Back in the early 1980’s I shot this picture of an antique piano stool belonging to my parents. Fast forward about 30 years: I inherited the piano stool, and now it is a favourite prop/support for portraits — I love it!
Mamiya M645, 80mm f2.8 lens with 25A red filter, one strobe through umbrella. Ilford SFX 200 film, developed in HC-110 dilution B for 9 minutes
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!!
Today’s image is the latest shot from my women and cameras series. The model Bonnie (who was great to work with!) is posing with a Kodak Retina IIa 35 mm camera, built between 1951 to 1954. Built as high-quality precision mechanisms (partly in response to the German Leica’s), the Retina’s chief claim to fame was that it introduced the 135 35mm film cassette, which rapidly became the start format for 35mm film, continuing up to the present day.
This image, like all the others in this series to day, was shot using my Mamiya M645, on Ilford Delta 400 film. This film is definitely becoming my new best friend!! 🙂
Today’s picture is of a model named Galana; she is posing with my Super Baldina 35mm rangefinder. A very interesting person; we ended up discussing education and when I mentioned that I had a degree in Russian and Chinese history, she asked me “Has there ever been a Communist state?” I’d have to say that all the models I have been shooting for this series have shown a lot of intelligence; the stereotype of the ditzy lightweight and vain model has been completely absent; each model has brains to go with beauty.
Here is another shot from the Voigtlander/Kathleen session. Shot on film, but then enhanced using the Nik SilverFX Pro 2 plug-in. This plug-in is meant for making digital pictures look like vintage black and white film, but I find that it is also useful for working with scans of pictures shot with real black and white film. Purists may scoff, but at the end of the day, I got the image I was looking for.
A good rule of thumb is that when shooting a portrait when you have very shallow depth of field, you should make sure the eyes are in focus. This image, taken yesterday during a session with a model for my Women in Camera series, breaks that rule. The camera is in focus, but the model is out of focus. Although this particular image likely will not be the final selection for the series, I do like the effect and the resulting mood of the image, and the model made a great wardrobe choice with the hat, to give me the vintage look I was going for.
I suppose one could say the lens, or “eye” of my Voigtlander Avus folder is in focus so in that sense I’m not cheating 🙂
In Virgin Gorda we passed this stand of trees every day, and every day it caught my eye, as it seemed like a corridor in a cathedral. I took many pictures of it, and I think this is the one that best captures the impression it made on me. For this image I used my Mamiya medium format camera, 55 mm wide angle lens, and Ilford Delta 100 film.
This image was created on the only cloudy day we experienced on VIrgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. On a island known for sandy beaches and sun, I found this rocky beach fascinating. Much of the smaller rocks are actually old weathered pieces of coral that have washed onshore, along with small shells or broken bits of larger shells. Amazing textures, that demanded to be captured in black and white, so out came the medium format Mamiya, loaded with Tri-X.
I am continuing to work through the images I took in the British Virgin Islands, and while many of the photos are colour-centric (to be expected in a place where the ocean is a melange of breathtaking shades of blue), I do like the black and whites images I took. I’ve only had time to develop one roll so far, which contains images taken at “The Baths”, a famous beach on Virgin Gorda.
Virgin Gorda is not only a place of amazing colours, it is also a place of amazing textures and shapes, and I am looking forward to developing the other black and white rolls I shot during my week in paradise.
My Third Eye 