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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Oregon Dunes Nbr 12

I absolutely love the shadows at play here. The sun beaming through the reeds of grass the the form of the model laying in the sand. This may be one of my favorite photographs of recent memory.

This image also marks the first time I ever took my Hasselblad outdoor for a photography session. In some ways that feels like a lifetime ago with everything that is going on in the world. I am greatly looking forward to getting outside with some adventures I have planned over the coming months.

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The Future Of Everything (...but mostly film photography)

I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into what the world is going to look like in the near and distant future. I suppose living through a global pandemic will do that to a person. Will we ever get back to what we considered normal? Is what we are living through right now the new normal? Will things get better? Will they get worse? I don’t know. Quite frankly, I’m just a guy with a few cameras who likes to make photographs.

Speaking of making photographs though… The end of this year has come packaged with a few announcements of price increases in film coming soon. Figures. I mean it is 2020 after all so really nothing is going to go the way we would like it. I’m not going to deny that the cost of film is rapidly getting to the point where I need to start thinking of some creative alternatives. This may mean embracing digital photography a little more than I have in the past. It may mean putting my energy toward cheaper materials like working with paper negatives more often. There are a lot of possibilities here but when a roll of Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP5 starts pushing the boundaries of $10 a roll I can’t deny I’m forced to rethink things a little bit.

I do know this though. I’ll always be a photographer. How I work just might look a little different in the near future. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. Change can be good. New challenges, even cost challenges, can awaken new ideas and new ways of thinking. It seems we are all living in a world of flux right now and I for one don’t want to be a defeatist about it.

So stay tuned everyone.

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