landscape

Acadia National Park and Beyond - Pentax 6x7

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Acadia National Park - Pentax 6x7

 -- Finally in Glorious Medium Format (that got wasted due to bad metering and waiting too long to get developed)

Usually when I get a large batch of photos, it’s hard for me to do more than an initial triage of the shots. However I waited two years to get these photos developed - the color ones.  I don’t think waiting two years is a good idea. I’d be proud of them if they came out two years ago - I can’t just let the photos sit there and do nothing though, so I’m hosting them here.

(Fujifilm 160NS + Fujifilm Pro 400H pictured right, Fujifilm Acros 100 Below — I’d also like to go on record saying I shot this in 2018 before the lighthouse was a movie. Goddamn New Hampshire ass poser making a movie about Maine.)

If you haven’t read the previous maine travelogue, go ahead and do that. I dunno. I’m really starting to sit on the fence of whether the pentax is really the camera for me - I mean yeah I’ve gotten better over two years but it’s not like i’ve actually put the work in to improve that much using it - it’s not super sustainable for a lot of my daily uses and if you’ve followed me, I’ve done a lot of griping about how I just don’t get quite enough practice with it. Unless I’m in some dire pain - ie the grief suite - then there’s like some crazy override switch in my brain that goes off I can start borrowing on some level of photographic skill that doesn’t usually hit me in standard practice until about a year later -- usually about three to six months now that I’ve figured out how to practice better. (Pro 400h from Acadia National Park Below)

Anyway, I’d like to think a lot of these photos are what I traded for pinch hit grief shooting - don’t get me wrong, there’s some good stuff in here, and unlike the usual travelogue photo dump, I’ve picked it over pretty heavily, but all in all, there’s not much I’d put on my resume, nor is there anything worth going back and cleaning up or rescanning - in my opinion. That said, the feeling in a lot of these is cool, and it’s fun to look back on how I shot in 2018. Anyway - enjoy. (Provia 100f in 120 Below)

Honestly most of  the color film looks like ass here. I can’t tell if it’s because i waited too long to develop all the film or my metering was way off but it all looks *bad* like there’s some neat stuff, but meh, I wouldn’t steak my name on it now.

I thought I was going to make another book or travelogue out of this, but given the context of the trip and who I took it with, I’m kinda happy to share it here as a learning experience and simply be done with it. Y’know?

The gear report (for that SEO Clout): 

A bunch of bergger pancro 400 in 120. A bunch of Acros in 120 (RIP) Some Fujifilm Provia. A whole heaping fuck ton of Fujifilm Pro 400h that quite frankly I wasted -- even worse as the price continues to rise. I almost forgot - there’s some Fujifilm Pro160C in 120 mixed in here. By far my favorite no longer manufactured film/emulsion. Shout out Will Hopkins for scoring me a big ass grip of Fujifilm pro 160NS when he went to Japan. I still need to find a good project for it.

I like 400h a lot - I can’t tell what exactly went wrong -- some of it’s fine some of it isn’t. Same with the Provia 100f. The black and white turned out okay. I mean, I developed it and scanned it myself, and I haven’t really had any major qualms with my own processing in a long time. Longer ago than I shot this (give or take the dust/scan line problem)

All that said, I still don’t feel great about the Bergger Pancro 400. It just never quite turns out like I want it to, and after years of pissing and moaning about it, and not quite ever getting the results I want out of it, I think I’m making the switch to Ilford HP5+. Who knows, I’m really just bloviating here. Sorry. Beyond that this is really where I finally broke down after scanning (thanks Epson V600) and got into canned air - also figuring out how to scan the calibration area. I’m sure I could rescan but, like I said, this isn’t exactly new or relevant material.

Honestly some gripes aside the Provia 100f isn’t too bad -- not quite optimal, but survivable. Y’know? Ah well. Fujifilm, if you’re listening (lord knows you aren’t’/and/or you don’t want to listen to me -- I’ve taken too many potshots for that.)  I’d love to get another whack at Provia 100f again. 

That said -- as long as this is more of a confessional/photodump -- I had an issue with one roll of the bergger Pancro 400 - I got this crazy dot effect -- I hate that I don’t know what I caused it (the leading guess from @clemtaconsix is that it’s air bells) and it’s kinda unusable for most purposes - however the effect is interesting and I’d like to know what caused it -- if you know, and can show evidence I’ll give you the zine of your choosing, and a t-shirt provided I have the size for you.

