Today another image in my Women and Cameras series. This is a Van Dyke Brown print of model Angel Noel, holding a 1950’s vintage Exakta 35mm single lens reflex (with waist level, not eye-level finder). It was amazing shooting with Angela; she is a artist herself: as a painter she had great instincts for poses and other creative ideas. All in all, a great collaboration!
Last Friday, I took part in the PAB 2011 Content Walk. The idea was to walk around central Ottawa with cameras, audio recorders etc. to create content and tell stories. The weather rapidly became the story, changing seemingly every ten minutes, but mainly rainy. We spent some time outside, and I got some pictures taken around the canal locks, but soon we had to retreat to the safety of a pub. The weather got steadily worse, but in the basement of the pub we were having a great time. We got some great light and my favourite is the image below. I had to push the film to E.I. 1600 but in this context I don’t mind the grain.
Almost all of my people photography recently has been close-up (e.g. head/shoulders) so this image is a bit different. The subject is more than the woman on her smart-phone; it is her position relative to the concrete wall and steps/railing that is the key for me; a small touch of humanity in the midst of stone.
At the beginning of the year I posted a list of photo resolutions and I am happy to report that I knocked off two of them today by unveiling the following photograph during my presentation at PAB 2011. With this photo, I have produced (to some at least) a shocking image, and produced a self-portrait completely outside of my comfort zone. My wife suggested that since I have so many cameras I should take a picture of just me and my cameras on the bed. Who am I to resist a dare? 🙂
Sometimes you have to work very hard to get the shot you want.
Then there is the image below: taken in Victoria this week, all I had to do was literally look down from my hotel room balcony to see this interesting composition. To not take the image would have been an affront to opportunity.
Today another image from my photo session with Mysty. Again, I used the hybrid approach of shooting on film, and then using digital post processing; this is really becoming my favourite workflow, as I take advantage of the best of both the film and digital worlds. What a great time to be a photographer!
Another image in the Women and Cameras series, featuring an Exakta SLR. The Exakta brand has a long and proud history, and can claim the first 35mm Single Lens Reflex (the Kine Exakta of the mid 1930’s). The camera model pictured is from the late 1950’s/early 1960’s; at this point Exakta was a Communist East Germany operation, and I think this camera fits the era: a sturdy, tractor-like camera that belongs in a factory. Certainly the model was surprised at how heavy it was.
Another image from my women and classic cameras series; my friend Andrea Ross agreed to pose for me with a 1950’s vintage Stereo Realist. For most of its history, mainstream photography has been an exercise of two dimensions, but cameras like Stereo Realist allowed photographers to shoot in three dimensions. Effective portraits remind me of the search for dimensionality, in the sense that the goal is not merely to show what the subject looks like, but to find some insight into who the person is.
Andrea is a fascinating, complex person, who has been through much in her life; she is a combination of both strength and vulnerability, openness and privacy. I’d like to think I captured some of that in this image.
Yet another image in my Women and Cameras series, but with an interesting story. When I got to the shoot and pulled out my trusty Mamiya, I realized I had brought the wrong finder (the part you look through; the Mamiya is a modular camera and has a number of options). Instead of bringing the eye-level finder I had brought the so-called waist -level finder, that you look down into. The biggest trick with the waist level finder is that the image you focus on is laterally inverted (backwards like a mirror) and this takes some getting use to; when you move to the left, in the finder it looks like you are moving to the right and vice-versa. Also, doing portrait orientation shots is very difficult; turn the camera on its side. and the image you see becomes upside down. I don’t use the waist level finder much, but I got through it somehow, and was very happy with the results I got of model Erikka, holding the Voigtlander Vito B, my father’s old camera, and the first “good” camera I got to learn on.
Today’s image is another in my Women and Camera series, featuring a wonderful model named Fallon. One thing I am doing my best to avoid in this series is an expression I call “the pout.” It seems that a lot of photographers, fashion magazines etc. want their models to look angry, bored, petulant or generally hostile. These are not the expressions I’m going for, and Fallon was amazing in delivering a number of subtle, nuanced expressions that helped the pictures tell a story. Long live the Pout-Free Zone!!
My Third Eye 