starting my leica year

[Bingley]

Great shots! Thanks for posting and putting your journal here. I'm going to bookmark it.

 

[dave lackey]

Interesting. So what is this so-called secret thing about learning?🙂

Been using virtually nothing but the M3 for 2+ years now and I may be able to relate but I don't even know where Mike's article can be found.

One thing I will tell you, though...

At the end of the year... pick up another camera, SLR, RF, whatever brand. Use it for a week or so. Then go back the M6, then, you will have experienced something that is special!😉

 

[porktaco]

lol, and thanks guys. i think i've given up on slrs. i'm not about to give up my rd-1 yet but i am appreciating the leica joys.

also, mike's articles are:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/05/a-leica-year.html

and then the brouhaha overflow

http://theonlinephotographer.typepa...grapher/2009/05/why-it-has-to-be-a-leica.html

 

[dave lackey]

lol, and thanks guys. i think i've given up on slrs. i'm not about to give up my rd-1 yet but i am appreciating the leica joys.

also, mike's articles are:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/05/a-leica-year.html

and then the brouhaha overflow

http://theonlinephotographer.typepa...grapher/2009/05/why-it-has-to-be-a-leica.html

Thanks for the links. I have done exactly what he said for 2 1/2 years+ now and it is true. I can only find one thing to question and that is his statement about using rangefinders and doesn't like them. IMO, when you "become one", actually bonding with the camera, you do like it as it is a tool for specific photography that no other camera can quite do. The exquisite build, the feel of the camera, the soul, yes, the SOUL, of the camera... what is not to like about a camera with soul?🙂 My Nikon SLR's/ DSLR's have never had soul. The S3 2000 has soul but not the SLR's. The SLR's are like the Camry's of the photographic world....perfectly good at what they do. Great cameras. But rangefinders have soul.

 

[porktaco]

so, it turns out i have an affinity for M5s. who knew? i went to austin's annual hippie celebration, eeyore's birthday party, weekend before last. it's a noon-to-dark think in a park here. there's nothing really planned. they have some face painting for the kids and music at one end of the park, which is pretty localized really, but most of it is a gathering of the tribe. the weird and awesome tribe. people have to make their own fun. juggling, drum circles, slackrope walking, etc etc and so on.

the park is crowded with people in costume. there's a beer stand, and i smelled a bunch of reefer (though nowhere as much as i expected to smell, perhaps because today's reefer is so strong that kids don't have to smoke all day to stay stoned all day... but i digress), and i imagine some people were taking something stronger but i didn't see any crazy drug casualties and all in all everyone behaved very well. at least until i left just before dark.

i also had a couple of rolls not thread. i thought i was being so careful, but i had two non-exposes come back from the lab. i suspected this was happening (you're not supposed to get 40 exposures on a roll..), so towards the end, i would make sure i saw the film winding before i closed it up. i know, i know, i should just pay attention to the rewind knob, and so i will. i think it happened again last weekend, but i'm hoping to pay much closer attention in the future.

i took six or seven rolls at the party. i'm being thoughtful, still, as it is film and not digital, so i'm not snapping away wildly, but i have to say that i could have because quite literally every time i turned my head some new weird stuff was going on.

the lighting was also challenging. for the most part, i was under a canopy of low trees. live oaks and such, for those of you who have been to texas. they're not real tall, and are quite wide. shrublike in a way. what this meant for shooting was i had a dimmed-down light on my subjects and a relatively bright background without it being backlit. so, i ended up doing more post processing than i wanted to.

now, onto what matters... the photos.

one of the rolls i lost was the first one. which is ok, since the light was most boring then. i went down about 4pm, and walked through the park, waiting for the late afternoon light.

oh hi. old dude in a dress? PHOTO TIME.

hula hoops are very popular here. i don't really understand them, but i do like the hooping.

and then there's this one. pretty woman, who i've met a couple of times before. she photographs very well.

i will also say that i don't understand a lot of what people do with their cameras. there are a bunch of pictures on flickr of eeyore's. so many of them are upclose shots of people smiling. they're posing, and the pictures are, to me anyway, pretty much postcards. they're well-made images but are kind of uninteresting to me. the point - again to me - of the photo above is that the woman is being in her environment. the less attention she paid to me, the better the photo was likely to be. i saw a couple of guys wait till she was done juggling and then get an UPCLOSE shot. i just don't get it. but i am thankful for RFF in helping me to figure out that i don't get it, and that i get other things.

