Did a bunch of film scans this evening, and I have to say I’m not super happy with what I’m getting from the 35mm work. I’m going to go through the motions of developing what I’ve already shot and looking at it honestly, but I’m not super positive about it. A lot of the things I like from the work coming out of the 6x9 camera just aren’t there in the smaller format. Maybe the 40mm 1.4 will be the silver bullet to make it all magical again, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, here are three images off the queue. I don’t think they’re related at all, or even shot within a month of each other.
Posted on 2018-05-14T08:43:11Z GMT
These were from the first batch I did here at home, and they have a ton of dust and water spots (partially because my basement is dusty, and partially because I don’t have anything to clean them with prior to scanning). A little cleanup and they’re presentable. The last image in particular, was pretty hard to work on; I thought for a minute there might be starts in the background, but no, it was just dust that happened to look like a familiar constellation.
Need to scan more… I’ve got four pages of 35mm work ready to be scanned. Maybe tomorrow night? Friday night? One of them is the first roll through the new camera, shooting with the 50mm Canon lens I’ve had for better than a decade (and is itself a decade older than me, at least). Looking forward to seeing how those look.
This particular night we were mostly playing games, but I had the film camera and found a few moments, between things and on a pizza pickup run, to get a few photos in. That seems to be the way I work now; photos when I’m not doing anything else that requires my attention. It’s the background process that’s always running. Still, always looking.
Still trying to do a post a day; at the end of the month, we’ll see how I did without a backlog. Here’s today.
you can’t see it, but fletch is showing off a twiddler, an absurd input device that I’m super tempted to get. 
Beers that don’t like being poured. 
The fog all rolled in.
Posted on 2018-05-10T05:52:42Z GMT
So these are the film photos from the same time we were there as this post, but this time with the texas leica (as opposed to the almost leica I just got in the mail, which, more on that later). There’s definitely something to the film work that I didn’t even realize I was missing in the digital versions.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be said for a fast camera with the option to be color or black and white at will. but there’s also something to be said for the tonality I’m getting from these negatives, which is nothing like what I get from any of my digital cameras, even after pretty extensive processing.
So yeah, I bought another film camera, to complement the ones I already have. Shot my first roll of film this afternoon with a super old lens that may or may not be worth anything. I have another lens bought, that hasn’t shipped, that should be a little better suited to this camera (I bought the camera and lens the same day last week; the camera arrived from japan faster than the lens from new jersey). It’s everything my other film cameras aren’t; small and light and really fun to shoot with. The first roll is drying now, I’ll probably scan some tomorrow.
Posted on 2018-05-07T19:11:09Z GMT
So this was only two weeks ago, pretty far down from my typical 2-6 months to get something posted (if you haven’t seen some pictures you were expecting from me from before, say, a month ago, they’re not happening here; reach out and I might be able to do something). I don’t know why, but I found these really hard to edit. The color in the location is hard, and I threw my hands up on that and went black and white. But I’m also emotionally invested in this event, I suppose, and I want to do a good job.
To that end, I took my hardest-to-use lens, and pitted it against really difficult conditions. It’s a 500mm mirror lens, f/6.3. I was shooting hand held, and it’s a manual focus lens. The focal plane (that is, how much depth of acceptable focus you get) is about 4”, and there’s about a 1/4” difference on the focus ring between 30 and 50 feet. So, about 12 thou, or 1/80th of an inch. I did ok; remember, you’re seeing the good stuff, not the outtakes (there were many). Even so, using that lens forced me to use a very high ISO, which, if I’d been using a lower one, the color may have been more manageable… anyway.
The salon was about abandoned things, from children, given up to an orphanage, to a whole island, in NYC, abandoned to nature. Stops include Paris and Angkor, with way stations at Sati (not a place, but an abandoned funeral practice), and Kepler’s best idea that turned out to not be true. At least two of these pictures I only barely got, because I was too busy paying attention to the talk being given at the time.
If you’re interested in Odd Salon, the Something Weird facebook group has more info on salons, past and future, as well as links to many of the talks that have been recorded.
Names and talk titles taken from the FB page, typos are my own.
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Harvey the Wolpertinger in his natural habitat. /242/0005.jpg)
Annetta, the fearless leader of odd salon. /242/0006.jpg)
Christina Liu, talking about Ta Keo, Angkor’s Forsaken Temple /242/0007.jpg)
Reigh Robitaille, the Foundling Tokens talk /242/0008.jpg)
Sahil Bansal, talking about Kepler (Kepler’s so dreamy, I’ll admit, this is one of the talks I was too busy listening to for good coverage) /242/0009.jpg)
Stuart Gripman, who curated the evening’s talks. /242/0010.jpg)
This guy, as far as I can tell, was just on stage to show off his cool Fez. /242/0011.jpg)
Matthew Nelson talking about The Paris Catacombs /242/0012.jpg)
Wider shot, in one of maybe three photos I took with the short (40mm) lens I brought. /242/0013.jpg)
Dhiraj Korwani, talking about Sati, the practice of widow burning, how it came to be, and how it ended. /242/0014.jpg)
This is, I think, the very end of Danielle Baskin’s North Brother Island talk.
Posted on 2018-05-07T06:45:40Z GMT
So, a couple of weeks ago I got the chance to attend a dinner by chef Muffie Fulton, in collaboration with Kathryn Tomajan of Fat Gold. This is not a review; both of the geniuses behind Fat Gold are friends, and besides, I’m not qualified to judge food like this. It was an evening of molecular gastronomy, in which all the things I thought I knew were turned upside down and all the food was surprising and kind of amazing. Liquid Nitrogen! Blow torches! Sous Vide!
I wasn’t super happy with the photos from this evening, to be honest. I wish I had another dozen, and good pictures of every course; I just wasn’t “on” that night. Oh well, at least there are some pictures.
Kathryn explains Fat Gold, and Sophia instagrams. 
Diners, after the first few courses, got up and moved around, watching the prep for desert. 
Making the chocolate bits that went into the desert. You mix chocolate, coconut oil, and liquid nitrogen, and stir. to collect, you pour everything through a strainer. All that’s left is the bits of chocolate. Very flashy, and the liquid nitrogen is gone before it gets to the floor. 
Some of our dining companions. 
Ice cream making. The liquid nitrogen isn’t just flash in this case; it freezes the cream almost instantly, not allowing the water time to form large crystals. This makes the result as creamy as it can possibly be. 
Then, in order to separate it from the mixing bowl, heat is applied.
Posted on 2018-05-04T06:39:49Z GMT
