Category Archives: Dragon

“Paper Or Plastic?”

by Steven Lederman

I had my slides all mounted and ready to ship a week ago.  They had been titled, scanned, and fit into (seamed) sleeves.  The problem was, they wouldn’t fit into the Dragon Folio box.  It was then I noticed that every other slide in the box was mounted in cardboard. Mine were in plastic mounts.  Instead of remounting my original four, I decided to save them for the next loop of Folio A.  I mounted four new selections, all in cardboard mounts;

“Same As Surly Curs” – the title is a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “growlers”).  This was shot  during what is possibly the least-known photography celebration; “World Toy Camera Day”, observed on the third Saturday of October.  I employed a Holga 120 CF stereo camera with add-on wide angle lens attachments (which add vignetting) and a roll of Provia 400 to shoot a few photos on my deck to honour the occasion.  Developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

“DISC-guises” – this image is one I originally considered a focal point failure, but I revisited it, mounted the chips and decided to submit it anyways.  It was shot with a TL-120-1 on APX 100  film, and sent to dr5 for Dev1 processing.

“How To Winterize Your Vehicle” – I’m fairly certain that this was captured on one of a handful of trips to Mclean’s Auto Wreckers in Rockwood.  When I feel the urge to go explore this vast car graveyard, I call ahead, then I bake something with beer for the Mclean’s proprietors to gain my admission – chocolate stout cake, raspberry beer blaster cookies….you get the idea.  It’s either bake them something beforehand or share your photos with them afterwards, and sharing photos is just too much damned work!  Shot with a TL-120-1 on Fuji NHP 400 negative film, then cross-processed in Argentix (Arista) E6 chemicals using a Jobo processor in my basement.

“The Jazz Standard” – this title is also a crossword puzzle type of clue (the answer is “Autumn Leaves”).  This is a pinhole image, and I captured this just prior to Hallowe’en 2018, using one of Todd Schlemmer’s terraPIN Oskar^2 stereo pinhole cameras on a GorillaPod.   I seem to recall that the exposure was somewhere around the 1 min. 32 sec mark.  Todd’s cameras are 3D printed using environmentally-responsible materials.  This roll of Fuji RVP was developed in a Jobo processor in my basement using Tetenal Colortec E6 chemicals.

Bazaans MF A0204 (glamour challenged)

by Boris Starosta

 

With this image, we are trying to convey the model’s struggles trying to stay afloat in an ocean of popular media glamour imagery, which features predominantly thin women.  Bazaans has a “Rubenesque” figure, so her self-image is constantly challenged as being inadequate.  What is she doing there?  Is she vomiting some of the published pop glamour imagery?  I need your help: let me know if you can figure out what it all means.

This was shot in studio with strobes, I think with my “old” Sputnik.

Selene MF D0514 (glamour challenged)

by Boris Starosta

 

 

I’m not sure what to title this shot.  I’m not sure what exactly I’m doing with this composition or concept. About five years ago, a vague creative idea started to form in my mind, that intended to be a “challenge” to glamour imagery in general.  The idea was to create nominally pinup, or nude, or glamour type imagery, but to embed into the image something that was disturbing.  It might be an an odd or disturbing detail that would upend an otherwise tranquil scene, an “easter egg” that would only be discovered if you explored the image relatively carefully and closely.  Or it might be an image that more directly challenges the conventions of glamour photography, or that shows in some other way the “truth” behind a model’s reality, which might be quite the opposite of what the picture superficially conveys.   This project is naturally self-referential and introspective, as it examines my own critical thoughts on the nature of nude or erotic image making, what it means for the artist, the model(s), or even the audience… and by taking that examination directly to the audience, I hope to challenge the audience to examine itself.

So this picture of Selene is one of several attempts I’ve made over the past few years at creating a “glamour challenged” or “challenged glamour” type of image – I’m still finding my way in this project, and can’t say that I feel any of the resulting images so far are particularly successful.  I am still dissatisfied with them.

