We were leaving a friend's house and I saw this old Volvo in a parking lot. I had my camera and one exposure to spare, so I took a photo. I love the tonality of this show, and there's something about it and the shallow depth of field that gives it a vintage look.
Some teenagers were skating in the open space near the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial off of 7th and Pennsylvania. I had my 6x7 rangefinder and asked if I could take their photo. I asked them to look natural. I think this photo came out well. Film was Kodak Tri-X 400, lab developed.
We took a vacation to California wine country for Christmas, and I used the trip as a chance to really use the camera on my iPhone 7 Plus and see how it compares to my "real" digital cameras. The iPhone camera isn't as good as what you would find on, say, a Fuji X100T, but it is good enough. It takes sharp, contrasty photos and lets you edit and share them immediately.
Anyway, here are some of the shots I captured with my iPhone this last week. All were edited in VSCO for iOS.
Every so often, I will take a walk around the D.C. with the aim of shooting one roll of film, usually medium format. My last walk took me from Anacostia up to U Street, and here are the photos from it. I am moving away from color photography, so these might be the last color shots taken on this particular camera.
I spent a part of my holiday break in Northern California. My film from the week needs to be developed, but I brought a pack of Impossible Project film for my Polaroid Spectra, and took a few instant photos. Here are my favorites.
For many reasons, I spent a lot of time in Charlottesville, Virginia. During my last visit, we visited a few wineries in the county. The weather wasn't great, but at a certain point that afternoon, the light was brilliant. Beams of golden light poured onto the landscape, illuminating everything with their brilliance. I had a camera with me (a Yashica Mat) and so I did what photographers do; I took pictures. The light was still like this when we got back to town, so I walked around and took a few more photos of a nearby convenience store and gas station. The final photo is just of a missing dog sign. I sometimes snap photos of those. I'm not sure why.
I forget that these exist until I see them; relics of the not-so-distant past when people didn't carry mobile phones, and needed a way to contact someone away from home. This phone is near the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., on the 5th Street side. I didn't notice it—my wife did. But once she pointed it out, I had to take a photo.
These two shots are the best photos from a roll of film I shot at the end of November, when I attempted to do a few long exposures. All this means is that the time allotted for capturing the image was greater than a second.
In the case of the first photo, the exposure took about 20 seconds, with the camera mounted on a tripod and the shutter attached to a release cable. In the case of the second, which took me two tries to get right, the exposure was 1 minute and 35 seconds.
I used a Fuji GW670 rangefinder and Kodak Tri-X for these photos. The Tri-X was pushed 2 stops to 1600, which accounts for some of the extra graininess.
I was bored a few weekends ago, so I grabbed my Yashica Mat TLR (think a Rolleiflex clone), my tripod, and a roll of film, and went to the National Arboretum to take photos in the fading light. This was mostly a test of whether I could use the Yashica on a tripod without causing too much shake or otherwise ruining the photo The result is yes! I can, even with strong winds that make steadying anything a challenge. Which opens up new avenues of shooting with that camera.
In the meantime, here are the photos. I'm not a huge fan of the first one, but I like the subsequent shots quite a bit. Film was Kodak Portra 400, and I ended up taking most of these shots at f/8 and a ¼ or ⅛ second shutter speed.
I took these photos a few months ago, on two separate walks through D.C. I usually approach people when I want to take their picture, but in this case, they walked up to me. We chatted about my camera—the gentleman in the second photo sold cameras at an outdoor stand—and I snapped a picture before I left.
I used one of my medium format Fuji rangefinders—6x7 negatives—and my usual black and white film, Tri-X. Both were exposed for the shadows cast by their hats, which means the full frame was overexposed by about two stops. The tonality and three-dimensionality of the photos is why I greatly prefer shooting medium format to 35mm.
I have this ambition of shooting even more portraits next year, but we'll see if I can continue to power through aversion to approaching strangers.