The Pentax Kit: Pentax 6x7 MLU, Pentax Takumar 45 F/4 Takumar 105mm f/2.4, Takumar 165mm F/2.8. Honestly the Pentax lenses are kinda nuts. I might *actually* like the 55 more than the 45 - now that I’m a year or two away, and I can see the kinda wacky look. I still think the 105 is the best lens in the range - I need to get that stupid ikea lamp so that I can de-yellow the lens but that’s a small fix -- honestly the yellowing looks pretty good on BNW film so I might invest in a yellow filter - or not because hey, I’m not sure this is the right camera for me. That said, when the 6x7 works and shoots right - it really shoots right.

All in I think a 35mm equivalent on a 6x7 of some kind is where I’m headed. Or not. I dunno. It doesn’t really matter what I shoot anymore. They’re just fucking cameras. That said, I do think Medium format does lend a little more gravitas to the images - while still being reasonably portable.

(The Killing Field, Mini-Series on Pro 400h to the right)

The real key takeaway here is don’t sit on your film for two years. Especially when your fridge is unreliably damp and the weather in LA is stupidly hot in the summer and probably cooks your film half to death.

Again, would still highly recommend visiting Acadia National Park - probably my favorite that I’ve been to, although it gets real touristy, and my opinion is tainted with being a native Mainer.

More important than any of that — go buy a zine or in the shop. I'm tryna raise some funds to clear out my backlog, and make way for some actual new stuff.

No Man's Land: Elysian Park/Chinatown 5/19

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No Man’s Land: Elysian Park/Chinatown 5/19

I’ve often found that Los Angeles is a city comprised of smaller cities, or towns, I’d be shocked if I was the first person to say it, but some things are truisms for a reason. But on top of that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city with as much dead space as LA. Some of that space is parks, but largely, it’s just blank, empty lots, or underused warehouse space. Before I moved here, in warning, my mother would often snark that LA is basically just one large parking lot. And while, after having lived here for the last six years, I can easily (and happily) say that the city is more than a large parking lot, the sentiment rings true-er than I’d like to admit.

I’ve hit a bit of a wall in the last year or so, most of my photography prior to 2019 (2020 now) has been either diaristic work or documentation of Downtown Los Angeles, Big Landscapes out in National Parks, or reflections on home. Admittedly, my daily life or surroundings in DTLA have become pretty humdrum, or like, I’ve stopped seeing the novelty in them, and in a lot of ways my LA based photography has (had?) stagnated. Hard. At any rate, I’ve slowly been re-thinking and reworking what I actively hunt for, and what I’m trying to describe as a photographer.

I’m also working hard to implement the 80/20 rule to my own photography. Largely, I think I have been accidentally (or like my photography’s jumped through the roof compared to where it was when I got off the plane six years ago) and I’m not so hugely prolific in my shooting that the advancements in my work are pure grind -- don’t get me wrong I shoot regularly, and work hard at it, I’m just not the guy churning out 500 rolls a year (huge respect to that). At any rate, both printing, and making zines have helped me a lot in being more selective over what is and isn’t good, what is and isn’t redundant as a photo, etc. At any rate I’ve slowly been working on new concepts here in LA, lest I end up moving back to the East Coast, so that I can continue to create the kind of work that I want to create.  

When I don’t know what else to do, I usually end up exploring. And in this case, I ended up hiking (for lack of a better term) from chinatown, over into Elysian Park, or what I thought was Elysian Park, and into a neighborhood that wasn’t quite Echo Park. While the neighborhoods were most definitely neighborhoods, I quickly found that the areas between them were both vast, and empty. This is what I found on that day.

At the time I was testing/working with my two 100’ supply of Orwo N74+ and at this point, I’d realized that pushing this specific film in broad daylight or Johnny Patiencing (for lack of a better term) wasn’t going to work -- you can read more about that in the linked review. I was also using my Minolta XD-11, and also on my all-50mm-all-the-time (Minolta Rokkor MC-PG-x 50mm f/1.4). If you’re not aware of why I’m going out of my way to talk about equipment choice (largely irrelevant), it’s purely for SEO presence. Thanks for your continued understanding.

