FINALS WEEK IS DONE!

so.. ya.. after intense semester of 6 classes, (4 studios) it's finally over!

as promised here are some 4x5 B&W and ColorChrome (FujiChrome 100) pics i shot.

this was shot in Cedar City Utah, sometime in February.  originally shot in color, but i think i liked the B&W one better.  Shot at f/45 @ 1/5 8:45am. Direct Sun, Bellows at 11"

The Chicken Feet was shot at f/22 @ 1/8th with a 90mm.. i was in the shade and created a box enclosure with a black backdrop, also, i burnt a piece of wood to give it a more used look.   i have to give thanks to the chicken that let me use its legs! 

i'm not sure why i didn't stop it down to f/64 since the 90mm i had went to it?  next time i guess. 

this is my friend Leah, she was a good sport and had these cool leather jackets that i just envisioned with a pure white background. shot these in direct sunlight  these were also shot at f/22 with the 210mm lens.

another ColorChrome. this was shot in Nipton California at the Mojave National Preserve. i'd like to thank my buddy Van for showing me the location. its about an hour or so south of las vegas and it is amazing!  it might not look it, but it was fairly dark outside when i tool this picture. unfortunately i didn't record the time shot, but i know the sun had gone down already.  shot at f/16 @ 2 seconds with the 210 lens.

also Shot in Nipton, is this old Joshua tree. it sits in the middle of the Largest Joshua Tree concentration in the world (thanks Van)  i don't know why i was so drawn to it. but i'm definitely going to give it a another crack at it when i get my 8x10 camera.  shot at f/45 @ 1 Second, overcast, 4:53PM. in this photo, i tried to make sure the ground leading up to the tree was in focus, which led to a lot of tilting the lens and ground class plates until it looked acceptable. 

This one is probably my favorite of all the Color Shots i did. i was freezing my behind up at the peak of BrianHead Utah. BrianHead is a Ski resort that is just North of Cedar City Utah.  i shot this at either f/22 @ 10 seconds according to my notes.  the sun wasn't up yet. i'm guessing it was around 5:30am. i didn't write it down on my notes.  i was more concerned with it being -8*F on the mountain. 

just south of cedar there is a national park called Kolob Canyon. this was taken right before the sun went down, at F/22 @ 1 Seconds. 

I'll try to post more soon. i'm still scanning them and it takes for ever! 

let me know what you think! thanks! 

PRINTS!

28 shots later, I can't tell you how many I hours spent focusing, adjusting, compensating, metering, developing, printing, mixing, frustrating, in taking these pictures!

The picture below was taken with a 4x5 View camera. what you're seeing below is a scanned Silver Gelatin contact print from the negative, it was taken at 10:22 Am in direct sunlight with a 90MM Toyo lens. subject was about 4 inches from the lens, with bellows length at about 16.5 inches, which equated to an X factor of 17X therefore, according to the chart, i needed to add +4 Stops of light. i spot metered the white spikes @ f/22 for 1/60 seconds. so adding 4 stops light to get the white at Zone V (18% gray) I added the +4 Stops to make the final shot f/22 @ 1/8 second.

Apparently in the final print, my film holder had a light leak as seen by the fogginess on the lower left corner and that fog line on the bottom of the print.

The picture below was taken with a 4x5 View camera. what you're seeing below is a scanned 4x 5 Negative and below that the print. shot was taken outside in shade on piece of old wood. The wood was wet, and had some paint on it. i figured it would make good contrast because of the woodgrain creating these rectilinear lines moving across the frame, then abruptly halted by the curvilinear octopus tentacle. shot was taken at F/11 @ 1/8' bellows at 5.5" no X factor was taken into account.

Contact print on silver Gel paper was at f/16 @ 8 seconds total, - 3 seconds Dodge on middle left, side.

below is my feeble attempt at a Edward Weston pepper.

Here is the actual setup! shot at F/11 @ 1 Second, did not compensate for Bellows.

final words:

I had been working on looking at finding patterns and textures in everyday, and maybe not so everyday objects and bring out the extraordinary detail that they had. sometimes we overlook the awkward looking pepper in the mound of perfect cookie cutter peppers, or the strange spiked inner cheek of a cow. no one ever sees them, because frankly, who eats cow cheek? i put up 7 photos at the critique of the 28 shot. the ones i posted were my personal favorites. i hope it was educational! i know it was for me!

The View Camera

Last monday, as I was lugging the recently checked-out 4x5 camera to my car, I started thinking about all the exciting things i could do with it! This semester I am taking an Independent Study Class at UNLV with Professor Catherine Angel. My focus will be Large Format Photography. In brief, I am starting with the 4x5 View Camera, and then switching to the 8x10 later on in the semester.

I don't think I was prepared for how heavy the camera was! for all the ideas and places I want to take it, it will be a challenge. I took a beginning Black and White photo class last summer and really enjoyed shooting film. I have been shooting digital for a few years now and it was a pleasant change to what had become monotonous almost-point and shoot style photography. Don't get me wrong, when I shoot with my digital camera, my photos are thought out and usually pre-visualized before I shoot them. That being said, film and the subsequent prints made from negatives offers an aesthetic unmatched to digital-inkjet prints.

So why they large format? Why even bother with what seems to be a quickly evaporating method of photography? Well, after taking a history photography class I found myself highly interested in the clarity of images which some of the early pioneers in photography had accomplished. Photographers like Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams, in particular. American made products. I say pioneers, because they indeed pioneered photography as an Art form; and legitimized it as an art medium.

The control of light in their compositions, the tonal values in gray scale, and their creativity all stemming from a light-tight box with a hole. The View Camera is a camera at its most basic form. and as simple a design it is, I say it would take a life-time to master it.

I wanted to go back to that old aesthetic. I wanted to see my photos on silver gel prints, and perhaps to at least come close to what the early pioneers in photography could achieve.

Hopefully this blog will take you on that journey this semester along with me, and in doing so, we can learn a little more about the art of creating images.