Nudes

Escaping The Wind

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Sometimes when the weather is not cooperating during a photographic outing one really needs to get creative. Or you just need to get lucky. When these photographs were being made the wind was bitterly cold! The temperature on paper wasn’t really so bad, just a mild day in the late fall here in the Pacific Northwest. But the wind… The wind was making it feel fifteen to twenty degrees colder than it actually was.

Anyone who has ever tried to operate a camera with bitterly cold wind howling around you, not to mention anyone who has ever tried to remove their clothing under such conditions can tell you - it is really not fun!

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 medium format film.

I was actually ready to call the day a bust when we found a strange tree growing near the ground along the shoreline that had a perfect opening. I was able to stand out in the windy cold while the model was able to take shelter at the opening and didn’t have to endure the wind at all. The branches and foliage on the tree were so thick it felt like climbing into a sturdy tent.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 medium format film.

Our options for posing were very limited given the small opening, but I think we made do with the difficult conditions we had before us and I’m quite happy with the results. I was only able to expose one roll of film in this spot before it was physically impossible to continue. Sometimes one roll of film is all you need though.

Water Reflections in Black and White

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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.

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!

Extreme Light In The Studio

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Using the Hasselblad SWC In Small Spaces

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I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I really like using the Hasselblad SWC. The 38mm Biogon lens is an absolute marvel and I very much appreciate the almost point and shoot nature of working with the SWC. Set your focus distance, meter the scene, and you are good to go just pointing and clicking to your hearts content.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

I’ve noticed a lot of camera reviewers making hay about having to “guess” the focus distance with this camera but in real world use I have found this to be a complete non-issue. Even at a wide open aperture, the depth of field is so wide I never miss out on focus.

There is one scenario where the Hasselblad SWC can be a bit of a challenging tool - working in tight spaces. To be fair, I’m not sure the SWC was really meant for small rooms. This is a landscape camera through and through. However, I’ve never been one to be contend with using a camera purely in the situations it was designed for. I recently used the Hasselblad SWC on a balcony overlooking downtown Portland that was about four feet wide and only about three feet deep. It was tight quarters for sure, but I think the Hasselblad SWC is perhaps the only camera I own that could have pulled off some good images at all.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

The challenge to using the SWC in small spaces is the fact that the closer you get to your subject, the more the viewfinder on the top of the camera becomes “off”. The fancy term for this would be Parallax Error. In other words, what I’m framing with the viewfinder on the top of the camera isn’t the same thing the lens is seeing just below it. When your subject is far away, the difference is minuscule and practically undetectable. The closer one gets to the subject, the more dramatic the difference is. On a tiny balcony I was forced to be only a few feet from the model meaning I was guessing my adjustments big time.

Thankfully practice can make perfect. Or as perfect as visual art can be anyway.

Reticulation With Black and White Film

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The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been incredibly hot the last week or so. Heat waves are not my favorite thing, in part because it can make working with analogue photography quite difficult. Not only is it unbearable to go outside to make actual photographs, but it can also make the back end darkroom process a bit of a pain to work with. In my case, the difficulty can be the reticulation effect with film.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford HP5 120 film. Film was developed in cold water and rinsed later in hot water to get the reticulation effect.

What is film reticulation you might ask? In the world of emulsions and film, reticulation is simply the science of distorting the emulsion layer to create an overall pattern in the film. The single most important ingredient to produce reticulation is extreme changes in temperatures of developing solutions. In other words, because film emulsion is based with silver, hot and cold temperatures will make the emulsion expand and contract creating a textured effect.

When the weather is incredibly hot, the water will come out of my tap in spurts ranging from hot to cold at random. Normally I develop my film at an even 68 degrees. But during heat waves, the water will vary from about 60 degrees to 85 degrees at will.

Now, if I wanted to I could use ice cubes and steady water baths to keep my temperature consistent. In most cases that is what I do. However, sometimes I will just embrace what mother nature put in front of me and run with it, crossing my fingers that the effect will work out in my favor. I think that was the case here as the foggy misty morning where this photograph was taken compliments the reticulation effect quite well.

So hey it worked out!

As always with film however, you just never know and letting the reticulation effect take control in the development process can be risky.