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Blog Out Loud 2011 is fast approaching! The event was founded two years ago by local blogger Lynn, author of Turtlehead, to showcase local blogging talent and has grown substantially since its inception. Come out this Thursday at The Prescott from 7-10pm and see what’s new and amazing in the Ottawa blogging scene. Among those reading this year you will hear the eloquent Nadine author of Adorkable Thespian, the always stylish Jes of Your Sweet Bippy, the intoxicating words of Claire, wine specialist of FoodiePrints and many more! Local photobloggers will be present displaying their works as well. Come see me, along with many other amazing shutterbugs… it’s free… it’s gunna be fun… you now have no excuse not to be there!
One of the things I get asked about the most is my developing methods, especially my use of Rodinal in stand development. Rodinal has become my go to developer for almost all my souping needs. It’s flexible, economical, produces negatives that are great for scanning and almost idiot proof when used in stand development. But before going through my workflow, it’s helpful to know a bit about what’s going on when you develop film.
In traditional developing methods the goal is to immerse your film in a fairly concentrated developing agent for a specific time and temperature indicated by the manufacturers (or garnered from experience and experimentation) for the given combination of film and developer. Agitation performed semi regularly throughout the development period refreshes exhausted developer next to the film as exposed areas leech out the active chemicals as they develop. With this method time, temperature and agitation all play very active rolls in how the end product will turn out. Development time, which is usually between 3-12min needs to be extremely precise, especially with times down around the 3-5 minute mark, which makes sense if you think about it. If your development time is only 3 minutes a change of +/- 30 seconds means your film is roughly 17% lighter or darker than you wanted, assuming a fairly constant rate of development over the souping time. The amount you’re off by has a diminishing affect the longer your overall development time is; this is going to be key later on.
I’m slowly going through all the thousands of photos I took on my spring trip to London. As I said in my previous England post, while I brought a bunch of film gear on the trip, I ended up using my Sony Nex 3 for most of the trip. As much as I was impressed with the camera it really made me realize how much my mindset changes depending on what I’m shooting with. When I’m shooting film I’m much more careful with each shot. I take my time framing, judging exposure and I’m much more reluctant to squeeze off a shot at just anything. My keeper rate when shooting film is definitely much higher. Out of a 36 shot roll I’m usually happy with roughly half the frames and will get at least 2-3 really nice shots.
Comparing that to shooting digital, I get the same number of keepers from a full 8 gig card with hundreds of shots on it. I’m much more trigger happy with digital and quite a bit sloppier with framing and exposure because I don’t have that little voice in the back of my head saying “That picture’s going to cost you $0.25 to take, and you only have 10 more shots on the roll”. On the plus side though, I find digital does produce more dynamic and unusual shots because I’m more willing to take risks on subjects I wouldn’t take the chance of wasting a frame of film on. The nightmare begins when I get home after a two week trip with 3000+ images to go through.
I’m about half way through now, I still have all of Iceland to go through but they’re coming. I’m definitely going to have to make a second pass at these shots though in about six months time. Time enough to get some distance from the subject matter.
On a different note, a lot of cool stuff has been going on in Ottawa lately, stay tuned for pics from Fringe Festival, Roller Derby and more from the world of Canadian Music.
Last month was a great month for concert photography; three of my favourite Canadian acts came to town, all three of which I missed last time they played. First up was the Kelp 17, the Kelp Records anniversary weekend.
Every year Kelp Records throws a weekend music festival featuring Kelp bands past and present. Tons of great bands played, but of particular interest for me was The Acorn and Andrew Vincent. The last time I was able to catch The Acorn was two years ago at Kelp 15 when the festival was hosted at The Mayfair Theatre. Acorn fans got a real treat that night as Rolf and the band played their first full length album, The Pink Ghosts, from start to finish.
Day two of Kelp 17 featured Andrew Vincent reunited with his old backing band The Pirates (Scott Terry and Bryan Curry). Another flashback set, they played their classic hit album I Love the Modern Way. Here’s the rest of my Kelp 17 shots up on Flickr.
The next weekend Wax Mannequin came back to town to play Irene’s in the Glebe. I missed him playing the same venue a few months earlier and was pretty bummed. I caught Wax Mannequin’s show at Zaphods last year and have been dying to catch him play again. Finding a lot of new music kind of bland and formulaic recently, I don’t often come across an act that sounds so totally different from anything else out there. I’ve seen and photographed many bands over the last few years and no one, absolutely no one has the same presence, enthusiasm and charisma on stage as Wax.
He’s a one man show, but sonically he fills the room like a juiced up, angry wolverine orchestra. A true Canadian act, he even belted out a cover of The Log Drivers Waltz, from the National Film Board animated short you might remember if you were born in the late 70’s or early 80’s. The clip below is from another show, but I just had to post it, this song really brings back memories.
