Hardcore Hammer: BCX Product Photography

After a hard day in the trenches, all I can do is retreat into photography. The art of working with a product until it matches how I see it in my imagination is critical to my personal happiness. For the past week I have been wrestling with how I wanted to shoot the Hardcore Hammer I asked Graeme Cameron to leave behind from the portrait session. I knew the beauty I saw in the product; then it becomes just how to realize the vision using the techniques and equipment one possesses. Perhaps there was a personal element that related to my grandmother, Laura, that added to the importance that I get it right.

The hero shot was shot outside on a table that a tenant threw out a few years back, but that I dragged in from the trash for my balcony: a little bit of ruined Zen. I decided to go with the Linhof Color 4×5, the Schneider Kreuznach 210mm lens at f.16 via the Fotodiox Canon EOS adapter to my 1DmkIII digital body. I used natural light, a Profoto D1 500w light with a medium umbrella to balance the features of the wood and steel. I also used a ColorChecker Passport to correct the Schneider’s weird colour cast when adapter to digital. Overall, I absolutely love this image, despite my original desire to make it far more tilted and shifted into non-focus…to me this could easily stand up to any photographer’s product work – Martha Stewart would accept this shot, but Monocle would embrace it like a first kiss on the beach.

The next shot was a little lighter, without the mid-air suspension and featured more sharpening to balance out the Canon 50mm f.1.2 lens’ super-shallow depth of field. Less of a hero shot, it could be easily used as a side image or online promotional shot. Shot with natural light only, it was a precursor to the final shot to check for depth, positioning and colour.

The last product shot was just for my own enjoyment. The blur was meant to pull in the viewer in a sexy, snake-like curve through the sharp section into the green finish. Less of a product shot, it is a memento photograph: I love an object and want to recall it in a dream-like way.

Finally, I thought I would post two final images from the portrait session [poor Graeme said I could post photographs as I saw fit], because unlike all of the other images these were shot on Ilford 100 film with the Hasselblad 501 CM and an 80mm CFE and 12o CFi lens. Maybe I am nostalgic, maybe I see what other people do not, but I feel the film translates onto the screen in a way that stands out from the digital images. While I may have processed a few images to re-create an Instagram-style look that mimics film, film is film.

After a week of processing the assets from this session and blogging about all of the details, I still maintain that this was a perfect session. I had time, I had a subject who wanted his photo taken, I had the luxury of using multiple cameras/lenses/mediums and we came away with a full set of quality portraits. I was also permitted to blog about the experience as much as I wanted, which greatly helped me understand exactly what I appreciated about both the process and the product. Over the past few blogs I have talked about the product, the person, the brand, the techniques, the gear and shown a variety of final products. The purpose of this is to acknowledge that to produce quality photography that matters, a photographer needs to understand all of these key areas. For full disclosure to readers, I should note that I worked with Graeme in an eventual exchange for a Titanis axe [and possibly a hammer as an unexpected bonus] – I am not being paid money, but I love this product so much that I was happy to do the work  in exchange for what he produces. Frankly, that is what good work should provide: things you will remember and care about. Money is money, but in the end it never replaces those things that we love to keep close.

Perhaps I should also note, from a pure business perspective, that if I were relying on my photography for my survival, then the luxury of shooting and producing this many assets without a clear financial turnaround would be financial suicide. However, photography is my passion. I have time to slowly build clientele that I love to work with and who appreciate what I offer. I can take chances on work that a purely professional photographer cannot, and that is a giant advantage in my ability to learn and improve my final mastery of the art form. In the end…this session is done. The discs are burned. Next stop will be to finish out the school year before I head to San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, and Charlottetown to start the summer. East Coast meets West Coast in a miss-mash of photography and food experiences.

 

4×5 Film: The Thunder Bay Series

I picked up the negatives from Northern Artists Lab tonight, and busily scanned the first three sheets of Ilford Delta 100 film from the Thunder Bay adventure. The entire process is much more involved as the negative is giant in comparison to 35mm or even medium format film, and the dust is brutal to Photoshop out. I believe that this has as much to do with my loading the film holders as it does with the nature of these negatives and Northern Artists development this time through. Shooting with a giant camera and a jacket over my head, brought a lot of commentary from the locals in town, but that is to be expected when you are using fifty year old technology that few people would have ever seen before even if they had been alive then.

The first thing to mention is that I truly loved shooting with the Linhof Color 45S with the Schneider-Kreuznach 90mm f.8 lens. While we did have 4 unexposed/ruined film sheets out of 16, that is to be expected when one uses a view camera in the field for the first time, and the $20 wasted is just the cost of learning. The time it takes to set up the camera and get a proper exposure is about 20 minutes, but for images like these that is not an issue: neither the train nor the factory were going anywhere. The process is Zen in nature and not the type of thing I would want to do at this stage if I was relying on the camera for my only shot opportunity. This is not a sports, event or snapshot camera; a view camera excels at landscapes, portraits and still-life.

As a series, I wanted to alter the way the camera captured the basic negative. In my own mind I wanted an almost HDR contrast effect to pull out the details of the railway lines and debris. Using SilverFX Pro 2, I was able to tweak the contrast and remove the foggy nature of Thunder Bay in March, which is no small feat. As an industrial series, I wanted to express the starkness of the abandoned silos; perhaps I was thinking of the wasteland described in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, but I wanted give an ashen quality to the photographs. The Ilford Delta 100 film provided me with a lot of latitude when scanning. Delta is my favourite black and while emulsion for consistency and ability to capture the dynamic range available. I am still looking for a lab to develop the Kodak Portra 400 sheet film that Kodak sent me a few months back so that I can perform lens tests.

