Frantic

A little experiment with the Holga and multiple exposures.

Holga 120N, Kodak T-Max 400
(processing by 120processing.com; scanned with Epson V600)

"12" (Panasonic GF1, 20mm f1.7 @ 400 ISO)

At the SeaTac airport, waiting for my flight back to Chicago after spending the weekend hanging out with the family at my parents' house in Olympia, Washington.  Found this and a few similar examples on a early morning trek around the nearby fire roads.  This seems to be the result of either: 1) an artistic and bored lumber worker, or 2) a really out-of-the-box thinking tagger.  Ran across several of these stylized numbers painted onto stumps on my morning photo safari.  No repeat of the numbers and they did not appear to be sequential, at least as far as I could tell.  Maybe an art project from the local college?

A Few More Random Holga Shots

Ride Report: 2011 MS Tour de Farms

Day 1, Rest Stop #3 (came back through twice more - once for the 100-mile loop, once for the 125-mile loop)
Panasonic Lumix GF1 20mm f1.7 (all other photos taken with iPhone 3Gs)

The weekend before last I participated in the Multiple Sclerosis Society's "MS Tour de Farms" bicycle charity ride.  It is a two-day ride that is held annually in DeKalb, Illinois, which is about 70 miles west of Chicago.  This was the first year that I did the MS ride, but it probably won't be the last.  Near perfect weather was just the cherry on top of a really fun, well-supported event.

Coit Tower

Coit Tower, San Francisco - Holga 120N Portra 400VC, color conversion via PS CS3

This is another Holga image from the trip K and I took to San Francisco last November.  The original of this is a color image.  The color image is fine, but the color distracts from what I think are the cool elements of this shot - the textures and patterns of the tower and sky, along with the compositional framing coming from the tower base and the tufts of trees visible to either side.

In color, the shot is okay, but a little flat.  In black and white, I think it really comes into its own. Here is one of those situations where the digital darkroom kicks the wet darkroom's ass without even trying that hard.  Once scanned, I can take the color image of this shot into Photoshop and not only convert the image to black and white, but do it in a way that allows me to simulate the effect that would have been achieved by taking the shot on black and white film with color filters.  For example, in this case, I dropped the reds out of the image before conversion, which gives an effect similar to having shot the image with a red filter - darkens the sky, emphasizing the clouds.

Black and white films provide a feel to the image that can't quite be matched by the effect of a color conversion (black and white film has a very broad tonal range, for example - broader than color film and much broader than you will get with a digital camera).  I like shooting black and white directly, but when shooting color its nice to know there is the option of producing the end image as black and white.

Shameless

Rudder on a walk, Panasonic Lumix GF1, 20mm f1.7

That would be me, for posting pet pictures.  But come on!  The dog's adorable.