porktaco
Well-known
shooting inside a houseboat cabin is kind of cheating, since you have directional light and great shadows, but hey, i'm a cheater. again, i'm learning that photography is as much about seeing as doing and even if i miss a shot, i take solace from having seen it in the first place. seeing textures and tones is an exquisitely delicate art, and i take satisfaction from practicing it even a little bit.
this is another one of my favorites (of the film ones) from the weekend. it's hard to take a bad picture of this girl, and i got her at what i think was a very nice moment.
when we went to the liars' dice, i knew i would require the wider lens and kind of alternated between 28mm/rd-1 and 50mm/m6. only very good friends would put up with a geek with two cameras in his lap during the course of a drinking game. i think i even changed lenses on the rd-1 a couple of times. lol.
m6+cron (i think... though looking at it, this would seem to be a pretty wide FoV for 50)
rd-1+canon 28/2.8 ltm
rd-1+canon 50/1.8 ltm
rd-1 + canon 28/2.8 ltm
i did take the nokton 50/1.5 with me, and i'm reminded every time i use that lens of why i like it so much. the colors, the clarity and how forgiving it is.
this is another one of my favorites (of the film ones) from the weekend. it's hard to take a bad picture of this girl, and i got her at what i think was a very nice moment.
when we went to the liars' dice, i knew i would require the wider lens and kind of alternated between 28mm/rd-1 and 50mm/m6. only very good friends would put up with a geek with two cameras in his lap during the course of a drinking game. i think i even changed lenses on the rd-1 a couple of times. lol.
m6+cron (i think... though looking at it, this would seem to be a pretty wide FoV for 50)
rd-1+canon 28/2.8 ltm
rd-1+canon 50/1.8 ltm
rd-1 + canon 28/2.8 ltm
i did take the nokton 50/1.5 with me, and i'm reminded every time i use that lens of why i like it so much. the colors, the clarity and how forgiving it is.
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porktaco
Well-known
as always, the best shots happened during golden hour, well after i was ready to put the camera down.
rule 1 - always keep the camera with you
rule 2 - see rule 1
m6+cron
this next one is another candidate for my favorite.
up on the front deck, the 28mm turned out, once again to be very useful.
i've become somewhat heedless about doing stupid things like shooting into backlit framings, and i'm often pleasantly surprised at what comes out of the effort.
at the end of the day, literally as well as metaphorically, shasta is about slow times, pretty light and being with friends. golden hour is exactly that, not least because there is enough room, again literally as well as metaphorically, for the light's angles to make their presence known.
rule 1 - always keep the camera with you
rule 2 - see rule 1
m6+cron
this next one is another candidate for my favorite.
up on the front deck, the 28mm turned out, once again to be very useful.
i've become somewhat heedless about doing stupid things like shooting into backlit framings, and i'm often pleasantly surprised at what comes out of the effort.
at the end of the day, literally as well as metaphorically, shasta is about slow times, pretty light and being with friends. golden hour is exactly that, not least because there is enough room, again literally as well as metaphorically, for the light's angles to make their presence known.
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andredossantos
Well-known
Very cool thread. Thanks so much for sharing.
BTW, Im a fellow M5 Enthusiast
BTW, Im a fellow M5 Enthusiast
adam.watts
Newbie
i've just read through your whole thread. enjoy the journey as we do too.
SolaresLarrave
My M5s need red dots!
All I can say is that I have enjoyed going through the entire thread. Regardless of grain and contrast, I think you've done a great job with your composition. All those images speak of a vibrant, exciting world that i can almost hear.
Thanks a big lot for posting these! I'll try to keep up and return to view it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks a big lot for posting these! I'll try to keep up and return to view it. Keep up the good work!
Bingley
Veteran
I love the Shasta photos. You were fortunate to have the lake full this year - must have been esp. beautiful. I've houseboated Oroville and Berryessa but never Shasta. It's on my bucket list, and after seeing you shots I'll be sure to take a 28.
porktaco
Well-known
thanks fellas. shasta was full to the brim this year, which was really great. lake travis, here in austin, is showing islands. it's below half full. bleh.
steve - shasta is so worth going, and before you go PM me. i can give you some helpful hints on everything from supplies to houseboat rental to where in the lake to go (also, take the dam tour. it's really, really awesome). this year, next year, whenever.
steve - shasta is so worth going, and before you go PM me. i can give you some helpful hints on everything from supplies to houseboat rental to where in the lake to go (also, take the dam tour. it's really, really awesome). this year, next year, whenever.
paulfish4570
Veteran
much enjoyed your pitcher-show.
i remain not-too-experienced in BW developing, but i have to wonder if your lab on some rolls is running warmer developer, say 74F vs. the standard 70, with less time in the soup, yielding grainier negs.
another, separate culprit might be this: if negs are underexposed the scans to CD often will look grainier than those with "proper" exposure ...
i remain not-too-experienced in BW developing, but i have to wonder if your lab on some rolls is running warmer developer, say 74F vs. the standard 70, with less time in the soup, yielding grainier negs.
another, separate culprit might be this: if negs are underexposed the scans to CD often will look grainier than those with "proper" exposure ...
porktaco
Well-known
thanks paul. i suspect either they're oversharpening or i'm underexposing. we're corresponding about it...
