at Victor Harbor

I’ve come down to Victor Harbor for a day or so to continue with the 8×10 large format seaside architectural photography series. I plan to photograph this heritage building tomorrow, weather permitting:

Esplanade, Victor Harbor

In the meantime I’m watching a live stream of the judging of the Epson Australian Institute of Professional Photography’s (AIPP) South Australian Professional Print Awards at the Orange Lane Studio in Norwood.

The commercial architectural shots in this competition are nothing like what I’m doing. Mine are very rough and ready compared to the smooth and carefully calibrated celebration of the architect’s work that the commercial photographers do for their clients. They go for the wow factor, but they do seem unreal in their perfection–almost iconic — compared to mine.

making a foto book

I’m down at Victor Harbor this weekend going through some of my photos of the region. I reckon that I have enough images on the computer’s hard disc to begin to do something with them. I’m thinking about publishing them as an organized body of work.

early morning in winter

I’ve finally taken the plunge and decided to begin work on a DIY book of photos and text of the Fleurieu Peninsula. I’ve started by using the Posterous Spaces publishing platform to kick things off.

8 x 10 photography: scouting and scoping

It is extremely windy on the south coast this weekend. It rained on Saturday morning and then a south westerly has being blowing hard. It is gale force strength along the clifftops. Though it is sunny,the windy conditions make it impossible to do any large format photography. I had planned to do an architectural shoot on Sunday morning.

This morning, whilst Suzanne was walking the poodles, I took the digital camera and went on a scouting and scoping trip for future work with an 8×10. There are two possibilities: this and this:

Franklin Parade

I’d been eyeing this building ever since they’d started building it a few months ago.It’s big and expensive, and it is turning out to be one of the better architectural examples of modern Victor Harbor. So I went and made a number of photographic studies of it to see what it would look like as a photograph on the computer screen.

along the seashore

The beaches at the foot of the cliffs west of Victor Harbor are mostly deserted outside of school holidays and public holidays so we can wander along them. When we are on a daily poodlewalk along the beaches around the cliffs west of Victor Harbor I’m usually looking out for interesting objects lying scattered on the beach. These are mostly seaweed, dead birds and shells.

Often I wonder what would these objects look like as a photograph.Sometimes I bring them back to Encounter Studio to do close ups. Other times I just photograph them on the beach and move on:

crab, shell, sand

This particular one was constructed. I’d seen the crab on the walk up the beach in the late afternoon, then on the return, I wondered what it would look like sitting atop a cuttlefish bone.

8 x 10 photography: stumbling along

I finally started scanning the 8×10 b+w pictures this afternoon, even though I have still to figure out how to use the Silverfast scanning software; or how to process the pictures in Photoshop.

Cambo 8 x 10

The results are disappointing. Most of the negatives are way overexposed; some have light leaks; the old Schneider Symmar 210mm lens that I’m using cannot cover the extreme movements for architecture; whilst the Silver Efex Pro + Lightroom combination that I’ve been using is too crude for the subtle tones of an 8×10.

8 x 10 shoot

It was overcast with little wind at Victor Harbor early this morning. It looks as if a cool change is on the way with rain forecast.

So I was able to take the Cambo 8×10 out to take some black and white pictures of the local seaside architecture in my neighbourhood. It was something that I’d been planning to do for ages.

seaside architecture, Victor Harbor

I have become interested in the old architecture of this seaside town in South Australia for heritage reasons and because they are a graceful form of regional architecture. The seaside residencies along the foreshore are rapidly being pulled down to make way for the McMansion reworking of the modernist style. So I’m documenting them before they are pulled down to make way for the new.

Inman River: failure

We are down at Victor Harbor for the long October weekend, and I decided that I needed a break from my rock studies. I needed another little project that I could work on with a large format camera now that I’m aware of what is required. I need something that would allow me to become comfortable using an 8×10 monorail using black and white film, but which didn’t require too much walking with the heavy equipment.

So I’ve been hunting around for a suitable subject. I started exploring the bushland along the Inman River today because it is protected from the coastal winds. But very little in the way of possibilities came of it. It was mostly an exercise in frustration:

waterlilies, Inman River

I went there early this morning on my own and then returned late this afternoon with Suzanne and the poodles. The light was hard to handle and you only have a limited amount of time to take photos. So the scene has to be preselected and the exact time of the day:

8 x10 photography

I’ve came down to Victor Harbor for a couple of days before I fly over to Melbourne to do some 8 x 10 black and white location photography. I haven’t done any for a while mainly because I’ve had no way to scan the negatives.

My Epson V700 can only scan 8×10 as a negative, and up to now I’ve had no way to invert it into a positive. So I’ve ordered Photoshop from B+H in New York, as this professional software enables me to invert the negative into a positive.

8x10 Cambo

It was overcast and still today so I struggled down to the foreshore with the 8×10 gear (monorail camera in the right hand, the heavy duty Profi Linhof tripod with its centre post and heavy duty pan tilt head on my left shoulder, and the computer bag with the darkslides + darkcloth, lightmeter etc on my right shoulder). I was accompanied by the two standard poodles.

My aim was to take two photos of a particular rock. One photo was in portrait mode and the other in landscape mode. That was it. I struggled back to the car, unloaded my gear, and then took the poodles for a walk.

making the shift to digital

I did an experiment this morning, now that Wednesday has become a gym free day.

I took my Leica M4-P film camera and the digital Sony DSC R1 with me when I went to the IMVS Pathology Centre at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to have a blood test. I wanted to see which one I used instinctively as a working photographer.

I started out using the Leica with a 35mm lens (a Summicron F2-ASPH) as I walked through the dense shopping precinct that is Rundle Mall. It was just as I would have done in my pre-digital days. But I actually ended up using the Sony a lot more. I did so without thinking about it. It was instinctive in a photographic sense.

exclusivity

The film Leica with its expensive lens was basically put away in favour of the pro-sumer digital Sony because the latter was more flexible, I could get more shots with the variable Zeiss lens, and I felt a lot more more comfortable experimenting with digital than film. Film costs money. Towards the end–on the way back through Rundle Mall after having the blood test—I only used the Lecia if I thought that I had a worthwhile image.

So this confirms what I said in my earlier post about using 35mm cameras. The shift to digital at this format is a worthwhile investment. That means the film camera is used in order to get that film look. Or the Leica ‘look’.

scanning the workload

My days of late have been taken up with scanning some of the old 35mm + medium format negatives, plus some of the medium format film that I took earlier this year. Scanning sure is a time consuming business. In terms of workflow it is probably better to shoot a couple of rolls of film, have it processed, then scan it; rather than allow the rolls of film to build up to 30 or so.

I’m not persuaded that the combination of 35m film plus a flat bed scanner, such as the Epson V700, is better than its digital equivalent. People do use a dedicated film scanner–eg., a Nikon 5000— for 35mm film to improve the quality of the scan. However, if 35mm is the format of choice, then it would probably be better to invest in a top end, full frame, DSLR and some really good glass.

Angas St , Adelaide

Maybe 35mm film would be the equivalent of a high end DSLR if I used a really top line desktop scanner (such as the Imacon Flextight 949 Film Scanner or the Flextight X1); that is, the ones the pro labs use. However, these are a big dollar investment for just 35mm, and it is hardly worth the investment for that format. Those photographers who don’t have high volume requirements will not be able to justify the cost of these pro scanners. They are designed for Photo Labs, Printing Bureaus and professionals that need to scan hundreds of negatives each week or day.

If 35mm is the format of choice, then clearly, it is more worthwhile to shift to, and work with, the new technology. It would be easy to work within, and around its limitations with good image editing software.