what do you see like: 2012

i like that you use pics of your friends. me being stupid maybe but ive always kept friend photos and what felt like "photo" photos as separate categories, without ever even giving it much thought...one of a few unexamined habits im now considering thanks to ilp ppl.

yes! i think about this a lot too. the emmet gowin thing in the other thread about mainly having your life to offer as photographic material changes things a lot.

been quiet because I'm finally building my website! and the website building part went surprisingly fast, with the photo selection and editing taking surprisingly long.
accidentally made a bunch of photos on flickr 'private' and then back to 'public' again, eliminating favorites etc. so now am trying to take it less seriously, no longer posting to groups etc.
the latest is this then:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7038/6884085643_677c8a90f1_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7184/6884085435_5dc563406d_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7198/6884085243_51a85b6f5c_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7187/6884085039_65c0d55ddd_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7063/6884084843_5c799e8e6b_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7047/6884084543_e6f6f82ea9_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7064/6884084351_b722239f3a_m.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7046/6884084155_68b3dc80a1_m.jpg

er probably should have put those side by side, sorry

those are awesome! where was all that paper coming from?

Your Euro-trip photos are spectacular gr80

― Flag post? I hardly knew her! (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, February 16, 2012 1:21 AM (7 hours ago)

thanks! we spent most of our time driving/riding or drunk so i was really limited in what i could shoot. i was the photographer friend on a motorcycle trip, really want to go back and have the ability to stop and take pictures of whatever i want.

that was the giants super bowl victory parade. paper coming from office windows

cough up the website, dude!

oh man I think it's going to take me a little while. i haven't spent any time putting pictures 'together' before so I'm starting from scratch on that, and discovering that what I thought would be coherent sets of images don't mesh as well as i would have expected. a lot of rethinking going on.

thanks! we spent most of our time driving/riding or drunk so i was really limited in what i could shoot. i was the photographer friend on a motorcycle trip, really want to go back and have the ability to stop and take pictures of whatever i want.

― ⚓ (gr8080), donderdag 16 februari 2012 19:54 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The driving, being drunk and party elements are quite present, yes :-)

But there is something very particular and personal, or unique, in nearly all your photos. I can't put my finger on it and I'm horrible at describing an aesthetic image that pleases my eye or touches me in words, but you have the ability to single out moments that many other people wouldn't. The photos really feel like you frame a single moment, a 1000th of a second, yet they breathe and suggest so much motion and life - the seconds before and after the shot linger in it, somehow. Stirring a very particular melancholy, or nostalgic "i wish I was there" feeling within me.

Sorry if that is total gibberish, but they appeal to me in a big way. I need to cough up some dough for those Aloha Friday mags :-)

Did you change film for the black and whites or is it all digital and reworked into b 'n w afterwards?

dude thanks LBI, i'm glad you appreciate them-- add me on fbook i have shitloads more albums... or are we already friends? i forget.

Did you change film for the black and whites or is it all digital and reworked into b 'n w afterwards?

yeah most of europe was shot on kodak bw400cn. there might have been a roll of tmax in the mix. aside from a few shots that were on an expired roll of gold200, the color stuff is all portra160, the xpro stuff is a mix of provia400 and elite chrome (kind of bummed about how the xpro stuff came out-- have had way better results with both of these in the past)

i dont really edit anything color wise or crop anything, except for when the lab fucks up my scans i might 'shop out some scratches/lines or color-correct to a truer black & white

http://i.imgur.com/WkRsE.jpg

is that from the valerian tumblr? I'm hooked on tokyo camera style right now: http://tokyocamerastyle.com/
just pure equipment lust but I don't shy away from it

this is such standard-issue camera-desire-101 that it doesn't necessarily even qualify as equipment lust, but the clicking around i did on http://www.ibarelyremember.com yesterday was such a oh man leicas thing. like the conversation here recently regarding the potential of cameras - small cameras, cheap cameras, etc - is very reassuring and true to me, but i like having the idea of there being an out of reach camera, which would obviously up my game, &c

the couple of mentions/fridgefuls of t-max on there are interesting. i'm still waiting for my first real roll of that to come back from developing; i shot one once that got eaten up. curious to see what it's like, i can't imagine it being any nicer than tri-x

also basic: could someone testify to the purpose/effectiveness of the kinda extended 'collar' kind things on most of those lenses, pictured at china's link? is it a light thing or?