Jager
Established
Was wondering where my favorite thread had gone!
Glad to have it back. I'm enjoying the ride...
Glad to have it back. I'm enjoying the ride...
porktaco
Well-known
that is a wonderful thing to read to start my saturday. thanks!
NLewis
Established
These are good looking photos.
I think some people blow their "Leica year" because they don't really know what they are taking pictures of. You should have some sort of theme. It could be "life in texas" or "dancers" or "pretty girls" or whatever. Over a year, you can have a lot of themes, but you don't want to spend a whole year taking pictures of your cat and antique doorknobs.
Also, I think you want to spend the necessary time to edit and make final prints. I use generic photo albums that hold about 500 4x6 prints. I make 4x6 work prints of the better photos, and out of every 20 or so work prints, an 8x10 or larger final print. The final print gets all the tweaking and darkroom/aperture work you want to apply. I usually use 8x10 prints which fit in an album nicely. A few out of that album I'll frame and hang on the wall, and rotate them occasionally.
In other words, you should have an "artistic workflow" which is idea-project-theme/preparation/shooting/processing-proofing/editing/printing/final presentation. There should be more to it than just waving a camera around and pushing the button.
I think some people blow their "Leica year" because they don't really know what they are taking pictures of. You should have some sort of theme. It could be "life in texas" or "dancers" or "pretty girls" or whatever. Over a year, you can have a lot of themes, but you don't want to spend a whole year taking pictures of your cat and antique doorknobs.
Also, I think you want to spend the necessary time to edit and make final prints. I use generic photo albums that hold about 500 4x6 prints. I make 4x6 work prints of the better photos, and out of every 20 or so work prints, an 8x10 or larger final print. The final print gets all the tweaking and darkroom/aperture work you want to apply. I usually use 8x10 prints which fit in an album nicely. A few out of that album I'll frame and hang on the wall, and rotate them occasionally.
In other words, you should have an "artistic workflow" which is idea-project-theme/preparation/shooting/processing-proofing/editing/printing/final presentation. There should be more to it than just waving a camera around and pushing the button.
porktaco
Well-known
yeah... i like the idea of workprints. i think there will be a lot less graininess in the 8x10s than in the scans. which would solve a big problem for me
i do have a few recurrent themes - south austin, deep eddy pool, my kids' school - but shooting ends up being kind of an act of discovery as much as it is one of premeditated action. i agree that you don't want a leica year full of postcard pictures and backyard snapshots, but neither do i want to limit what i'm shooting to what i decided to shoot when i got up in the morning. in any case, all your comments are welcome and have given me stuff to think about. thanks.
i do have a few recurrent themes - south austin, deep eddy pool, my kids' school - but shooting ends up being kind of an act of discovery as much as it is one of premeditated action. i agree that you don't want a leica year full of postcard pictures and backyard snapshots, but neither do i want to limit what i'm shooting to what i decided to shoot when i got up in the morning. in any case, all your comments are welcome and have given me stuff to think about. thanks.
porktaco
Well-known
summer's over...
time to wake up, boy!
time for breakfast at the local cafe
then it's time to go the pool
time to wake up, boy!
time for breakfast at the local cafe
then it's time to go the pool
paulfish4570
Veteran
i like the overall appearance of this series, and especially those shots of your kids on a school morning ...
porktaco
Well-known
the boy so did not want to get up. lol.
porktaco
Well-known
i spend a fair amount of time on s. congress ave here in austin. 15 years ago, s. congress was hookers and brokedown motels and drugs and bad stuff. now, it's the epicenter of hipness in austin. where there was, when i first came to town 10 years ago, a gun store is now American Apparel (though they have kept the Just Guns plastic sign on a roof HVAC unit). it's family friendly, and it's a tourist mecca. it's also close to where i live, so when i go it's as a local. i shop for chicken purses, get costumes for my kids and (before netflix) rented videos there.
