Life has gotten in the way of photography for me over the last month or so, and unfortunately, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with my camera as I would like to. I’m hoping things start to get back to normal soon, and regular posts along with it.
In other news, last week’s Chairman post was my 100th post on the site. Certainly a milestone that I had been looking forward to, but it didn’t get the attention that it deserved.
My favorite of the set if being POTW didn't tell you.
I hate large crowds almost as much as I hate mushrooms, so going out somewhere to see fireworks on the Fourth of July isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, especially when I see people camping out for spots at 2:30 pm for a 9:30 pm fireworks display. I can think of so many more things that I’d rather be doing with my time than that. At the same time, however, I also have a five year old little girl that loves fireworks, so like many people end up doing for the holiday, we decided to purchase our own fireworks and have some fun at home, and, of course, I had to have my camera there.
What follows are some of my favorite photos from the set. To do this, I set my camera at an aperture of f/10 and an ISO of 100. For the shutter speed, I set my camera to bulb and tried my best to manually time each exposure based on what each particular firework was doing. It didn’t always work out the way I liked, and there are several in my complete set that are almost completely whited out, but for the most part, I was able to get some decent shots.
Check out a few of my faves after the jump.
My Canon T1i with DIY pinhole lens
I’ve written several times before about wanting to try my hand at both traditional pinhole photography, as well as digital, and this past weekend I came across probably the easiest and cheapest method of doing digital pinhole photography that you’ll probably ever find. The method I used comes from Photocritic, and although I didn’t follow their instructions exactly, I’m completely ecstatic with my results, but that could just be because this was the first time that I’ve ever done any sort of pinhole photography at all.
The items I used to create my DIY digital pinhole lens were:
Each of these items I had lying around the house. Since Photocritic does such a great job of explaining how to create the lens, I won’t get into those details myself here, although I’ve done so on my Flickr page. The beauty of this project is how quickly you can go from creating the lens to shooting photos with it, and of course, the fact that if you’ve already got this stuff handy like I did, you don’t have to spend one dime to do it.
Check out some of my results after the jump.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of those posts, largely because I’ve been reading more books than I have posts on my feed reader. So to make up for this, this post is actually going to cover my favorites from several weeks worth of posts that I’ve picked up on or was really impressed by.
Coming out of retirement.
If you follow my feed on Twitter at all (and you should!), you’ve probably noticed that over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about film photography. Other than a couple rolls that I’ve shot with my Holga, I haven’t spent nearly as much time doing film photography as I would like. As you’re likely to hear from anyone that’s hesitant to pick up a film camera, there are two reasons why I just haven’t done it much over the last few years. The first reason is cost. To put it quite simply, I really haven’t been able to afford financially to shoot film. With film, you’ve got to consider both the cost of the film itself as well as the developing costs, and we’re not even talking about getting prints made yet. The second reason, if you haven’t already guessed, is time. One of the great things about digital photography is that you’ve got the results instantaneously, whereas with film it could be anywhere from hours to months to find out what photos you’ve got.
35mm shot from the Ensley Abandoned House
You’re probably wondering why I’m considering shooting film at all if I can’t afford it and don’t want to wait for my photos. Well, there’s a certain realness to film photography that you simply cannot get with digital photography. I’m a big fan of trying to achieve quality photos straight out of the camera, and with film, you pretty much have to get it right the first time–framing, composition, lighting, etc. There are no second chances with film photography–you can’t shoot 100 different angles of the same thing and decide later what works and what doesn’t–and for me, that’s a lot of what photography should be about. Beyond this, I love some of the unexpected aspects of film, such as light leaks and double exposures, that you simply cannot get naturally with digital cameras. With that in mind, I’m planning to adjust my personal finance budget so that I can do more film photography (everything from 35mm and Polaroids to 120, 127 and 620), because it is such a unique art form that I hate to see dying out.
In additional to the photo to the right, after the jump are a few more photos from the first roll of 35mm film that I’ve shot with my Minolta X-570 since probably 2001 or earlier. Also, just today, I’ve sent off my first ever roll of 127 film to Dwayne’s Photo in Kansas, so hopefully I’ll be able to share those photos in a couple of weeks, but I’ll be trying to share more and more film photos in general going forward.