During this walk I did manage to identify a few spots I’d like to shoot again (and did) in color. But, it did call to mind, or at least get me to think clearly about landscapes. I don’t really consider myself a landscape photographer much anymore. I mean I am, but I’ve come to loathe the label (watch out for an interview with the one and only Brendon Holt on that, or at least the ghettoization of landscape photography). 

That said, I think above anything, in photography I’ve always had a stronger fixation on how or where people live, or don’t, than I do specifically with the people themselves. Likewise, I’ve often found the most fascinating bits about Los Angeles to be the neighborhoods, and the frequency of feeling like a lot of places in the city are “No Man’s Land” -- neither here nor there.

Anyway, I’ve come up with this e-zine/blueprint for more projects via this walk/set, about emptiness/negative space, either created or natural. 

Thanks for giving this a read! If you’d like to support the website and content like this, and interviews (or really, just the web-hosting capacity to put them up/keep them up) pick up a zine in the shop!

Big Sur -- Memorial Day -- May 2018

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Overview of my trip to Big Sur and Central California, one year out. Photos are exclusively Medium Format from the Pentax 6x7 MLU, and shot with a mixture of Fuji Pro 160c, Kodak Portra 160, Fuji Acros 100, Fomapan 100, Fomapan 200, and Bergger Pancro 400.

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Maine - July/August 2017

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Honestly, I probably should’ve posted this a year ago or like whenever I started doing heavy updating to my website/blog on a regular basis, but y’know -- whatever.

This was a while back, when I was in the habit of carrying around *three* separate Minolta XD 11/7/s cameras. Yeah I know, I’m cringing too. Around the same era as the trip out to the Trona Pinnacles. -- Actually some of the film from that trip got processed in the same batch — also in fairness, it’s not like 2 years is that long of a time — it kind of is, but it’s not — really.

Anyway, I typically take one trip home a year, in addition to the holidays. In 2017, I went home in late July or early August. Maybe both. I can’t quite remember the dates of the vacation. Either way, I did a lot of shooting. Too much to be honest.

I hate tech specs, but, this was one of my first real multiple day landscape outings with the  24mm, so that tends to dominate a lot of the photos I took. I think I was also trying out the 100mm/135mm and making a last stab at telephoto landscape -- two years later, I think I’m willing to say I’m not much of a fan, but in selected uses, it’s alright.

I also decided (stupidly) to have a professional lab develop my bnw film. They fucking ruined 8 rolls of it. I had to pull teeth to get to my money back for a lot of the service/film. The owner of the lab is a really nice guy. The lab shall go unnamed, but to this day, it still really pisses me off when I see some of the botched photos -- some of them would’ve been really great. Beyond thaft I still think their scan/dev (on black and white) is way way overcranked/overcooked/contrasty (to my taste). Their interpolation/correction on the color is actually still one of my favorite jobs/batches of film. Also they kinda fucked up the Bergger Pancro 400 (I think this was actually my first time shooting the film). Bergger’s low contrast but this is… special. I’ll also throw in that as much as I generally dislike lab-done bnw development for my own work, there is something really nice about the low amount of dust contamination in the scans. I’m not naming the lab because we more or less reached a reasonable settlement, and genuinely, the seem like nice people, and it was an unforeseeable accident.

At any rate, Acadia is really beautiful, though I doubt these photos are really doing it any justice. That said, I honestly think the ultra-muted Bergger Pancro actually is a fairly accurate representation of Portland Head Light, and probably some of my favorite shots of it, ever.

At any rate, I also ended up taking a few walks around Portland during the trip. I think I finally started to get the city “right.” in terms of portrayal, etc -- I incorporated a bit of that photography into Chaplet of Divine Mercy, but always have looked for a good place to put up some of the rest of my photos from that same period. I’d like to believe I started to get the city “right” but time will tell. I’m actually covering the city for Around the World in 80 Cameras (a Kosmo Foto project) with my Minolta XD-11 (don’t worry, I’m going to produce new content/photos for it, and y’know an actual XD-11 review instead of me joking around about the camera for a couple pages -- I’m going back soon, in May, and plan to cover it then).