getting there from the north, one drives across the s. congress bridge. during the summer some unbelievable number of little bats live under the bridge. like two million. really. two million. when they come out, which they do every night at sunset, it takes a half hour. it's one of austin's great, free spectacles, and the bridge is full every weekend night and most weekdays.
just up the hill from the bridge is the fantastic home slice pizza. i love home slice. sometimes i eat there three times a week. there's always a little scene at night. sometimes there's a 20 minute wait. for pizza. i go home and come back when the line goes away. people eat and sit and watch the traffic going up and down congress. it's a great slice of actual street life in austin.
home slice is, in the restaurant half, closed tuesdays. fortunately, the take out part is open 7 days a week.
they started about four or five years ago in what's now the restaurant, got super overwhelmed and rented a second location for take out only just across the parking lot. the second location is turning out to be the busier of the two. it attracts college kids and neighborhood families, girls track teams from the junior high school and bikers, slackers and professionals. pizza is among the most egalitarian of foods.
getting there from the north, one drives across the s. congress bridge. during the summer some unbelievable number of little bats live under the bridge. like two million. really. two million. when they come out, which they do every night at sunset, it takes a half hour. it's one of austin's great, free spectacles, and the bridge is full every weekend night and most weekdays.
just up the hill from the bridge is the fantastic home slice pizza. i love home slice. sometimes i eat there three times a week. there's always a little scene at night. sometimes there's a 20 minute wait. for pizza. i go home and come back when the line goes away. people eat and sit and watch the traffic going up and down congress. it's a great slice of actual street life in austin.
home slice is, in the restaurant half, closed tuesdays. fortunately, the take out part is open 7 days a week.
they started about four or five years ago in what's now the restaurant, got super overwhelmed and rented a second location for take out only just across the parking lot. the second location is turning out to be the busier of the two. it attracts college kids and neighborhood families, girls track teams from the junior high school and bikers, slackers and professionals. pizza is among the most egalitarian of foods.
porktaco
Well-known
one of the things i'm learning in my leica year is the serendipity of always having your stupid camera with you. recently, i went out to dinner with a friend. i was, for once, 30 minutes early. so, before going to eat, i parked at one end of the lamar st bridge, got out my camera and went for a little walkie.
the lamar st bridge has next to it a very new and groovy pedestrian and bike bridge. this is austin, after all, and bikers need their own bridge. in all seriousness, it keeps a lot of bikes off a very narrow, no-shoulder lamar st bridge. plus, it's pretty. when it's eight billion degrees out, like it has been all summer here, there's still some psycho who gets out and jogs. usually it's a lot of someones. go figure.
at the end of bridge where i parked, the bridge leaves town lake, crosses cesar chavez st and then slopes gently down to earth well on the other side of cesar chavez. downtown austin is at the slope-down end, but town lake (now called lady bird lake) is about 30 feet below the bridge, and the hike-and-bike trail - a long and pretty series of trails that runs around town lake, connecting over all the four or five bridges in central austin - is at the bottom of a spiral staircase that runs down from the bridge. in the summer, there's a whole scene underneath the bridge, some of which is very well viewed from that spiral staircase.
i was rather surprised to see so many people out kayaking in the 100+ degree heat, but i'm told that it's 10 degrees cooler on the lake. i was reminded of taking the circle line around manhattan when i was a kid and watching city kids jumping off of footings of the george washington bridge, clowning for the gawkers on the boat. i would never in my life have swam out or climbed down to a place like that - because i was kind of a chicken at that age, not because i was horrified - but it looked urban-exotic and summer-in-the-city cool. later in my life, i read the basketball diaries, and jim carroll described an episode swimming there and, just as i saw, clowning for the tourists.
the lamar st bridge is just a few steps away. you can see the fancy new bridge up in the top right corner. i was fascinated by the kayak docking. every piling gets regular traffic. sometimes people stay for a while, sometimes it's on and off. i'm pretty sure it's illegal but no one enforces any law about it. people kayak all over town lake and on a hot summer day, they take shade wherever they can find it.
kids - mostly - pull up, get out, rest, swim, do whatever. i don't know that i'd swim in town lake but i'm an old coot. also, i don't know that i'd hang out there in the first place. there are tons of pigeons who roost in the beams above. there's a lot of pigeon crap. maybe austinites are all cool about bird poop, but i'm an ex-new yorker and pigeons are just plain nasty. still, you can understand why the birds would be drawn to the cooling shade and the protective heights.
sometimes it's for lovers, sometimes it's merely bromantic.
on the way back, there were still people on the first piling, one swimming around the concrete. i realized after seeing the photographs that this person must have been swimming around at the start of my walk. there are pretty clearly three kayaks in the first two spiral-staircase photos. in retrospect, i like the mystery that two people and three kayaks projects, and the sort of distant body-language i see in the two people sitting down.