like this. what the hell is going on here? who knows.

i think there's at least a reasonable chance that the guy in the mask was doing something stronger than pot.

all this was down in the low part of the park. i went uphill and found a great drum circle, all off in the woods. not too loud, and if you were a little bit away from it you could have conversations, which seemed intimate due to the tree cover.

then i went and paid attention to the dancing.

there was much celebrating, and as this was both secluded and off the main path, i was pretty sure it would be more interesting than the big open-air drum circles. i think i was right.

this is about where i realized i needed to change my PP technique. my first run of photos was pretty washed out, so i turned the exposure down 2 or 3 stops, turned up the contrast and fill light and, to a lesser extent, the black clipping and brightness. the backgrounds darkened and i got some nice tones from the bodies of the dancers.

 

[filmfan]

Interesting stuff. I really like the personal journal style of presenting photos. I have to say that, at least on my computer, the tones are very contrasty and harsh. Some shots are perfect, but a good many of these look over-processed. Every lab that I have ever used over-processes black and white film to make sure the client gets something back for their money. I suggest learning how to process film yourself and it will make a big difference in the tonality. That aside, I like the project and keep up the overall good work.

 

[porktaco]

are you following me?

the drum circle itself was a very fluid thing. people came and went all afternoon. some moved from drum to drum, some took their drums when they left, some left them and came back later.

drum circles, of course, have other stuff besides drums

sometimes the drummers were guys, sometimes it was mostly women.

i think this is about where i lost my second roll, which had, among other things, some cool shots of guys in hammocks way up in trees, slackrope walkers and a bunch of this guy. he was probably 6 2 or 6 3, and did all kinds of capoeira dancing. he was amazing. for a while he had the whole circle to himself.

i became interested in a couple of characters. the guy with the weird african mask, the capoeira dancer and this woman. this was the most elegant dress at the party and it looked out of place. it was simple, and clean, almost a party dress. the woman seemed very cleancut and earnest and a little innocent, the kind of person who would put on a pretty party dress for a hippie party. but she was an an animal when she started dancing.

it wasn't all women dancing either. it kind of went in waves. a lot of women would dance, then the guys would go, and then back. much like the drummers.

 

[porktaco]

this woman also seemed a little well groomed for this particular party, but, she also acquitted herself very well in the dancing

this guy impressed the hell out of me. LOOK at the ash on his smoke. while he's drumming, no less.

this guy was painted blue, with tiger stripes. so was his girlfriend.

this guy wasn't. lol.

then, capoeira man re-emerged. this time, with a woman. they were very... i think the word is "present". very relaxed. very much an their own pace.

then the light was fading and i felt it was to leave. plus, all that dancing had made the little clearing very, very dusty.

i traded pictures with these two

then, back through the main part of the park and out

to the bus back to the garage where my car was parked.

 

[paulfish4570]

was the aroma of spliff in the air?

drum circles are cool. it's strange how real music eventually arises, even with young children doing the drumming.

nice shots, pt ...

 

[porktaco]

not as much reefer as i would have thought. some, to be sure. but not like everyone was waving a joint around.

drum circles are very fascinating. spontaneous rise and swell, and yes even kids get involved.

thanks

 

[porktaco]

Interesting stuff. I really like the personal journal style of presenting photos. I have to say that, at least on my computer, the tones are very contrasty and harsh. Some shots are perfect, but a good many of these look over-processed. Every lab that I have ever used over-processes black and white film to make sure the client gets something back for their money. I suggest learning how to process film yourself and it will make a big difference in the tonality. That aside, I like the project and keep up the overall good work.

thanks...

the first run though lightroom produced images that were kind of washed out. it's not the lab, it's a choice i made in PP. the negatives are quite lovely, actually. and yeah, some of the images above are overly contrasty. i have things to work on. i'd think about doing the film myself but i barely have time to open the images up in lightroom...

 

[Bingley]

So... This was the UT chapter of Young Republicans, right, LOL!

Cool set of photos. You could wind the clock back to 1967, and the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park...

