Water Reflections in Black and White

Every so often a photography session will line up just perfectly. All the elements that can make or break an image from the light, to the location, to the time of day, to the equipment you brought along will work out exactly like you want them to. It doesn’t happen all the time. In fact, it hardly ever happens. But when it does the results can be so stunning and the moment so effortless that you hardly believe the photograph that resulted from the day was something you did on purpose.

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Photographed with a Sony A7iii and 55mm Zeiss f/1.8 lens.

I actually wasn’t expecting to get very good light when I set out to make this particular photograph. The day had been both muggy and overcast at the same time which isn’t a great combination for a productive photoshoot. However, at some point between leaving my house and arriving on location everything took a turn for the better and we managed to capture the last glimmers of light before the sun set in the west over the mountains. It certainly didn’t hurt that there wasn’t a soul in site either, which meant we could take our time and get the image right. The model was incredibly patient, holding this pose for quite some time, letting the water beneath her feet become as calm as possible to really enhance the reflection.

I brought along a digital camera for this session as I’ve been trying to work with my Sony A7iii a bit more. I exposed a few rolls of film in this spot as well but have yet to develop any of them. I’ll get to that eventually but at the moment I’m happy with the digital capture results!

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Extreme Light In The Studio

It’s been an incredibly hot and bright summer here in the Pacific Northwest. To spare myself, and the people I work with, the pain of dealing with extreme heat I’ve been booking work in local studios instead. This has been rather fun for me as I don’t work indoors all that often and exploring the slow pace and creative freedom of being indoors has been nice.

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Photographed with a Sony A7c and Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 lens.

For this particular session I booked the studio at 8am thinking I should get some nice soft morning light to work with. I was quite wrong!! Despite the early morning hour the light was harsh, bright, hot, and incredibly intense coming in through the studio windows. So really I had no choice but to try and embrace it and use it to my creative advantage.

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Photographed with a Sony A7c and a Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 lens.

I exposed a few rolls of film for this scene, but to cover my bases I also figured I would expose some frames with the digital camera. I haven’t developed the rolls of film yet but I do think these digital “test shots” came out pretty cool.

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Photographed with a Sony A7c and Zeiss 5mm f/1.8 lens.

There are times when I’m really impressed with the dynamic range digital cameras are capable of these days. Naturally I photographed these images in RAW format and brought up the shadow details just slightly in PhotoShop. They didn’t take much editing though which is good. Sitting on my laptop with PhotoShop opened up for hours on end is never going to be my thing.

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Fall Colors And Zeiss Lenses

It’s kind of a thing with people who own Zeiss lenses that one of their main selling points is the way they render bright colors. That fun little factoid comes to my mind when I look at this image.

Every so often when I make a digital photograph the image comes out perfectly right from the camera. No photoshop. No fancy color adjustments. No nothing. Just pop the image into photoshop, resize it for the internet, and there you go. This was one of those times.

The wind was blowing something fierce on this particular day and we couldn’t work for more than a minute or two at a time before the model felt like she was freezing from the cold. I have to give her a lot of credit. She stuck it out in short spurts for a couple of hours and we walked away with some rather glorious work. I was in particular happy with the opportunity to get the bright oranges and yellows of the fall foliage captured in an image.

I almost didn’t bring a digital camera with me for this session. Looking at the results I’m really glad I did.

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Zeiss Lenses and Fall Colors

One of the reasons I decided to go down the path of Sony cameras when I purchased a digital camera (for me that would be the Sony A7c) is the availability of Zeiss lenses. In the case of this particular image we are looking at an example from the Carl Zeiss 55mm f/1.8.

Anyone who is at all familiar with Zeiss lenses knows they are legendary for the way they render color. I think this image is a perfect example. It may be hard to believe, but this is straight from the camera with zero post processing or editing. Just a simple re-size from the full resolution image to something a little more web friendly and that is it. Simple as that! The way the colors just pop in the frame is blowing my mind a little bit. This honestly may be one of the few examples I’ve done with a digital medium where I’m anxious to make physical prints.

I was lucky to be able to get outdoors when all the gorgeous reds and oranges of the Pacific Northwest fall season. Not only is it cold but typically very windy as well - more or less the worst possible weather to be photographing nudes. Thankfully this particular day wasn’t too bad and the woman I was working with was a real trooper. We didn’t stay out for long, but we managed to make some great images in a short period of time.

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Sony A7c: A Short Review and a Portrait

So I recently did something a little out of a character for me. I bought myself a new digital camera. In this case a Sony A7c mirrorless camera.

Now, to address the first question that I’m sure I’m going to get asked… No, I am not stopping working with film. Not by a long shot. I’ve always worked with digital on occasion and I was in desperate need of an upgrade in equipment on that front. For the last three years I’ve been using a Canon 6D for my digital needs and I’ve never really connected with it. I’ve just never liked a large SLR type body and the Canon has always felt too bulky for my taste.

Also, as I’ve mentioned on this blog a few times, film is starting to get very expensive. So while I am not going to quit working with film any time soon, I might have to work with digital a little more often. Typing that out on this blog bums me out, but the act of making images is more important than the medium.

So why the Sony A7c? There are a couple reasons…

First, the camera is rather small for a digital body with a full frame sensor. This is important to me as my camera bag is already pretty heavy with medium format film gear taking up space. The Sony A7c fits nice and neat in the top section of my camera bag and doesn’t add too much weight.

Second, quite a number of years ago I owned a Sony A7. I liked that camera a lot actually, mostly because I found that it was easy to adapt vintage lenses to the body. Unfortunately my A7 was stolen out of my car while on a road trip. The Sony A7c seems just as easy to adapt vintage glass, only now the body is more closely aligned to the size and shape of a small 35mm rangefinder. I don’t have any plans or desire to buy a whole bunch of modern lenses and I like that with the Sony A7c I can mount my old Leica lenses, Minolta lenses, and more. The electronic viewfinder is high enough in resolution that manual focusing is a non issue for me.

That’s about it quite honestly! Those two reasons right there. I suppose I could talk about the sensor quality, the processing speed, all the various feature like video capture, face recognition focus, etc. etc. but all of those things take a back seat to my two most important criteria in a digital camera right now. Size and the ability to adapt vintage glass. So far the Sony A7c checks both of those boxes for me so going forward it is going to be a part of my camera kit.

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