i had pretty low expectations for this set of pictures. at the time, i thought it was kind of an indulgence (as is, i suppose, film photography in general). then it took me a couple weeks to send them in for developing. one of the joys of film is, as many of you know, the time between shoot and seeing. when i got these back, i was struck by how strong the bridge lines were, and how pretty the water textures. i know i saw some of the lines. the first couple pictures were all about the lines, and i do remember positioning myself a few times to get the concrete in certain places, but i was trying to photograph people. in the romance/bromace photos (the bromance one is cropped a bunch; they were taken from the same spot), i had this silly idea that i'd actually get some resolution on figures that far away. instead, the bridge dominates the image and in a pretty cool way. this turned out to be more than an indulgence.
oh, dinner was fantastic. thanks for asking.
the lamar st bridge has next to it a very new and groovy pedestrian and bike bridge. this is austin, after all, and bikers need their own bridge. in all seriousness, it keeps a lot of bikes off a very narrow, no-shoulder lamar st bridge. plus, it's pretty. when it's eight billion degrees out, like it has been all summer here, there's still some psycho who gets out and jogs. usually it's a lot of someones. go figure.
at the end of bridge where i parked, the bridge leaves town lake, crosses cesar chavez st and then slopes gently down to earth well on the other side of cesar chavez. downtown austin is at the slope-down end, but town lake (now called lady bird lake) is about 30 feet below the bridge, and the hike-and-bike trail - a long and pretty series of trails that runs around town lake, connecting over all the four or five bridges in central austin - is at the bottom of a spiral staircase that runs down from the bridge. in the summer, there's a whole scene underneath the bridge, some of which is very well viewed from that spiral staircase.
i was rather surprised to see so many people out kayaking in the 100+ degree heat, but i'm told that it's 10 degrees cooler on the lake. i was reminded of taking the circle line around manhattan when i was a kid and watching city kids jumping off of footings of the george washington bridge, clowning for the gawkers on the boat. i would never in my life have swam out or climbed down to a place like that - because i was kind of a chicken at that age, not because i was horrified - but it looked urban-exotic and summer-in-the-city cool. later in my life, i read the basketball diaries, and jim carroll described an episode swimming there and, just as i saw, clowning for the tourists.
the lamar st bridge is just a few steps away. you can see the fancy new bridge up in the top right corner. i was fascinated by the kayak docking. every piling gets regular traffic. sometimes people stay for a while, sometimes it's on and off. i'm pretty sure it's illegal but no one enforces any law about it. people kayak all over town lake and on a hot summer day, they take shade wherever they can find it.
kids - mostly - pull up, get out, rest, swim, do whatever. i don't know that i'd swim in town lake but i'm an old coot. also, i don't know that i'd hang out there in the first place. there are tons of pigeons who roost in the beams above. there's a lot of pigeon crap. maybe austinites are all cool about bird poop, but i'm an ex-new yorker and pigeons are just plain nasty. still, you can understand why the birds would be drawn to the cooling shade and the protective heights.
sometimes it's for lovers, sometimes it's merely bromantic.
on the way back, there were still people on the first piling, one swimming around the concrete. i realized after seeing the photographs that this person must have been swimming around at the start of my walk. there are pretty clearly three kayaks in the first two spiral-staircase photos. in retrospect, i like the mystery that two people and three kayaks projects, and the sort of distant body-language i see in the two people sitting down.
i had pretty low expectations for this set of pictures. at the time, i thought it was kind of an indulgence (as is, i suppose, film photography in general). then it took me a couple weeks to send them in for developing. one of the joys of film is, as many of you know, the time between shoot and seeing. when i got these back, i was struck by how strong the bridge lines were, and how pretty the water textures. i know i saw some of the lines. the first couple pictures were all about the lines, and i do remember positioning myself a few times to get the concrete in certain places, but i was trying to photograph people. in the romance/bromace photos (the bromance one is cropped a bunch; they were taken from the same spot), i had this silly idea that i'd actually get some resolution on figures that far away. instead, the bridge dominates the image and in a pretty cool way. this turned out to be more than an indulgence.
oh, dinner was fantastic. thanks for asking.
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tunalegs
Pretended Artist
These are all very nice. I would recommend though perhaps playing with a yellow or orange filter to bring out the skies sometimes. Generally I like the look of a plain white sky, but in some shots I find the very faint hints of clouds distracting. In some cases it can be better to bring them out rather than obliterate them.
porktaco
Well-known
yeah. i don't know anything about filters. that's on my list of stuff to learn about.
and thanks
and thanks