Today’s post features recent portraits of my friend Paulette Michayluk, who along with Bill Smith and I make up the team behind the Defend the Darkroom podcast. Paulette is a talented printer and artist in her own right as well.
Sony A7ii, 50mm/f1.4 Nikkor lens (Pre-AI)
The third portrait in this set of three, also from last weekend. I really feel I caught the moment here.
Voigtlander Bessa R2M, 50mm/f2 Heliar Classic lens
Kodak TMax 400 film
Every now and then a candid portrait clicks. 🙂 Taken at a recent meet-up of Toronto film shooters.
Nikon N90s, Helios 44/2 58mm/2 lens, adapted for Nikon
Ilford FP4 film, developed as positive by DR5
This past Saturday evening I went with photography friend Leon to the Hamilton Supercrawl Street festival to do some street photography. It was a rainy evening, but people were still having fun. The streets were filled with artists selling their creations, and the artisan below saw my Rolleiflex TLR camera and started asking questions about it, so naturally I took the opportunity to create a portrait of a stranger. The Rolleiflex is the perfect ice-breaker in this situation.
Rolleiflex 3.5E3 (Xenotar lens)
HP5+ at EI 800, developed in Legacy Pro EcoPro 1+1 for 14:15
Last weekend I had a photoshoot with my good friend (and very talented musician and composer) Jo-Anne. While I was using my Hasselblad kit for most of the work I did take some 35mm images using my Nikon N90s and 50mm/1.4 Nikkor lens. I used Rollei RPX 400, pushed to EI 1600 using Tmax developer. I was very happy with the expression I was able to catch.
I had the pleasure of working with friend and frequent creative collaborator Jennifer Bettencourt this past weekend. In addition to being a talented model, Jennifer is also an accomplished fadista, or singer of Portuguese Fado music. The shoot was inspired by Fado legend Amália Rodrigues, a we were going for a fairly formal look, with some intensity.
Rolleiflex 3.5E3 (Xenotar lens)
Tri-X, developed in Ilfosol 3 1+9
Finally back with a new image! This is my good friend Sylvain; a couple of weeks ago I enjoyed meeting up with him and other good friends just outside Montreal. This image was created with my 4×5 Speed Graphic and 1860’s Petzval lens.
When Sylvain saw the image, he said he thought he looked “serious.” The word that works for me is “thoughtful”; like everyone at the gathering, Sylvain is a person of great depth and creativity; he lives up to the caption on his T-shirt. This lens has a very shallow depth of field, but I think it captures depth of character.
HP5+ developed in D-76 stock solution
The final post from our shoot with Amy. Music, like teaching, is a journey.
Rolleiflex 3.5E3, 75mm/3.5 Xenotar lens
Tri-X developed in Xtol 1+1 for 9 minutes @ 20 C
Here is the second image from the photoshoot with Amy last week. This image was created with my Zenit 3M 35mm SLR and Helios 44/2 lens, to get the swirly bokeh in the background. The film used was Rollei Retro 80s, and I added some diffusion in post.
Earlier this week myself and another photographer had a photoshoot with a cheerful and talented teacher and musician named Amy. I used three different cameras, so I will do three different blog posts. Tonight, I am starting off with the 4×5 and1860’s Petzval lens, shot on HP5+. This lens has a knack of picking up interesting expressions 🙂
