Today I finally purchased a monitor calibrator. Not completely necessary, but since I do a lot of work between laptop and desktop, I figured it makes sense to have both calibrated properly. I do notice quite a difference on both monitors. I bought the Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite. It’s really small, easy as pie to set up and even easier to use. For $220 from Adorama, you can’t really go wrong, if you’re *serious* about color calibration. Okay, that was typed with a very Guitar Center salesman tone, but honestly, it’s incredibly useful.

I’m still bummed about my sorry execution of fireworks pictures this year. I *swear* next year I’ll do it better.

Image details: Nikon F6, Fujichrome T64 pushed 2/3 stop to ISO 100. 50mm f/1.4 @ f/2 (If I remember correctly)

Twas an interesting evening in Frisco, North Carolina. There had been idle threats of thunderstorms for two days where dark clouds would be on the horizon and nothing would happen. One night after dinner, I kept seeing flashes of lightning so I grabbed my gear and headed down to the beach. Thankfully I had the shelter of the pier when it actually did rain, though I still had garbage bags to cover my stuff with. This shot was a pretty lucky one because there are no star trails like the others, and there are two awesome bolts of lightning in the ocean, plus a cool lighting effect from where the bolts originated. Only thing that bothers me is the shadows on the beach. Oh well, can’t be perfect.

Okay, so I’ve been fighting this battle with myself over the pros and cons of film and digital, as you’ve probably read. Essentially, I give up. A picture is a picture, regardless of what it’s taken on or with… and even futher, it’s either good or bad, and even further than that, good and bad is all relative to the viewer. That being said, I think it’s time for me to shift focus yet again and focus on quality.. not what the picture was taken with.

This image was taken in Frisco, North Carolina.. before I grilled burgers. We threw some fireworks in the grill and lit the fire, at which point I popped the shutter. Came out pretty sweet I think.

Taken with a Nikon D3, -2/3EV, 80-200 f/2.8 @ 170mm.. ISO 200, 3260K white balance.. (really Nikon, why can’t I just choose 3200K?)

Taken from my most recent shoot. Sammy needed some press-ish shots so we made a date to do some street photos and then some actual studio shots. For this one, the idea came on a whim to have him stand in front of my softbox and light the side of his face with another strobe. It came out pretty well I think.

Mamiya RZ67 with Velvia 50 @ f/8 with a duration of 1/400 sec.

Check out Sammy’s MySPACE!

Flower of the rocks. Bernal Heights. San Francisco, CA. Taken with a Mamiya RZ67, 1/15 @ f/4.5.. Fujichrome Velvia 50. This lone flower caught my eye because of its color and how it was contrasting against the rocky background. Also I knew shooting Velvia that the yellow would pop right out of the image. Really though, you should view full size.

So I’m here on vacation and I’ve brought like 25 rolls of 120 with me.. I’ve shot 1 roll so far, with 5 days left on vacation. I also brought my Nikon D3 with me, along with two flashes and 3 lenses. The good thing about that is I can practice light balancing and not worry about throwing away a roll of film when I get back to NYC. I’ve come to the conclusion that digital to me is just an accelerator for learning the things I missed years ago, like light balancing… which I think is most important to me given what I see in my mind never coming out like I see on film. It’s also just made me set my white balance on my D3 to either 3200K or 5500K and forget it, because really, that’s how Dad did it, that’s how *I* do it, and it’s working out pretty well so far. What else have I learned? Oh yeah.. I hate sand and sea spray when it comes to camera equipment. Yuck. You turn the focal length adjustment ring and hear the grinding of sand against metal and just cringe at the sound. I guess my point is, digital isn’t bad, I think I’m just cranky that it’s so easy for anyone to pick up a camera and suddenly become a photographer, when it takes so much time and effort to really understand the craft. I think too, the social scene I run in, everyone is always snapping pictures at parties and I think it’s tacky sometimes… granted there are a few people that I respect who do that, but 9 times out of 10, it’s not very interesting.

There is talk of thunderstorms tomorrow so now I’m hoping that we get some good lightning so I can breakout the ol’ RZ for some sweet 6×7 lightning action because let’s face it.. 35mm sucks. I should really just rename this blog to All 120 All the Time.. though I doubt you would actually care.. maybe just think I’m more arrogant than you already do.

