sjmurray

Cool shot, Scott! Great idea.

Nice composition and mood. I am always impressed by how your use of that super wide angle is never absurdly distorted. You seem to line things up to capture the scene, yet not make it bizarre and unbelievable, which happens a lot with real wide angle use.

Beautiful, fantastic!

I disagree with Ivan, no offense Ivan! The textures are quite strong and you would appreciate them from several feet away. The emerging light on the left becoming dark is also very noticable. Up close there is plenty to get into. Those are the two criteria I notice in a photo I can hang on the wall for a while: Attention grabbing from across the room, and fascinating up close. I'd love to see the print to see if I am right.

 

Steve

Simple, but effective. The dark filtered sky with clouds is great. "Three layers."

Beautiful composition!

Thanks for commenting, Maria. I've done many such "portraits" with the 50mm lens. It is slightly cropped because the 35mm format is longer than 4x5/8x10 ratio. If you get any closer you do get distortion. Check out "Portrait using window light" and several other available light/candid type portraits in the folder, all done with the 50mm 1.4 in my "People" folder.

 

Yes, my daughter can be pretty serious, especially when she knows I'm lurking about with a camera. Its only semi-candid because I told her I was taking a picture.

 

I love this lighting, which is late afternoon. The sun is just setting to the right in the image, creating the effect on her hair. The illumination on her face is pure skylight with random reflecting from the house, which is yellow. I did use a hand held incident meter to get accurate exposure for skin tones. I could take a good photo of anybody in that spot at that time of day, I reckon!

Great image! Nice to see some black and white large format work on the POW.

John, I like the composition, lighting and expression. Very nice overall.

 

Digital cameras have a strange way of showing out of focus parts of the image. Kind of like the "ghosting" one gets with movement and flash.

 

I've noticed there is a general bias on PN for straight portraits, unless it is a scantily clad female model, of course.

Yes Wieslaw, you are probably right. I never used pyro developers in all my years of developing black and white. The scanner though, did a great job of separating those upper zones, something I couldn't easily do in the darkroom.

Bravo! A "memorable" image. There's nothing wrong about having persistence and doing a take over and over again until you get it "right." This is the mark of a true craftsman. You still have to discern when you have the image you want. I think the naysayers here are jealous. This may not be one to frame and look at every day, but then again, that's not the only goal of photography. This image is very appealing and eye catching. The patterns are fascinatng. Its also a very creative execution of a simple idea. Again, Bravo.

Ben, lovely shot. You and I share a love for capturing spontaneous moments with available lighting. Black and white, especially medium format, gives such wonderful tones. Nice bunch of images in all your folders!

Thanks for the comments. Arthur: it was in the 80's and I was putting together a commercial portfolio. I probably used black formica that was bent into a "seamless" background. Otherwise I used black seamless paper. Transparency film has such a short tonal range. Anything that was dark enough to register black would work. The softbox was placed directly overhead. It was a pretty simple shot.

 

I think in photography design is primary. I doesn't matter whether it is a landscape or a tabletop setup like this one.

Very nice shot! I like the flat lighting; it makes it more abstract. Its the effect of layers, starting at the bottom, with the rock wall. This is one of my favorites of your landscapes.

Thanks for the comments. The neat thing about photography is that you can shoot black and white landscapes one day, and the next day using the same camera and lens go for completely graphic effects like this shot.

Beautiful!

Well John, its a really beautiful place, and the 4x5 probably recorded a lot of detail. My eye is mainly drawn to the foreground lump of brush, and then to the mountain peak right above it. The ice adds some more interest. Perhaps its a bit too perfect overall and not enough stimulation for the eye, even though it is very pretty and well composed. Just thought I'd add why this one doesn't seem as dynamic to me as some of your other shots. Its a very subtle thing. It would look great in a calendar, or on the cover of a magazine, but I probably wouldn't want to see it on the wall every day for a year.

 

I have been trying to get maximum sharpness of 4x5 images to the 100kb jpgs too. So far I have gotten the best results by first scanning at high resolution, adjusting brightness, contrast and color, then resizing to desired tiff for screen size, dust removal, and finally a little unsharp mask before converting to jpeg for uploading. Doing it this way I don't think its any less sharp than a 35mm or medium format scan. We just have to imagine the real level of detail that is there from those large negs/trans.

 

On the black and white neg developing problems with scratching, are you doing it one handed in a tray, shuffling gently through the stack from bottom to top, emulsion side up? This works for me, although I've done it for years.

 

Cheers

Great image John. I think you captured it beautifully. Very expressive print job. To me it looks pretty balanced and my eye is kept moving in the image enough to stay interested. The textures are wonderful.

Beau, in general I like all your work. You do a great job of capturing the spontaneous with a strong sense of composition. I have a fondness for 35mm black and white too, having done a lot of it over the years.

Very very nice shot. I love the moon. What is a Wratten # 29?

I like this one. Nice job. Great portfolio. Its nice to see someone use a 4x5 utilizing its full potential.

Thanks for the comment, John. The composition was, of course, done on the spot. Looking at it now I have choosen to print this image fairly dark, so the rocks are really dark and don't show a lot of detail. This darkness seems to balance the trees above them pretty well to me. Darkness is "heavy." I feel there is an adequate balance in this image. I'd have to take another picture to give you more of the rocks.

Interesting tones. I think it was good to shoot on a cloudy day like that.

Great composition, as usual. The scan of the Ektachrome is sharp and smooth as well.

Maria, you know what they say: "If you remember the '70's, you weren't there."