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.
I’ve been shooting more 35mm lately (in addition to medium format), and of course with the smaller negative, grain becomes more of a reality. One can either embrace the grain, or try super fine grain film. For today’s image it is the latter: it was made using Adox CMS 20 film (with a speed of ISO 20, so it is very slow and wants a lot of light). It’s basically high contrast microfilm stock, but developed with a special developer to allow continuous tones. This type of film requires some taming, but I love the look! I used my Leica IIIb and a 50mm lens for the image, taken in Guild Park, Scarborough, Ontario Canada.
Toronto is testing some new subway cars, and one of the nice features is that with these new cars the train is open from end to end, so you can walk between cars. From a photographic point of view, seeing right to the end of the train offers some interesting photographic opportunities. I had been wanting to shoot one of the new trains with a super-wide angle, and this past Saturday morning I lucked out. I had my Leica IIIf with me, with the 21mm/f4 Voigtlander Color Skopar lens. I had to shoot wide-open at 1/40 second, but I did get some that were sharp.
Another image from a roll sitting around for sometime waiting to be developed. In this case, a roll of 35mm Tri-X black and white shot late last summer in Toronto with my Nikon F2 (body since sold as part of a gear rationalization, since I have an F3 body as well).
Since this was shot on 35mm high speed film, grain is inevitable, and in comparison to decades ago when photographers would do everything in their power to minimize grain (in part as a response to shooters who didn’t take the 35mm format seriously), many film shooters now don’t mind the grain. It’s a badge of authenticity, and has a special character, especially when compared to digital noise. It is ironic that people spend money on Photo shop plug-ins to recreate this grain. I like the real thing 🙂
Ilford HP5+ is a film that I’ve never had luck with in 35mm; it’s always been just too grainy when I develop it. And that was certainly true with the latest roll, so for this image I decided to bow to the inevitable, and accentuate the grain with some post processing. I captured this image at Ashbridges Bay in Toronto, while waiting for a model to show up; it was a very grey September evening, and this part of the beach was certainly not busy.
Posts haven’t been very frequent lately, as I have been very busy appearing in a community theatre production of My Fair Lady here in Toronto. (By the way, tickets still available for this weekend, just click on the link). The thought did occur to me backstage this past weekend that in some ways, film photography is like live theatre; there is always an element of chance involved, and one is never quite sure how things will turn out, and unlike digital, where the LCD screen acts as a security blanket, in film you never know if you’ve been successful until the film is developed after the fact. Along with knowledge and skill, you have to rely on (as Alfred P. Doolittle would say) “Faith, Hope and a little bit of luck”. Today’s picture of a bike in downtown Toronto, taken with a defective Rolleicord Twin Lens Reflex camera (sold for scrap after shooting only one roll successfully and replaced with a better example) to me is an example of this idea. The picture isn’t perfect, but I got just enough luck to make it work. 🙂
I like this image because of its ambiguity. To me it looks like it could have been made anytime over the last ninety years or so; there isn’t much in the picture that would give the actual date it was taken. (For the record, I made this image just this month, with my Rolleicord Vb Twin-Lens Reflex medium format camera.)
The viewer gets to fill in the blanks, and there are no wrong answers.
Quite often people talk about what an image can reveal, but today I will talk about what an image can hide. This is an image I created this past week by the Don river, using my Mamiya M645J camera, and Tri-X film. Except for the lamp post in the middle of the image, there is nothing to indicate that this is a polluted river in the middle of central Toronto, as opposed to some unspoiled wilderness somewhere else.
One experiment I plan to try this year is to take a water sample from this river, and develop a roll of black and white film with it; it wouldn’t surprise me if I get a recognizable image!
Today’s image was originally captured back in the fall of 2010. Originally taken on Ilford XP2+ film, I added the toning and the vignetting in Aperture using the Silver Efex Pro plug-in. I am quite happy with how the image turned out, but since I’ve been doing a lot of film recently, I still can’t help but have some mixed feelings, like I’m using artificial vs. natural flavours. Then there is the fact that using the plug-in is fairly quick; I spent about 20 minutes fiddling with the image, compared with what would have been required in the darkroom: two extra chemical steps, and likely multiple attempts to get the burn-in for the vignetting just right.
Am I cheating?
My Third Eye 