As an extra bonus, he had copies of his newest 7″, Hear Some Evil, at the show, a collaboration with The Burning Hell. Wax has worked with The Burning Hell often in the past, always with great results. If you ever get a chance to see him play, go, don’t think, just go… I promise you won’t regret it. You can see the rest of my pics from Wax Mannequin at Irene’s on Flickr.
So it’s been a bit over a week since my cross the pond trip to the UK and I’ve finally gotten through the first batch of photos from the trip. People have been asking photos since I got back, but I swear, it’s not laziness, there’s a method to the madness. I usually like to put aside big batches of images like this for about a week after taking them, time permitting. I find that when I try to pair down to just the best images very soon after taking them it can be hard to be objective. By letting them sit for a while and forgetting about them I tend to be much more objective when it comes to picking out the keepers. I’ll probably end up doing the trip in three batches: UK Round One, Iceland and UK Round Two. Breaking it up into smaller batches also makes going through a couple thousand images much less daunting.
Besides being an amazingly fun vacation, this trip to England really opened my eyes photographically. I didn’t want to bring my full DSLR kit with me, I knew I’d be doing a lot of walking and my Canon rig would destroy my back by the end of the trip. I also didn’t want to rely completely on my film Leica kit. What if they wouldn’t hand check my film at the airport and it got X-Ray haze? What if it gets confiscated for some reason? What if I run out of film? What if I don’t bring the right film? I’m probably going to want to take a million shots, do I want to soup 20-30 rolls of film when I get home? I really wanted a digital alternative to compliment my Leica RF kit for the trip. I ended up picking up one of the Sony NEX 3 micro 4/3rds bodies a couple weeks before the trip with a Leica mount adapter so I could use my rangefinder lenses on it. My plan was: Leica M2 loaded with ISO 100 for during the day, Voigtlander R3A loaded with 400 for at night and I could use the NEX for snapshots and what ever focal length I wasn’t using on the film body. By day three I was using the NEX exclusively, it really turned out to be that amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to jump ship on film, I love the stuff… but for running around a big city for 8-10 hours a day even a two body RF kit gets heavy after a while. I also found whichever camera wasn’t around my neck and therefor hanging off one shoulder kept getting bumped and jostled around, especially in the subway. I really wasn’t prepared for how busy London is.
As it turned out, the NEX paired with either my Voigtlander 15mm or 25mm (giving me 24mm and 40mm field of views respectively on the NEX’s 1.6 crop factor sensor) was about all I needed for most of the trip. The NEX’s flip up screen also let me shoot from the hip very effectively. One of the biggest complaints I read about the NEX before buying it was how it was fiddly to focus manual focus lenses on the LCD screen. Well, when set to hyperfocal distance on the 15mm and 25mm, everything from about 3 feet to infinity is already in focus… problem solved! All I needed the LCD for was rough framing, no fiddly focus issues. I’ll be doing a more in depth review of the Sony NEX at some point in the future, but for now, all I can say is that it was probably my most useful photographic purchase in a long time.
I have a ton more to talk about regarding the England trip, but I’ll leave at this for now. Stay tuned for pics from the Iceland and Brighton side trips, a review of my new travel bag from Grafea and more. You can see the rest of the first batch of my UK vacation pics on my Flickr.
Amidst the craziness of Ottawa Fashion Week I snuck in a shoot with Tania for Grafea London. Grafea are the creators of some of the most gorgeous and affordable leather bags, briefs and purses I’ve ever seen. I wrote a review for their newest camera bag, the Grafea PHOTO a few months ago and recently they approached me to do a shoot for the bag.
I wanted to do an outdoor shoot, but Ottawa has not been very accommodating weather wise. It’s been either too cold, too sunny or too rainy every time I tried to put the shoot together, finally we decided to just go for it, regardless of the weather and see what happens. This particular day it was blindingly sunny and deceptively cold. We ended up having to do the shoot in whatever shade we could find. It turned into a complete run and gun, eight locations and four hundred plus shots in just under an hour.
Sometimes I actually prefer this method as it keeps you from over thinking things. You can have a great plan with the perfect location and somehow when it’s time to shoot there just isn’t that magic you pictured in your mind. By running from location to location and shooting a minimal number of shots per site you get a great variety to work with afterwards and avoid the
“200 shots of the exact same thing” syndrome that seems to have taken over the digital workflow. One of my least favorite things that digital has given me, hours sorting through what’s essentially the same photo to pick out the best shot. It also keeps the model fresh and spontaneous, over all I think it worked out well in this case.
You can see the rest of the Grafea Camera Bag Shoot on my Flickr. Stay tuned, as some of the shots are currently up on Grafea’s Blog and some will soon be included on their website as well. Many thanks to Tania, she was great to work with as always.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to shoot Apocalyptica right here in Ottawa not 50 ft from where I work, actually. At the time I thought it would be the greatest show I’d ever get to shoot. Not only is Apocalyptica visually an amazing band to photograph but they’re one of my favorites musically as well. Well last month I did one better.