Thunder Bay does have many inspiring landscapes, but it was the abandoned industry that appealed to me most. The contemplative nature of view camera photography matched the feeling of the city, and on my March Break I certainly had the time for contemplation. Ideally, I would love to use the Linhof with a digital back and adapter when I am shooting food photography. While the 90mm does not provide much room for tilts or shifts at infinity focus, due to the wide focal length, I imagine that the 210mm would provide me with a great latitude for such work. In an ideal world, I would  be able to procure a newer, digital version of a 180mm focal length for a digital back, though.

In the end, I am extremely happy with both the Thunder Bay series and the large format film camera experience. For the $800 that my entire rig cost used, I firmly believe that this set-up offers the ultimate in learning experiences about photography; experiences that are just not possible using standard 35mm digital cameras.

4×5 Film: The First Linhof Negatives

My first 4×5 negatives came back from Northern Artists lab today, and much to my surprise they were in relative focus and perfectly exposed. In fact, they were exactly as I had imagined the photographs in my mind. The challenge had stemmed from my inability to press the standards close enough with the Schneider-Keruznach 90mm f.8 lens; only after coming in from the blistering cold did I think to switch both standards to the same side of the mount.

The next questions are what do I see here and how did I achieve these photographs? I see the selective focus that draws me deeply to this format. Yes, I can create similar bokeh with a Lensbaby lens or even the 50mm 1.2 lens, but the overall quality is not there in the same way. I do not have perspective control built into the dslr lenses, and though few movements were available with the standards so tightly pressed, there was room for minor adjustments.

In the first photograph the focus is on the clock tower and creating a tilt backwards for the tower in relation to the building’s foundations.  At f.16 and 1/15th exposure on Ilford Delta 100 film the details are extraordinary given how far out of my desired focus (infinity) I was.

The second photograph is an attempt to get at least something in focus from the shoot. I had spent my lunch hour focusing and freezing with the feeling that it was an absolute failure from a final product viewpoint. I aimed my focus at the closest window and hoped for the best. Again, the sweep is clean and the tones are consistent throughout the negative. I am uncertain as to whether either of these photographs could grace the cover of the yearbook I am producing for school, but I hope that the first photograph will hit the mark. The result is much, much closer than I had ever expected after the session.

What do I think of shooting 4×5 sheet film? The process is Zen. The challenges make it exciting to even load film in the bathroom in total darkness. The negatives are large and crisp with tonnes of dynamic range. The cost is about $8 an image [not for machine gunners]. You are limited to how many film holders you own [I own two for a total of 4 photographs]. Development time is about 2-3 days, and few labs do this type of work. C-41 is harder to find processing for than BW film.  Still, I feel portraiture would be spectacular within a studio set-up wherein you proofed with a digital camera to ensure the lighting was accurate and then shot when with the 4×5 when the subject was at his or her best. If this is what can be achieved on my first attempt using the sheet film, then I can only imagine what V. and I can do after the next weeks ahead.

Cairo: Beyond the Pyramids and Mummies

The situation in Cairo is critical, yet misunderstood by anyone who has not walked this ancient city’s streets. BBC reports one viewpoint while The Globe and Mail featured nine pages of news on the rioting and unrest. Still, the situation on the ground is so far from the freedom chants that Americans imagine in their minds; this is rioting for food and basic living conditions. If the world is not careful, then Egypt will fall under the sway of extremist groups just as Germany, Italy, Iran and China did when their revolutions took them to dark places.

I traveled through Egypt and Jordan for three weeks in 2009. Actually, that is where I met V., and Cairo will always remain the reformative place where I found myself. I woke up in Cairo more than a few times,with bats flying across the swimming pool at midnight, and the airport is straight out of an apocalyptic novel with hulking jetliner bodies off the runway filled with sand. I even spent my final night at the luxurious Oberoi Hotel in a double suite overlooking the pyramids.  I did the tourist traps. The Egyptian museum is the worst museum in the world; it is like a high school from the Silent Hill video game series. Dark, hollow, and void of any reverence, the museum is a tomb for Egyptology. The pyramids are littered with Coke cans and camel rides. Cairo is not a place for the faint of heart or the delicate hygiene that requires clean money or water. No…I do not want to ride your camel!

In Cairo, I spent an afternoon away from the tour group in search of the real city. Eventually, I followed a small herd of sheep into the market place where I was the only Westerner to be found. It was a ghetto area. Frankly, had I not been slightly off-kilter at the time from the collapse of my marriage and a violent illness on the Nile, I would never have imagined walking through the area, let alone taking three rolls of film. It was a National Geographic moment, wherein I felt like a part of moments greater than me. I was eventually chased by two younger men in a truck who swore at me, metal wrenches in hand,  for taking photos of women. The market was the only place I had even seen Egyptian women, so I could only hazard a guess that it was not acceptable to take photographs. Frankly, most Egyptians paid me no notice as my EOS 3 with the 70-200mm lens must have seemed like anything but a camera to them. My death-defying retreat left me without any idea how to get back to the hotel, and walking through tense neighbourhoods until I spied a main thoroughfare. Truthfully, I did my best to get into trouble there. I ate the food, drank water from the sink, walked the streets at night alone, and took pictures of things I probably should not have, but in the end Cairo let me do as I wished, like an indulgent soldier dealing with a child.

When you line up for bread that may run out, then you know the value of food. Until the world addresses Egypt’s need for financial support and reform, it sits upon a powder keg of desperation. Cairo dreams just as we do, but when it wakes up the city may be on fire.