Week 21: On the way to Charlottesville

This past weekend I made a drive down to visit a friend who lives in Charlottesville, VA. The drive took us from MA through CT, NY, a sliver of NJ, PA, MD and finally to VA. That's a lotta states. And a lotta states means a lotta driving.

Luckily for me, at least in this instance, I got to ride shotgun the whole way while my buddy took the pilot seat.

Since this was a reunion weekend of sorts for three really close high school friends there were only a few photos sanitized enough to make it up for this week's post. Of those I only had one that I really liked, so there are no outtakes this week.

This shot could be from any one of those states we passed through. Really have no idea which one it was.

The one thing I know from this foggy quick trip to the South is that I really gotta get back there. Charlottesville was a lot of fun.

Week 20: Bike Messenger

In last week's update I mentioned that I've been playing around with panning lately. While moving cars are interesting to photograph I found that trying to capture bike messengers in motion was far more challenging.

Freezing their motion against a blurred background is definitely hard, but the hardest part was actually finding them. I started out waiting on a corner on Congress Street near Post Office Square in downtown Boston thinking there would be a lot of bike traffic through the financial district. I only saw one bike. So I wrote about it on twitter and a friend of mine whose wife used to work downtown sent me a note about how he would see a ton of them when he would visit her.

Turns out I was about a block away form there when I was first shooting, so while I was in the neighborhood, I was just far enough away to miss the action. I went back there the next day and sure enough a whole clutch/gaggle/school of bike messengers was hanging out in the park on Devonshire Street.

I parked myself on the sidewalk and waited.

I ended up catching about a dozen messengers on that street. This was the only one that I really liked. I shot this one on the Canon 35mm film camera I have, on some Velvia 100 film. Actually all of this week's shots are from this setup.

The next time I try to go on a panning hunt I'll be bringing my digital camera. Being able to get some immediate feedback on the shots with the digital camera will make the outing a bit more successful. As it was with the film setup I had to guess at what exposure settings would work, and just how slow of a shutter speed I would need to keep the biker relatively crisp against a blurred background. I obviously have a ways to go...

Here are the outtakes from the week:

Week 19: birdwatching

Who knew seagulls were so friendly? This guy was perched up on a pylon at the end of the Long Wharf near the New England Aquarium. I took his picture from maybe 5 feet away and kept creeping in on him until my lens was about a foot from his beak. He was pretty cooperative. I think he was hoping I'd make with the breadcrumbs.

I took a bunch of pictures of this guy, but this one was my favorite.

I got a few outtakes this week, two of them are previews of what is to come this week. I've been messing around with panning, and for some reason (maybe to torture my patience) I've only been doing the panning work on film. I'm planning to get out there again this week and try to perfect, or at least work on, my panning techniques.

And the last outtake image is from Christopher Columbus park, again near the Aquarium in Boston. Not really happy about this shot, but that just means I need to get back there and try it again.

Week 18: P10

I found a new parking garage to get on top of. These are the sorts of things that excite the photographer in me.

This particular garage is above Downtown Crossing in Boston, pretty close to where I work. The 10th floor is the top floor, and it's completely open to the air. Some of the garages I've been in are the bottom few floors of an office building, and while they may offer some good views of older architecture, they're a bit limiting as far as skyline views go.

I will have to head back to this garage one night with a tripod to get some of the buildings. There's a great panoramic view of the nearby office buildings that would look pretty amazing through a really wide lens.

For this shot I went back to the digital camera and used the Canon 17-40 lens at 40mm with a circular polarizing filter on to darken the sky out a bit.

While I was up on the roof I also took a few shots of the action below. The downtown crossing area is pretty busy on a nice day during the lunch hour. I made a gimmicky fake tilt-shift miniaturization shot out of one of the images. Sure it's kitschy, but fun nonetheless. This is outtake #1:

On my way back from the garage I spied this pooch hanging out of a car, so I took a shot. He's outtake #2:

Week 17: Durgin Parking Garage

This week's photo is of the Durgin Park billboard from the top floor of the Dock Square garage in Boston, near Faneuil Hall. I have been on top of two other garages so far in Boston, and even though I park in this one nearly every time I drive into the city I had yet to wander up to the 7th floor. 

Today as I was heading back to my car I had two frames left on the roll of 120 loaded in my Yashica Mat. So instead of huffing up the stairs to the 4th level I decided I'd gamble on the rickety elevators and take the ride to the top floor. I wasn't really sure if the top would be totally exposed to the outside, but when the elevator doors opened I was presented with what looks like a football field sized flat parking garage floor with plenty of room to walk around and get some great shots of the Boston skyline. 

I will definitely be coming back.

And here are this week's outtakes, all from today. 

