Month: January 2024

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

We Could All Use a Little Light

Here’s a dispatch from the Don’t Try This at Home Department: I’m a sucker for people in wild costumes doing crazy things. Hence, this photo. This is Michelle Yeager, and awesome fire breather – performing at a Krampuslauf event in North Philadelphia, a few years back. It is one of my favorites because of the work it took getting the right balance and detail of the fire without it being too bright and therefore blowing out the details. It started as big white blob of fire, but with the magic of lightroom and RAW file, rather than a JPG, I was able to coax detail out of flames that look, to me, like an angry universe, or maybe the interior of a sunspot. Yes, I like to shoot film, but there are certain things that are best done with digital, and shooting fire breathers is one of them. And also – use a long lens. No sense singing your eyebrows, even if it is for a good photo.