Eyes and Shadow

Spending a little bit of time playing with the balance between light and shadow on black and white film. This image was a bit of a challenge and I probably sat in front of the computer moving the brightness and contrast dials back and forth on my film scanning software for way too long. I can only imagine how obsessive I would be over this negative if I was making a print in the darkroom!

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Theresa Manchester on Black and White Film

For my first post of 2020 I present an image I made with Theresa Manchester during a quick photo session on the north end of Portland. I’ve done a lot of work with Theresa over the years and I always value the time we spend being creative together. Our sessions always seem to be an even mixture of firing off frames with the camera and just chatting about every random topic a person can imagine; from camping on the coast, to road trips, to our favorite stores to go grocery shopping.

In other words, it’s like hanging out with your pal while also making lovely photographs.

This image was made with a Mamiya M645 1000s. I’m not using that particular camera much anymore because I tend to favor the Hasselblad a bit more. Still, I spent years working with Mamiya equipment and I highly recommend anyone who is thinking about getting into medium format to give Mamiya cameras a consideration. Mamiya lenses tend to have a nice sophisticated yet gritty quality when paired with Kodak Tri-X film.

The lighting situation for this frame was obviously a bit of a challenge. It was 100% lit from behind the model on a gray and overcast day. To keep as much detail as humanly possible in the shadow areas of the frame I developed this roll in Rodinal at 1:100 for 45 minutes. It came out exactly how I hoped!

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