 

[porktaco]

lol young republicans. i think there were a few of those, too. somewhere.

very GG panhandle, very hippy before hippies became cartoons of hippies. i'd put it more at 1965 or 66, but that's a fine point.

and thanks

 

[porktaco]

and paul sometimes the kids dance too 🙂

 

[blw]

Awesome thread porktaco! I'd never seen it before tonight; but I'll certainly be watching it from now forward.

I just got my first M and I am inspired by your thread.

Be thankful you have somewhere to take your film for developing though. My only choice is mail it off or do it myself. Doing it myself has created a 2 year backlog I'm afraid.

 

[porktaco]

oh, i mail it. and i love what they do. north coast photographic, in carlsbad.

and thanks. i love being an inspiration...

 

[porktaco]

Interesting stuff. I really like the personal journal style of presenting photos. I have to say that, at least on my computer, the tones are very contrasty and harsh. Some shots are perfect, but a good many of these look over-processed. Every lab that I have ever used over-processes black and white film to make sure the client gets something back for their money. I suggest learning how to process film yourself and it will make a big difference in the tonality. That aside, I like the project and keep up the overall good work.

i readdress this comment for a couple of reasons. one, i've been curious about midtones in my film photos. my understanding is that ilford is a little more contrasty than kodak, and i think i might be missing something. in the pictures way above, there's this

i think about this picture a lot. i wish i'd been able to get more midtones out of it. i love the image but parts of it are washed out and i wonder if different film might have made a difference. of course, i'll never know, but i remain curious.

second, i agree absolutely that the photos from the hippie party above ended up being very contrasty in PP. if we compare my two passes on one of the photos, it's plain to see where i started and where i ended.

here's my first pass

and here's the second

i think this image is among the most affected in the set by my PP decision. yes it's over shadow-y, and maybe the brightness on my monitor is turned up too high in the first place, but i think it's a better image in the middle tones and it doesn't get so washed out by the background and in the heads (the heads really suffered in the diffuse lighting under the tree canopy).

anyways, the third thing about my interest in midtones manifested the next morning. i went to breakfast and took a different lens (i know, CHEATING). summarit 1.5/50. a delicious character lens, with lower contrast and more flare than the cron. the lighting was very similar - tree canopy, bright backgrounds, so my PP decisions were similar, but i think i got more out of the midtones this time. i love this lens, especially since it came back from DAG all cleaned up.

these seem less "overprocessed" than the eeyore's images. i adore the summarit but i don't think it's the right lens for my leicajahr. i'm trying to develop intuition about film and light and lenses and the stupid aperture ring turns the wrong way. lol. so, i'm back to the cron, but the summarit might rear its head again.

also, fourth and last, i did buy a tenpak of tri-x, which i'll eventually run through the camera. i feel less urgent about doing so now than i did a couple weeks ago, but this is all about the learning, so at some point, i'll do it.

 

[Snacks]

The festival shots are really nice and well timed. Keep it up!

 

[porktaco]

in this week's installment, gentle reader, we find ourselves at the hands of children...

my kids' end-of-year carnival took place in the late afternoon on the... saturday before last, i think. their campus is about my favorite place to shoot, as it's up on top of a hill and gets tremendous afternoon light. golden hour there is really something.

it was hot in the afternoon and my kids demanded ices. which i gladly let them purchase.

apparently, all the kids wanted ices, and apparently they were yummy.

the campus is very full during the festival. there are bouncy rides and splashy rides but the regular stuff is kept busy as well.

sometimes, though, the best parts of outside activities are the simple things - running and jumping and being with friends.

other outside activities included, yes, chicken poop bingo. a true austin tradition. please imagine how it might work, and then realize that that is exactly how it works.

my daughter, with the chicken that she loves so much

then, inside for karaoke. which was a scream. when the kids got too shy to sing, the guy running the music would start singing at the top of his lungs rebecca black's "FRIDAY", which, if you don't already know, is the worst song in the history of music.

back outside, the negotiations and the play continued

 

[marcr1230]

I enjoyed the content of these images a lot.
for my taste, there is too much grain in the photos, and some look a little washed out, like lens flare or contre-jour.
what film were you using and how was it processed ?