I guess of note, also, is that I was shooting mostly Fujifilm Pro 400h for color around this time (I think there’s like one roll of Ektar snuck in -- it’s pretty obvious -- and I think some Ultramax 400), I probably have enough to do one of my writeups/reviews, but for the life of me, it’s just so poorly documented -- I don’t know if I could conscientiously do a decent writeup. Also I wasn’t really in the habit of pushing a film’s limits or exposing 1 stop over for color. Likewise, the same thing follows for Acros -- Shot a lot of it, but the documentation isn’t really there so I have no clue what I’d really report on aside from like “ACROS GOOD” “XTOL and ACROS GOOD.” Or like Pro 400h (and it’s slow speed sibling, Fuji Pro 160NS) is actually really excellent for the East Coast/New England and the color profiles that pop up there, or like the greenery in that region is more conducive to using cool tone film for the blues/greens, where the sunny, warm-toned west coast makes it maybe a little more feasible for Portra 400. I could probably also do a similar thing with Ultramax 400 -- but I dunno -- the documentation just sucks, and while I’m happy enough to share weird (old/past) plateau moments or photosets, providing bad documentation or just another mediocre film/camera/lens review that basically amounts to “look at these photos I shot with this, with no real insight” isn’t really something I’d feel great about doing or posting up.

Anyway, I think this trip is also kind of a weird important piece of chronology for a few reasons. Primarily that A: It was the last time I saw my friend Matt. B. After shooting that much in quick succession, my eye did a huge leap forward. Because these things run in plateaus and spikes more than anything else. C. This was the last trip or set of hikes/walks I took without my Pentax 6x7, and was done entirely on 35mm cameras. I may revisit only using a 35mm camera in the future. I’ve got a lot on my mind gear-wise, most of it seems to involve stripping back more or continuing to limit myself.

One other odd thing is that I had a crappy point and shoot, A pentax 110 iq-zoom I think — nothing special but fun to mess around with. I’ve been kinda re-thinking my stance on zooms lately, so funny to see this here.

I still wish I’d spent a little more time in Lewiston or shot more there. I’m finally making some time to do that, but it’s still a bit of a sore point. I feel like the years of not shooting it or kinda avoiding the city (I’m using the Maine definition of “city” -- not really a city per-se, but definitely a city by the population standards of the state) finally added up into me wanting to take a serious look at it, from both a personal standpoint, and one that lines up with my own family’s history with it. It is what it is.

This is probably the most informal/actual blog-ey post I’ll do, but I just wanted to put some (a lot of) photos up, and keep some kind of stream-of-content running so the website stays up and ranked. So, I dunno -- Don’t read the text if you don’t really care about me grousing and complaining about photo processing -- just look at the nice (ish) photos of Maine, and hope that it helps sell you on why tourism is the number one industry in the state, and rich Bostonians and New Yorkers bought up half of Portland on the cheap, because they’re carpetbaggers.

Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed this content, pick up a zine in the shop or swing by the Independent Art Book Fair in LA next weekend.

Huntington Library (i) -- 12/17

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Huntington Library (i) -- 12/17

A walk around the Huntington Library and Garden. Testing a few different films and meditating on losses. Shot on the Minolta XD11, and primarily the 24mm md 2.8. The films used were: Fomapan or Arista 200, Fuji Neopan Acros, and Rollei Ortho 25.

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The Japanese Garden -- 4/18

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I normally avoid the Valley. I call it Mordor. But Kristina and I were looking for something to do that Saturday, so we piled out to see “The Japanese Garden” which apparently isn’t just a garden but also a method of recycling sewage. Also it showed up in Star Trek, apparently. Pretty neat, but not quite as cool as the Huntington, or at least the Huntington’s Japanese Garden.

I think I burned a roll of fuji C200 to start, then switched to Ektar at the end. I also know I shot my 24mm lens for most of this.

If you like content like this, and would like to keep the website online — consider buying a zine in the shop. Thanks!

Hermosa Beach -- Kodak Photo Walk -- 4/18

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Hermosa Beach -- Kodak Photo Walk -- 4/18

Kodak Photowalk around Hermosa Beach led by instagram famous, and generally great photographer, Pete Halvorsen. Shot all on Kodak Ultramax 400 and Kodak Ektar 100. Pleasant surroundings and amazing sunset for the photowalk. I shot it all on my Minolta XD11.

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