PS - I know I've been on a bit of a B/W film kick lately, but now that the sun is starting to come out more consistently I'll be shooting a bit more with the digital camera, and definitely more with some Velvia film. I have 5 or 6 rolls of 220 Velvia 100 that I'm hoping to unleash on the bright skies sometime soon.

A great piece on Dorothea Lange heard on NPR today

On the drive into work today I heard a piece on NPR about Dorothea Lange and a new book written about her by Linda Gordon.

The piece starts off talking about what is arguably Dorothea Lange's most recognizeable image, that of a California pea picker Florence Owens Thompson. The image was taken while Lange was employed by the Farm Security Administration in March, 1936.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson

One incredible piece of information I learned from the NPR piece was that all of the images that Dorothea Lange took during her work with the FSA became the proprety of the US Government. The original images were accompanied by captions that she wrote for each image, but they were not distributed with the images when the FSA would make them available to news outlets. Not even the titles of her images were preserved.



Listen to the NPR piece embedded below, or visit this link to read more about the new book by Linda Gordon.

5 questions from Etsy and a sweet pair of cuff links

The other day I was working on my Etsy shop and I ran into a gal who asked me if I'd be up for a quick interview on her blog. I couldn't say yes fast enough -  I mean, who doesn't like talking about themselves?

She is an Etsy artisan that makes some pretty cool jewelry so you should go swing by her shop to see her stuff - mother's day is right around the corner dontcha know (hint, hint).

She asked me five questions that you can read over on her blog, but one question totally caught me off guard. The final question was, if money were no object what item from Etsy would you buy. Since I have yet to see a Hasselblad for sale on Etsy I went with something I had come across only a couple days before - these sweet camera cuff links from Etsy seller CosmicFirefly. Check them out:

                                                                                  image courtesy of CosmicFirefly's Etsy shop

Check out the interview over at her blog by clicking on this link.

Week 16: Argus (or, "Go Thattaway")

So week 15 in the 52 Weeks project was a tad late (due mostly to my being wrapped up in the 4am project contest) and this week's photo was threatening to be delayed too, but for totally different reasons. 

I've had one roll of 120 Delta 3200 sitting to be developed from the 4am Project shoot earlier in the month, as well as a roll of  Tri-x 400 35mm, Efke 50 120 and today I just burned through a roll of Kodak 3200. I got through the Delta 3200 and the Tri-x 400, mostly because they were the oldest undeveloped rolls and also because the Tri-x 400 was what I shot this past week and I needed a photo for week 16.

This roll was the first roll I've run through my inherited Argus C3 camera. According to the wikipedia entry for the C3 it was the best selling 35mm camera in America for nearly three decades. That's insane. It's a rangefinder, with separate viewfinders: one for setting focus and the other for composition. The viewfinders are about the diameter of an eraser, so composing shots isn't the easiest thing in the world. 

Oh, and there's no meter.

I had no idea how much I relied on my other camera's built in meters to help me figure out exposure. Without the meter to tell me whether I had a scene properly exposed or not I had to wing it. I used a calculator I found on the web to give me a starting point, then adjusted as the scene dictated. It was tricky, but thankfully I was using negative film which gives you a little more wiggle room than slide film.

I got a few decent shots, but it's clear I still have a lot to learn about shooting with this camera. 

Here's the shot I chose for this week. Taken near the Union Oyster House in Boston, MA. 

And here are a few outtakes, mostly from last week, but some might be from weeks past.

I landed 2nd prize in the 2010 4am Project photo contest!

It was a very tight race, and after being selected as a finalist from almost 1500 photographs I ended up winning 2nd prize in the 4am Project photo contest!

You can read about it on the 4am Project blog here: http://4amproject.org/2010/04/4am-project-prize-winners/

Congrats to Nandor Hargita of Budapest for taking first prize with his photo - you can check it out here: Nandor's winning photo.

Can't wait until next year's event - in the meantime, go out and shoot some pinhole shots for World Pinhole Photography day - it's today!

My growing camera collection

In the past year I've aquired 4 new (old) cameras. First it was a Yashica Mat 124g, then came the old Duaflex II, then I inherited an Argus C3 and most recently picked up a Praktica (see the last blog post for output from that one).

So far I have resisted the urge to dive into the instant photography craze. Mostly because I am very preoccupied with the small horde of film cameras I can play with. But with the recent announcment from the Impossible Project that they have begun to sell two varieties of monochrome 600 format instant film, and with their upcoming release of a new color film, I am tempted to plop down some money for an eBay special.

That is, I was tempted, until I saw that Rachel is giving away an instant camera to one lucky fan. You can check out her giveaway over here at her Rachel B. Blog site.

The entry fee is a comment, or a blog post, or a tweet - just head over and say hello and your name goes into the hat.

And while you're over there you really should check out her work - she does some beautiful things with light and a camera.

good luck!