Baby Photos

When you have a kid, you want to take pictures all the stinking time. And when you get a really handy camera, you take even more. So here’s a handful from the last few months with Paul.

There’s been a lot of long days…

Somebody learned to crawl.

As with all the other film projects/trips, I’ve got a good few rolls of film from Paul’s first 4 or 5 months that I’ve yet to scan. But they are all developed, at least. My goal is to have all those scanned and edited by his first birthday. That’d be nice, anyway.

Making Practice Possible

So finding time to sit down and edit blog posts has been difficult enough, let alone developing, scanning, processing the backlog of film. There are at least 3 film blog posts in the works that I’ll get to eventually, but I wanted to sit you down and break the bad news. After 9 years of shooting film almost exclusively, I bought a digital camera. The Fuji x100F, to be exact. And I found it used – so at least there’s that.

But why? The aforementioned time – it dissipates so readily. I wasn’t taking the time to produce film photographs. So I just wasn’t shooting enough, I wasn’t progressing in any quality whatsoever in the photos that I was taking. And disappointment hits hard when you finally do take the time and you’re just never satisfied. So you don’t want to work on them. AND, it’s really cumbersome to carry a child on my back as well as a medium format camera. So I broke down. The desire to shoot and get better outweighed my desire to shoot film. And if I’m being honest, the x100F is really quite fun to shoot.

So I tested it out over Easter weekend with some family in town. Having a little rangefinder was less intimidating for everyone. Way less intimidating than the RB67 or the Fuji 6×9. And obviously much easier to use. It could actually be the right tool to have on hand to shoot for practice and pleasure. Did I mention how fun it is? 

Click through the gallery to see them large.

Pop picked up a checkers set at a yardsale. They played for hours…

Easter eggs.

Pop also fixed ribs.

Like, really fixed them.

So many ribs.

And this is my son, Paul. He was baptized at the Easter Vigil. I wish I had photos of that, but I was dying of allergies.

Paul & Nana after the Vigil.

 

 

Mt. Baker

So I ran the test rolls through the Zeiss just a few days before work took me out to the state of Washington. We were filming up on Mt. Baker, which supposedly has some great snowboarding.

The weather was terrible pretty much the entire time we weren’t filming, and most of the time we were filming it was pretty awful, so snow boarding didn’t happen. I kept the Zeiss folded up in my camera bag and if we had a few minutes, I’d just grab a shot from where we were.

Like I said, pretty rough weather. It would snow and sleet at the drop of a hat. Big thick clouds rolled in out of nowhere. And we’re trying to film, so there was a lot of starts and stops. For instance, the weather started coming in here, way off to the south…

And five minutes later…

Normally I’d wander off a little bit while we were on break, but not only did the weather keep us on our toes, but we were actually wearing snow shoes.

So even with snow shoes, wandering too far was pretty hazardous. Our first camera operator, above, fell through the snow up to his hip at one point. It wouldn’t have been so bad except he went through all the way to the lake we were standing on. He spent the next hour or so drying out his boot in the car.

We were honest to God standing above the tree tops at one point. (excuse the phone pics)

I’ve never seen snow that deep and never hope to again. It was just insane.

We knew the weather would be hit or miss while we were there, so my boss planned for a 3 day trip, just to be sure we could get something. We ended up filming the 2nd day and spent the 3rd hiking around where we stayed a bit before heading back to Seattle.

There was a waterfall, so of course I took photos of that.

It was a pretty fun trip, all in all. Except for about 10 minutes when we made it back to the cabin after shooting. I was prepping the cameras for travel and couldn’t find the media cards. I was dead certain all the footage we had was lost in the snow forever up on the mountain. Thankfully, they were indeed in the camera bag. I just gave myself a heart attack for no reason.

Super Ikonta Test Run

Well, on my quest for the perfect travel camera, I ran across an interesting idea while searching forums and eBay. I certainly cannot afford a new high end medium format camera, but I could definitely afford an old folder from the 50s. The only two things I really truly care about are portability and image quality. Medium format folders are probably more portable than a 35mm system. And the lens of the camera I’d been eyeing has a reputation of being legendary.

