Category: Art

Gathering Winter’s Light

Gathering Winter’s Light – On the topic of Winter’s Light, be they hyggily candles (Google Hyyge -Denmark), a fireplace, or Xmas lights, there is place that I go to as a pilgrimage every winter – It’s called Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  It was, at one time, the private greenhouse of Pierre DuPont, who was kind of like the Elon Musk or maybe Jeff Bezos of his time. 

I like to go there, especially in the Winter, because I love the light and I can recharge from the Seasonal Blues. Making this photo was important for me because I’ll be taking this camera and lens with me on a trip next month and I rarely shoot wide-angle, medium-format film, so I wasn’t sure how this was going to go.  I like the immediate feedback of digital, but I really have to up my game to get this photo and have it work out, first shot, out-of-camera.  And of course, this lighting is kind of tricky, even with digital cameras – so much is backlit and in shadow.  

Having spent the past year assisting in a darkroom, I feel that, with this exercise,  I should only be allowed to dodge and burn, and tweak contrast if I want to stay true to my film discipline and get ready for the trip.  I know that ‘should’ is a dirty word from a creative standpoint, and we have so many new tools in our artistic kit since the days of Ansel Adams, but I also think that should is a magic word when practicing the discipline of photo purism and trying to hone one’s abilities, in camera. 

About This Photo:

Camera: Mamiya 6 Rangefinder, Lens: Mamiya 50mm f/3.5 (24mm full-frame equivalent)
Film: Kodak TriX 400 ISO

Weeping Sunflowers at Solstice

Well, it’s that time of the year again. The shortest days bring the least amount of light into our lives and most everything that grew over the summer is dead, sleeping or suicidal – like these poor, pathetic sunflowers. Looking at them, I wanted to crowd fund some therapy for them, but instead I did what any heartless photographic voyeur would do, I exploited their trauma with a picture.
When I pressed the shutter button, I knew that the image would be backlit, but I expected more color in the image from Kodak Portra 400, which is usually so delightfully vibrant. I was surprised and happy however, that the suggestion of color, rather than an overt blast of chroma, adds to the sense of the loss of light in the world at this time of year.
Shooting film on antique cameras never ceases to bring surprises and joy for this camera geek.

About the photo: This was taken with a Plaubel Makina 67 medium format film camera on fresh Kodak Portra 400. The camera is a unique joy to shoot with and the f/2.8 lens is unheard of in such a small portable package.

The Chicken Says Don’t Drink the Water.

Listen to the Chicken.

I enjoyed the simplicity of this water spigot – in Philly, we pronounce that ‘spicket,’ The simple plaster background really helped isolate the subject and the rooster shaped handle truly fit the theme of Chanticleer Gardens, where I took this photo. I enjoy the tiny splatters and drips on the wall – along with he cracks and texture it creates such a subtle background. The patina in the metal, along with the strange angle the little metal sign is resting, all lent to the subtle whimsy of the shot. I made this image with expired film in a vintage camera using an old lens, shooting patina and decay. We all have our hobbies. I guess it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

And there is a lesson in this image for all. When a chicken tells you not to drink the water, you should listen to the chicken. I shudder to think of what could have happened if had ignored his advice.

About the Photo: Shot on my of my three favorite Nikon film cameras, the Nikon FM. The whole FM family is great, but I like the FM and the FM2N, they are small, handy, light and have everything a film purist needs. My other two film camera bodies are the F3HP and the F100, which are both great cameras in their own right. It took a lot of camera tests and a lot of film to come up with this triad. The lens used here in the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 Ai. It’s a fast, small, light autofocus lens that does an excellent job for manual and autofocus cameras. Truly one of my favorites. The film was Kodak Gold, long expired and of dubious origin, found in an iced over freezer on an abandoned farm in Oregon wine country. Really. What could possibly go wrong.

Cormorants at Niagara Falls

Sometimes the challenge in creating impactful travel photography is to isolate the photo from the environment. Originally I was taken by many cormorants occupying bare trees along the Niagara River. Try as I might, I could not compose a decent photo as the background and the subject matter were much too busy. Finally, I decided to zoom in on a just a few of the birds and carved this shot out of the background. While the entire scene would have been unremarkable, in the cropped shot the cormorants seem to be engaged in a meaningful conversation in their own blue universe.

Kingston, on the Hudson

Sometimes life throws you fog. When that happens it’s best to get out your camera. For this image, I used the old, trustworthy Nikon N90, Kodak Portra 400 Film, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens. The camera did a great job of metering a fairly tough image despite the fact that it is more than 30 years old. The colors came up great with the Kodak film. What amazing grain!

Foggy Landscape at Harriton House

The Nikon Z7ii is an astounding camera, and is probably the most capable camera body that I have ever used. It produces a 48MP image with image stabilization and very good low light capability. For this shot, I got up early on a foggy morning and ran out to a 18th century mansion, Harriton House, on Philadelphia’s Main Line. There wasn’t a whole lot of light when I shot this, but at 1/10 of a second at a f/14 aperture, I was able to get all of the detail that anyone could reasonably expect to get, plus that wonderful fall of created by the fog.

I used an old lens for this, the f-mount Nikkor VR 16-25 f/4G, and was very happy with the results. Converting to black and white was the best choice for this image.

Boost Drama with Rim Lighting

Rim Lighting creates drama in a photo – more so than with most lighting techniques – and in the right situation it can be just the creativity you need. This shot turned a photo a session from typical and blah into something that really pops.

To do rim lighting you really need off-camera lighting.

Exotic Portraiture: Split Light, Clarity and Vibrance

Sitar John Protopapas is primarily a World Music instructor at York College in York, PA. A study in diversity, John has a Greek background but grew up in South Africa and studied music in India.

Salad Days: Storytelling With Fuji XT2 Color Rendition

Doing a photoshoot in a supermarket was never high on my list, but there I was on vacation, three thousand miles from home, with only a travel camera and a kit lens. Luckily the camera was a Fuji XT2, and lens was Fuji’s XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4, the most capable kit lens I’ve ever used.

 

I was walking by the vegetable section in the produce department of a Fred Meyer’s Market near Portland, Oregon, when I saw this explosion of color, and even under the horror of fluorescent supermarket lights, I knew I had to capture the color and symmetry that some anonymous produce department person – someone who obviously should be working in arts – had set up to delight and entice the ravenous soccer moms of the Pacific Northwest.

 

This should not have been an easy task but two factors worked to my favor. First, this supermarket periodically sprayed their produce with a fine mist of water, which kept the carrots and beets damp and vibrant. Second, the Fuji XT2 handles colors magnificently. These little crop format cameras have an uncanny ability to continuously knock me out of my shoes with how they render colors. In this case, the camera’s processor made mincemeat out of the bad fluorescent lighting and left me with very minimal post production tasks.

 

To me, the resulting photo captured all of the shades and promise of late summer – when the photo was taken – promising the bounty of the harvest time to come.

 

I have smaller cameras and I have bigger, more capable cameras, but to me, the Fuji XT-2 is the perfect travel camera, providing all of the features I need in order to hit any creative needs that might come up on location, thousands of miles from home.