Rasputina is a band that is completely undefinable, they don’t easily slot into any of the conventional musical genres when you look at their discography as a whole. They’ve toured with everything from Marylin Manson, to traditional folk musicians. They slip from haunting sea shanties to grungy industrial ballads and the incongruity makes them all the more enthralling.
They’ve been in my top five bands list since I first heard them on Toronto’s 102.1 The Edge, back in the early nineties when Alternative was actually an alternative to rock and pop and the station still played stuff you don’t hear on the top 20 stations. I never thought I’d ever get a chance to see them, let alone shoot one of their shows as they hadn’t been to Canada for over a decade. When I heard they’d be coming to Lee’s Palace in Toronto I grabbed a ticket immediately even though it’s a 6 hour bus ride away. Continue reading →
The winter’s been a pretty slow time for me. Too cold to walk around taking pictures, everything’s grey and uninspiring, so I’ve been using the time to catch up on my back log of undeveloped film. I’ll be through most of it fairly soon, so expect some samples. In the meantime, here’s Ryan. I met him at my regular Starbucks about a year ago and we’ve continued to meet up for coffee semi-regularly since. These shots were taken when a group of us were getting a late breakfast at Denny’s. It’s always nice to have friends with expressive faces that aren’t camera shy.
About two years ago, after a long and exhaustive search, I finally found the perfect camera bag for my rangefinder kit from a company called Grafea out of the UK. Well last week Grafea was kind enough to send me a sample of their newest camera bag to review: the Grafea PHOTO. It’s very similar to their previous bags with one very important addition, a padded and removable insert. The bag pictured in this review is their “Caramel” color but I’ve been told it will be available in dark brown and black very soon.
My original Grafea bag has been on my shoulder almost every day since I bought it, so I had pretty high hopes and equally high expectations from this new bag. It’s slightly taller but with slightly less room back to front, roughly the same internal volume. I was excited about the added height as there are a few items in my kit that where a bit too tall for my previous bag; my netbook for one, it would fit but protruded a bit above the top. It has the same side pockets and zippered back pockets as the original camera bags. The stitching and construction is great, and it’s made from the the same type of high quality leather as my old bag. I was a bit disappointed when I first picked up the bag as the leather felt stiffer than my old one, but on reflection that’s not surprising; it’s the difference between a brand new baseball glove and one that you’ve been using for years that’s become an extension of your hand. Like any quality leather product it’s going to take some breaking in, I’d just forgotten the mileage I’ve put on my original bag. One thing this has made me realize though, is that while all my other camera bags are looking worse for wear after even occasional use, my Grafea bag looks better and better as time goes on, acquiring the character you expect from well used leather. Continue reading →
It’s been a while since my last post but winter is upon us and the slow period during the colder months should let me get back to my old posting schedule. I’ve been extremely busy this summer which has been a big bonus as far as revenue is concerned, but it’s really put a damper on my creative photographic outlets. The more commercial work I drummed up, the less and less time I spent just having fun with photography. After four straight nights of shooting every weekend as well as a day job spare time becomes a precious commodity.
I don’t want to sound negative though, this summer has been my most successful to date when it comes to trying to make photography a financially successful. I’ve been shooting 3-4 nights a week for ClubZone since May, and through them have gotten a weekly column in 24 Hours, which has been great for exposure. Shooting clubs has also gotten me connections to quite a few people in the Ottawa modelling community, which is starting to pay off with modelling shoots and headshot commissions. I even got a spread in this months Faces Magazine and will have pictures in an upcoming issue of Umm Magazine.
Halloween was a great time to be shooting clubs as well, with the Monster Fashion Show at Mansion being by far the most fun event I shot over the Halloween Weekend. More pics will be forthcoming as I go through the backlog these last couple months have created in my editing queue but for now here’s a sample of Halloween on my Flickr. Stay tuned as well as I slowly make my way through developing the dozen or so rolls from this summers street photography, sitting in the fridge.
Blog Out Loud 2011 is fast approaching! The event was founded two years ago by local blogger Lynn, author of Turtlehead, to showcase local blogging talent and has grown substantially since its inception. Come out this Thursday at The Prescott from 7-10pm and see what’s new and amazing in the Ottawa blogging scene. Among those reading this year you will hear the eloquent Nadine author of Adorkable Thespian, the always stylish Jes of Your Sweet Bippy, the intoxicating words of Claire, wine specialist of FoodiePrints and many more! Local photobloggers will be present displaying their works as well. Come see me, along with many other amazing shutterbugs… it’s free… it’s gunna be fun… you now have no excuse not to be there!