The Zeiss Super Ikonta 532/16. I was able to find one for cheap because the lens had a good amount of haze, but looking at the photos, I didn’t think it was fungus. But who can tell, so I took a chance and bought it thinking that I might be able to clean the lens myself. I ran a roll through it just to see how bad it was. Dreamy, but obviously problematic. On the plus side, I expected to see big streaks from light leaks in the bellows, but to my surprise and great delight, there are no leaks to speak of.

I took the lens mostly apart, which was an ordeal, and cleaned it as best I could with generic glasses lens cleaner. There’s only one surface with a little haze left, but getting to it would take quite a bit of know how. I’d have to take it all apart, degrease everything, re-oil everything, recalibrate the rangefinder, and I’m nowhere near competent enough yet to do that. But here’s the same photo after cleaning.

The Super Ikonta is kind of a weird camera with a great lens. The lens is really quite sharp, and the out of focus areas render a lot like my father-in-law’s speed graphic from the same era. On the other hand, the viewfinder is terrible. Gets the job done, but incredibly small. Also, it only takes 11 shots per roll instead of the ubiquitous 12 (which you can see on the counter below). It was one of the first automatic frame counters for the format, so I guess the mechanics for 12 just wasn’t there yet or something. For the lens alone, one missing frame is an excellent trade off (particularly for the price).

The camera arrived early enough that I could test it, clean it, test again, and still had a few days before leaving for another work trip. Took a couple rolls out at Mt. Baker in Washington. There’s still a roll of expired Fuji color in the camera with a couple frames left, but haven’t had an excuse to finish it. For next time…

Sedona

Sedona is a strangely magnificent place. Home of some of the most interesting geologic formations and landscapes. Home of the modern New Age movement. You can visit a monastery in the hills, or you can take the grand tour of the mystical vortex. Still not entirely sure what that is…

We drove around Sedona to film at a couple locations, but the real winner was driving up to the Merry-Go-Round formation. To get up there, what’s supposed to happen is you go downtown and rent an off-road ATV. Oversized go carts with monster wheels for adults. They’re made specifically to get you up steep and rocky trails that cars shouldn’t be on. We did not know this. And our formerly new age guide somehow managed to forget to relay this valuable information, even though he was in the car with us. But we managed to make it up to the top in a GMC SUV that has less clearance than a minivan. I don’t know how we’re not still stranded up there…

I had some time to climb around while my coworkers flew the drone. Still shooting the AE-1. After having shot with it for a while, I really like having all the features a 35mm camera can have. Auto exposure (or at least metering), large viewfinder, easy to focus, lots of exposures per roll, portable… But I’m not quite happy with how the lens performs. It is the standard lens that came with the camera back in the 70s after all. So it’s not incredibly sharp even stopped down to f8 or so. It’s fine for snapshots and fun, but any kind of enlarging will be impossible. Maybe I’ll try to find something a little faster, a little sharper.

S.P. Crater

Filming the documentary took us back out to Arizona to see S.P. Crater and the rock formations around Sedona. S.P. Crater was first on the docket. That’s “shit pot” crater, for those not in the know. Evidently, who ever owns the property has naming rights, and this particular rancher was pretty colorful, if not down to earth.

It’s a cinder cone volcano of somewhat recent origin with a 6-mile long basalt flow coming out its side. We ended up filming on top of the basalt rather than the cone, which was definitely for the better. I can’t imagine trying to steady myself on a 45 degree slope made of loose scree.

That was probably one of the nicer roads we traveled on this trip.

That’s S.P. Crater in the background.

The basalt flowed out as liquid lava once upon a time. The reason it’s all rubble now is that as the puddle of lava cools, it cools from the outside in, and it’s got the right chemical composition so that instead of creating one big rock, it cracks. And as it cools more and more, it cracks deeper and deeper until it’s cool the whole way through and there’s nothing left but a bunch of rocks. Giant’s Causeway was made the same exact way, but it’s composition allowed for the cracks at the surface to follow the same path all the way through, which is pretty cool.

We spent a day here and got most of what we needed. In documentary work, you really just kind of hope you walk away with what you need, but you never know. We spent the next day in Sedona, which will be in another post.

 

Grand Canyon – Color

I shot a few rolls of color film as we continued our loop around the whole of the Grand Canyon. These first couple are from just northeast of the canyon, I think in Hopi Buttes. One of the latest theories of Grand Canyon formation is that water filled this whole area – an inland lake dubbed Hopi Lake. The natural dam that held the water back eventually failed, all that 500-some-odd cubic miles of water then carved out the canyon, and probably created the Colorado River at the same time. That was Steve’s favorite theory, anyway.

