I had heard La Vie en Rose, but hadn’t made the connection), but in reading about her, listening to her music and watching performances on YouTube I was struck by how this tiny (4 foot 8 inch tall) woman had such a powerful, commanding stage presence, and how her essentially tragic life is transmuted into the emotional intensity of her singing. She literally put everything she had, and everything she was into her performance. As an amateur actor who clearly has so so much to learn, I can really take a lesson from her life and music.
Today’s image is the latest in a series taken with vintage 35mm gear (either my Leica or Contax 35mm rangefinder). This image was taken with my Contax IIIa, and Russian Jupiter 8 52mm lens (Damn it’s sharp!!).
The real drama with this image began with the film development though. I have a number of bulk loaders (so I can save money by buying film in 100 ft. lengths and “rolling my own”). I had thought this film was Fomapan 100, one of my favourite films in medium format. When it is developed, its anti-halation coating is dissolved and turns the developer a cheerful shade of green when it is poured out of the tank. When I started pouring out the developer this time around though, it came out clear, meaning it wasn’t the film I though it was. I immediately stopped pouring out the developer, topped it the tank with water, did some mental math and added 75% more development time.
I dodged a bullet, and everything came out OK. (Perhaps a tad more grain than optimal, but I’ll take it). The sad thing is that the film has no edge markings identifying what brand/type it is, but at least in the future I know how to develop it. 🙂
I don’t think I have posted anything from this session for the “Broken” project yet. It features the tricycle featured in a recent blog post. The way the model worked herself into the tricycle reminded me a bit of Charlin Chaplin in Modern Times, as he seemed to become part of the machine.
Today’s image is the second in my project of portraiture taken using vintage 35mm equipment. This specific image was taken using an early 1950’s Contax IIIa rangefinder, coupled with a Soviet Jupiter-8 normal lens. The inherent sharpness of this lens was just what I wanted for this look, while still keeping a vintage feel.
Today’s image is Not Safe For Work (NSFW for short), so I am just providing a link and some commentary. Images are normally marked this way for nudity, regardless of context (anything from porn to art nude to images of breast feeding of all things). I don’t see as many “NSF” images of violence, guns, or hunters posing beside a defenceless animal they’ve just killed, which is a pretty damning indictment of our society.
That’s not my main point of the post today though; I had a meeting with a model a couple of days ago about an upcoming shoot, and she mentioned that because she planned one day to be a teacher, she need to pose using a pseudonym (actually a couple of different ones), in order to segment this part of her life from the rest of her online persona that would likely be evaluated when she entered the field. The assumption is that if nude images were connected to her, the controversy would end her career.
Now it goes without saying that the vast majority of teachers are dedicated people with a positive influence on the lives of their students, but when I think of the news stories of teachers who were pedophiles, or engaged in exploitative relationships with students, were violent, or taught racist/homophobic ideas, I don’t recall hearing any of them being nude models, yet people still make snap judgements about a person’s morals, based on images that are seemingly Not Safe For Working. How about recognizing courage and risk taking for the purposes of making art?
About a year ago I did a self portrait where I am surrounded by cameras (and nothing else). It’s not a nude shot, in the sense that certain pieces of equipment are hidden by other pieces of equipment, but it is on the edgy side, and I had one person at work who saw the image draw me aside and tell me I was taking a risk. It was hidden for a while, but then I made the link public again, and public it has stayed; to keep it hidden would in my mind be hypocritical, disrespectful to the models I work with, and a sign I was giving into negative public attitudes.
My Third Eye 