you know tmax's rep as far as I can tell is that it is extremely fine-grained and gives good mid values. but as someone who loves fine-grained mid values, I never really got along with it. I think tri-x has advanced so much over the years that it is pretty smooth itself, and if you really are after that smoothness, then some ilford films really take you there. fp4 is what I'm thinking of maybe?
you're talking about the lens hood on those cameras. it's used to cut out light hitting the lens surface at an angle, which causes a loss of contrast (say you're pointed towards the sun, and although it's out of frame its rays still strike the glass and cause contrast loss... basically the hood throws a shadow over the glass). I went without one for a long time, but then started taking more pictures facing south in the winter in nyc and realized why one could be helpful. the added benefit is that it makes it harder for an object to bump into your lens.

speaking of small cameras, I came across two olympus stylus epics recently, and they are now my new 'going out' cameras. pretty good 35mm lens point and shoots.

it seems i'm mainly seeing B&W in 2012
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7037/6887578561_5b09761ca3_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7068/6865469181_f42d300b22_z.jpg

thanks for that, china. i love grain but saw some nice fp4 scans somewhere recently (in a guy's great set of fuji presto & other b&w stuff) & might give it a shot. lens hood info interesting also.

Other benefit of a hood - protect the front element in a bag or from bumping into stuff if you're clumsy. I keep one on my lenses rather than use a protective filter or lens cap, unless the lens is worth more than the rest of my worldly possessions (like the Leica 35mm I sold a couple of months ago).

those pictures that you linked actually look pretty grainy to me still, schlump! I imagine it's because he's rated the film at 400 iso.
here's an example of what I consider to be some pretty smooth fp4:

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1114/5116423732_956f9bf64b_z.jpg

oh sure yeah - sorry i kinda careened towards 'but fp4 looks generally nice anyway!' rather than 'but who needs grain anyway'. feel like i haven't seen any of yr b&w stuff before, china, or have just got used to the colour, that's nice. i was using this interesting, weird agfa film for a while recently, i think pushed to 800, & got some v nice tones:

http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/c/0/0/42/6/AAAADAwSmaQAAAAAAEJuAQ.jpg?v=1239562205000

i think i maybe like getting mids, & getting some gradation of greys, while there's still definitely some dark/black in the picture, for range. i'm saying this like it's something i can control, where as it's just not using 100 speed film that's gonna come out in a narrow range of midtones - a lot of my associations for b&w film are of it looking washed out, & muted, rather than boldly transformed from colour to this new, other spectrum, & it's only really 400+ speed film i can ever seem to get that from.

(i'm doing that thing again, here, where bc i'm awkward about posting particular pics itt i'm just gonna link to some stuff i've uploaded. via the schlump profile below this; on the page linked there's a bunch of b&w stuff towards the end that is kinda richer for me for its higher contrast. i think i wondered if that would be what the lens hood did, wrt colour photography: stop the bleaching of lens flare and so create a richer, darker tonal range, etc).

dude thanks LBI, i'm glad you appreciate them-- add me on fbook i have shitloads more albums... or are we already friends? i forget.

Did you change film for the black and whites or is it all digital and reworked into b 'n w afterwards?

yeah most of europe was shot on kodak bw400cn. there might have been a roll of tmax in the mix. aside from a few shots that were on an expired roll of gold200, the color stuff is all portra160, the xpro stuff is a mix of provia400 and elite chrome (kind of bummed about how the xpro stuff came out-- have had way better results with both of these in the past)

i dont really edit anything color wise or crop anything, except for when the lab fucks up my scans i might 'shop out some scratches/lines or color-correct to a truer black & white

― ⚓ (gr8080), donderdag 16 februari 2012 22:02 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We're not friends on facebook for I am not on it, apart from a spoof account i needed to enter the outloud music room. But if a guy with a fake Dutch name adds you soon, someone with no friends or profile at all, that will be me. Thanks dude!

Thanks for the background on your photos. I think the black and whites especially worked out brilliantly.

is that from the valerian tumblr? I'm hooked on tokyo camera style right now: http://tokyocamerastyle.com/
just pure equipment lust but I don't shy away from it

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Friday, February 17, 2012 5:33 AM (9 hours ago)

a dude in hawaii does this: hawaiicamerastyle.com (i'm on page three)

We're not friends on facebook for I am not on it, apart from a spoof account i needed to enter the outloud music room. But if a guy with a fake Dutch name adds you soon, someone with no friends or profile at all, that will be me. Thanks dude!

one of my fbook friends is a Dutch dude i found on flickr offering to GIVE AWAY a Leica MiniZoom (i'd been watching them go for $100 on eBay). i hit him up and he shipped it halfway around the word to me for $0.00, asking only that i email him photos i took with it

That's how cool we are http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Very sweet deal gr80.