Being the only person awake in a big beach house at 1:20 A.M. with the sound of a fan being the only thing you hear aside from the typing is kind of creepy. But soon I shall run off to sleep, only to spend more time in the ocean tomorrow working on my magnificent tan.

If you’re interested in vacation pictures, check out photos.crewcial.org for the Outer Banks Vacation 2008 gallery. I kind of feel guilty talking that up, given that this is supposed to be about film only, but I’ve already broken that rule before. Oh well.

The above photo was taken ground level on the big hill in Bernal Heights. (San Francisco ‘hood) Exposure was a bit miscalculated because I forgot I was shooting ISO 50, and I had metered for ISO 100, on the sky. Doh. 50mm f/4.5 (I need to start keeping a notebook on what I use for each shot), Mamiya RZ67. Fuji Velvia 50. mmm.

Also new is trying to integrate this blog with tumblr and twitter. We’ll see how that goes and if it sucks I’ll yank it.. but it’s kinda tough to get people to read a new blog and keep reading it. Hell, I have to have a bookmarks folder with all the photo-related blogs/sites I read daily. My mind is filled with too much at this point to remember every URL I need to.

It’s my 29th birthday today. Almost 30! I’ve been saying for years that I can’t wait to be 30. Now, I don’t really care so much.. I’m too busy to actually care about that.

I don’t know if you know much about me but my full-time job is being a Production Engineer for Yahoo!. Basically I manage thousands of servers (~7,000) with 6 other people for the Right Media adexchange. It’s not related to photography at all, however it affords me the ability to chase my dream of becoming a professional photographer.. funny though, since I can’t seem to catch it… yet. On the side I shoot the occasional party, mainly for The Rub and when I’m not there, I’m off somewhere with my Mamiya RZ67 trying to fully grasp manual photography as it’s been quite a few number of years since I was 100% manual. I don’t really have much of a point to this entry other than it’s been awhile since I’ve updated.

Earlier in the entry 6×7 Heaven you will see a scan of my first 6×7 frame. I really like the photo itself, but I don’t feel like the scan really represented it well.. so I rescanned from my new Nikon Coolscan 9000.

Yeah, the difference is pretty signifigant, and there was hardly any color correcting on my part.. mostly just a bump in the blue saturation. Even the sharpness is better, probably due to the scanning tray I used.. not the default one which I’m sure sucks ass. Regardless, I’m impressed with the clarity of the negative at full resolution and would love to get into a darkroom to actually print it.

Since I’ve been buried in work I’ve spent a lot of time reading photography related websites/blogs. One of my most recent favorites, www.polaroidforever.com shut down. Guess the owner wasn’t really feeling the blogging thing but I assure you, it was such a GREAT website and his images are fantastic. I’d love to find out where I can see more of his work.

I’ve been working on more portrait work.. recently did a shoot with my man Sammy Bananas. It was fun, simple and turned out pretty well for essentially guessing my way through most of the technical aspects of the shoot and also having to still work on breaking myself from the “oh shit I can’t see the end result right away! what if I screwed up??”. Here’s one of the shots.. Taken with a Mamiya RZ67, Velvia 100, 1/400 @ f/8.

Loco Banana

DW Hi-hat clutch

I have a bunch more things to add over vacation, so stay tuned for shorter posts and more pictures.

TTFN!!

Wow is all I have to say! I am completely in love with 6×7. That is all I have to say for now. This was my first film frame on my Mamiya RZ67.

I think it has rained every 4th of July I’ve lived in NY (3 so far), actually.. I think it rained most of the ones I lived in philly for as well. Rain doesn’t bother me.. being unable to capture fireworks bothers me. My first one in NYC was on a roof in Williamsburg where I had a great view, but a Canon SD450 to capture fireworks. It wasn’t awful, but I have a different image in my head than my final product. Next year I vow to get good images, I don’t care if I have to stand in 3′ of water in the East River to do so.

I’ve entered medium format land, with my lovely new Mamiya RZ67. The polaroid back is incredibly fun and maybe when I find a flatbed scanner I can scan some to post. I’m still afraid of shooting a roll of film through it. Small moves.

I’ve not updated in awhile because work has been absolutely crazy (hence why this is related to the 4th of July) and I’ve had no time to shoot or even process film. The Rub is coming up this week so that should be exciting.

I’ve a small number of new images that I’ll be posting up over the next week, so be looking forward to that.