Might have been my favorite cliffs of the whole trip.

Filming on the rim was pretty interesting. It’s government policy that any film crew must be accompanied by an escort of some sort. So we got a fairly green ranger. We expected a bit of trouble, scientists coming around talking theories that don’t comport with the standard line. Evidently, Steve’s been kicked out before. But all was quiet.

The crew stuck around into the late afternoon before heading off to the next location, shooting b-roll of the canyon. Once I’d run out of digital media, I just walked the southern rim a bit and shot with the AE-1. Since we needed to drive a good 3 hours or so after we finished, we had to leave before the sun had fully set. Which I deeply regret.

I’ve got another half roll somewhere undeveloped of our time in the Western Canyon. We hiked out 3 or 4 miles to see a fossil bed. I vaguely remember shooting some photos on the hike back out, but it would seem that roll is floating around in the ether. Maybe I’ll find it.

Grand Canyon – B/W

I’ve logged a good few miles for work over the last 6 months shooting for a documentary. We’re going to some really awesome locations, too, so not taking a personal camera was NOT an option. All my medium format cameras were way too big to throw into the already over-full video camera bag, so I thought it would be a good time to see if I still enjoyed shooting 35mm.

I had gotten my Canon AE-1 repaired not too long ago to take on the Roan Highland backpacking trip, so that was the weapon of choice. The sound guy, who is also an Assistant Director, was pretty excited to see someone still shooting film. He’s shot more rolls than he could count back when he was learning how to do more than just location sound. Our camera guy was not as enthusiastic. I think I started to realize how much of an anomaly I am working in a digital video industry.

But we flew in to Las Vegas and drove all the way around the Grand Canyon with our scientist, stopping at various locations to interview him. All in all, a successful 5-day 900 mile road trip. First roll was b/w. Color to follow.

We stopped often so Steve, the scientist, could teach us something. Above, he is explaining the formation of the Red Wall Limestone at a random road cut. Evidently these are great places to go rock and fossil hunting, if not the safest place…

Most of our driving was along state routes, but we did a number of off-road trips. We were in minivans. Zero clearance minivans. But we never got stuck, though I’d be lying if I said anxiety wasn’t an issue that whole time.

Mystery negatives…

So I found a mystery roll of 220 in my film bag a couple weeks ago after we went backpacking. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I had shot in color – black and white has been my go to for the last few months at least since I can develop it at home. So i dropped it by Filmbox and they ran it through in a couple days.

Lo’ and behold, the only color roll I ran through the Fuji 690 on the yard sale last August. Not sure how I lost track of it.

I think she is taking a picture of a purse she just bought? Context clues…

This was at the Mennonite community we stop at every year. They don’t like having their photos taken, but no one seemed to mind about the horse. 

I’m thinking of selling the camera, though. Not much of what I shoot warrants such a huge piece of film. 645 is probably more reasonable (and manageable for hiking/backpacking). A little less… conspicuous. A little less… spendy.

Mordancage for Tenebrae

So back in February, one of the elders at my church asked if I’d be interested in contributing to our Tenebrae service for holy week this year. “Sure, what are you looking for?” The darker and more abstract the better. A dark and abstract photo…

So after brainstorming with some friends, Leah came up with the idea of trying out the mordancage process, and I have to say it was a stroke of genius on her part. The way the process works, the darker the image, the more distressed it ends up. The long and short of it is this – you drop the print in an acid bath and the blacks start to dissolve, but since there’s less silver in the whites, they don’t dissolve. But the cool part is that the dissolving emulsion lifts from the paper and forms curtains, sheets, parachutes that adhere back the paper when it dries. Super chaotic stuff. Perfect for Tenebrae (Latin for shadows or darkness).

The idea was to try it out on a few different prints to see which worked the best, but it ended up turning into a tryptic. Which was just a shame, really.

After holding off judgment for a couple months, I feel pretty good about them. But my personality is way too detail oriented to easily accommodate the process into my repertoire. I’ll probably mess with it again in the future, but it was incredibly frustrating to work with in the moment. Expectations adjusted…

My friend Chris modeled for the photos.