I went down to Charleston, South Carolina for Thanksgiving, to visit family. I brought a camera and some film for the day after, when I took a nice walk around downtown. These are the photos I took. If you're familiar with the city, you'll see some recognizable places. And then there are the houses and such that caught my eye, for whatever reason.
These are the "leftover" photos from a few of the rolls I shot this past November. There's no particular theme, just scenes or objects that caught my eye. All are from around D.C., and all involve the same combination of camera and film that mark photos in earlier posts.
When I took these photos, I hadn't walked through the sculpture garden at the Hirschorn in more than a year. The first two photos reflect the installations that caught my eye. The final is a shot of the Hirschorn itself, or at least, a part of it.
This is a bit of a profile shot of the National Museum of African American History. I took it shortly after the election, during a long walk on the National Mall. One of these days, I'll take that same walk with a wide-angle lens, so I can get a different perspective on the building. For now, I think this shot shows the scale and beauty of the museum. As usual, I used a 6x7 rangefinder and Kodak Tri-X 400, developed by my lab.
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.
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 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.