TOP is running some great posts on how B&W pics can look different

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/02/bw-through-the-years.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/02/interpreting-black-and-white-part-i.html

wow I *just* closed my attempt at that black and white conversion before checking this thread. the initial post was pretty great on there.

come on dudes, I'll do it... gotta rack up view counts somehow:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7178/6773433706_317683825a_m.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6919335181_b66b76a5f2_m.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7202/6919241629_527fe34837_m.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7055/6913955775_8ec7bd9be4_m.jpg

return to the scribbly wall

WW
OO
MM
PP

i can't remember if i already said this, you are the only guy who makes modern cars look okay, in photos/takes photos in which cars are not some awkward difficult element actively ruining the photo. this isn't a car thing, it is a photo thing.

behind the scenes scribbly wall director's cut remix also great

the one of the bus stop is so balanced, I love it

oh this is great, cv: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7069/6913136509_b23bd214bc_b.jpg

thank you!
re: modern cars, it's not something I *specifically* try to shoot, but I have always been really bothered by some people I'm contacts w/on flickr who obviously love shore, eggleston etc. and always shoot OLD CARS. those cars weren't old when they were photographed guys! part of a trend of people who try to mimic their fav. old photographers by photographing stuff from the same era of their fav. work.
that WOMP tag is all over for some reason

yes, for sure. i mean i think such a key thing about eggleston is his eye for design, or fixtures, or fashion, which must have seemed fairly mundane & ordinary, but which carry a lot of power after the fact. & the retro-(/decay?)-documentation urge is definitely counter to the idea of filling the same role as a photographer.

yup people seem unable to separate the style/technique/goals etc. of a photographer from the subject. folks left hunting for scenes that look like they miiiight pass for 1973.

I'm purchasing the Canon 10-22mm at the end of this month, anyone used/owed one? I'm off up to Loch Etive next month and wanted a good wide angle lens.

Something the keep the thread going...
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7182/6931456253_8e5213d6b6_z.jpg

I have one. I deliberated for a loooooooooong time over it (kept waffling over Canon vs Tokina) but I'm pretty happy I chose the Canon.

I think I walked by the same antique shop seen in one of Elvis Telecom's Feb 6 posts:

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x18/gr8080/abe999ca.jpg

Ha! When were you in Bisbee?

yes! spent the day there today. hadn't been there in years. took a few b&w photos too. will post them when I get them back if they're any good.

Birkenhead Hamilton Square station. I waited for many trains here in my youth...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7068/6790639324_447d9d136c_z.jpg

not_g: played with a 10-22mm once, at the top of a Peckham multi-storey car park...

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2546/3717669520_aaa15e3d66_z.jpg

A recent favorite. The south face of Mount St. Helens, out the window of a plane, with a telephoto lens.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7030/6834128575_027fe13f40_z.jpg

niiiice

It's a crazy-sharp lens, and one of my favorites. (Though at this point it's like picking favorite children.) It's an 80's model push-pull zoom, 70-210mm. No auto-focus, but in situations like this that serves me well, because I don't want to trust the camera to decide what's most important. I'm looking at hundreds of miles, ffs.

I think from time to time that I'm venturing into more saturated pictures, but then I scan some old kodachrome slides and realize what heavy saturation *really* is:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6790895690_d26a40409c_z.jpg

Kodachrome: jellybeans for your eyes!

ha that's amazing, it makes me categorise the past as a time when everything looked like kodachrome/everyone was on acid all the time (/everything was orange)

yeah it's funny because looking at it, it seems *right* to me because, of course, LA was sun-drenched orange and yellow when I took it, but if I took the same picture now with, say, fuji superia, I wouldn't get ANYTHING like this, and if I pumped up the reds and the saturation etc. I'm sure it would just feel wrong!
also the black blacks... I'd be kicking myself if I let my blacks get that dark with print film, but with slide film the decision is made for me, and it kinda looks good? I'm thinking of messing around with chromes a little more again. I can't get the *greatest* scans of them, but whatever.

slightly off-topic, I noticed that an installation picture I did was used on LPV: http://lpvmagazine.com/2012/02/medium-1/ (the Art Blog Art Blog one)... and I now realize that that gallery series has been written about quite a bit, with my documentation accompanying most articles. I did it pretty unprofessionally anyway... in exchange for vacation time upstate.

http://lpvmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/artblog.jpg

but with slide film the decision is made for me, and it kinda looks good?

heh yeah there was a photographer who shot slide film in the south american tropics - the exposure range is so wide due to the harsh light that he just said fuck it and let the shadows go to pure black and got these amazing, color film noir-ish photos. can't remember the name of the photographer but there was a post on TOP about it.

I've seen those! and yeah they look good.