The day began with Selene and I looking for some pretty, natural spot in which to shoot, and after some hours, we ended up at this river not too far from the roadside. We set up and shot numerous standard or ordinary nude and semi-nude images of her posing among the rocks in this little river.  She knew that in the end I’d be asking her to be getting into the water, but by the time that moment came, she was reluctant – she’d already noticed how cold the water was, after having put her foot into it several times.  But she was a champ, and finally took the plunge.  She gave quite a shout upon first entering the water, but then concentrated on giving me some poses.  I had wanted her to look  both “attractive” but somehow in trouble, distressed or drowning (?) in this river – and I thought she came up with some passable looks.  I think we were both surprised by how she hardly needed to act looking uncomfortable, or indeed of distressed.  As we quickly learned the water was indeed brutally cold, and after only thirty seconds to a minute, she needed to come out.  I wrapped her in blankets, shivering violently, and it took her probably twenty minutes to recover from this seemingly innocuous dip in the water.

Kat MF A0118 “Full Service”

by Boris Starosta

Kat’s Full Service was shot at a perfectly chaotic and disheveled, local “hole in the wall” tire/repair garage in an older part of town.  I’d been looking for a place like this for years, to re-interpret a famous picture by Herb Ritts, Fred (google “Fred with tires” there are actually several variants).  After finding this shop in 2013 or so, I shot my first “Fred” session with my beloved partner M, and though this produced some wonderful MF3d images, I feel somewhat restrained in publishing them.  To have greater freedom in publishing the image, I decided this past year to reshoot it with a “professional” model, and this slide is one of the images that came out of that session.  (By the way, Kat really was a professional, and of the nicest sort.  She was super helpful and accommodating in the challenging location, totally un-self-conscious and focussed on the modeling tasks at hand, and spontaneously creative in her posing, even after we had attracted a small audience of passers by.  And she was fairly easy on the eyes, too;-)

Now, this particular image does not follow on the Herb Ritts image.  (I did get one good facsimile of Ritts’s “Fred” with Kat on film, but I am holding onto it, read on).  But at least this image is in focus!  While this session with Kat produced many fine images on my digital rig, my efforts with film were unfortunately plagued by bad luck and, frankly, operator error due to my long absence from shooting.  (The last time I’d shot a model with film was about one year prior, in the summer of 2017 – Selene at a river, an example included in this round of the folio).  I shot three rolls of 120 with a “new” Sputnik, yielding 36 stereo pairs, and a pair of 220 rolls with my twin Mamiya 6 rig, yielding 24 stereo pairs.  This particular shot came from the Mamiyas.

All of the Sputnik shots were essentially out of focus…  either I made a mistake, or the lens markings were off.  The garage in the background was in perfect focus, but the model herself was a bit soft on all of the Sputnik shots – a very great disappointment!   This was only the second time I had used that Spud, which I had acquired in 2018, after the first couple of test rolls seemed to come out fine.  But the session with Kat was more demanding: it was more close up, and due to the light in the shade, I had to open the apertures a little bit, shooting at f16 I think.  The imagery, though “out of focus” for MF3d slide viewing, is however good enough for scanning and stereoview printing… but you know that is of little consolation.

All the Mamiya shots were in excellent focus, but a different type of operator error caused more than half the shots to be badly out of alignment – and in such an odd manner that there is no fixing it.  I might include a copy of one of those in future, as an exercise or challenge for everyone to figure out what I did wrong.  This view of Kat – “Full Service” – however does not suffer from the alignment problem.  It is one of less than ten stereo pairs that ended up looking pretty good.

The upshot is that I’ll probably want to return to this garage a third time with a model – beating this creative idea to death as it were.   I haven’t decided yet, but I imagine the guys at the shop won’t mind.  They’ve been quite amused to have me there with a model.

 

PS: prior to the session with Kat, I tried to get two warm up filters for the Mamiyas at least, but couldn’t get them in time.  Next time around the color will be much better.

 

Bazaans MF C0109

by Boris Starosta

 

Alright.. this one is a little bit nutty.  I hesitated putting this in the folio, but I thought: it’s okay if people see where and how I make mistakes…. and yet it might still be entertaining!

The film had gone bad, probably just from old age.  Both L and R show poor contrast, weak blacks.  The film looks underexposed, though that seems unlikely to happen to me in studio.  And the L and R film shows a slightly different color, both tending too much towards magenta.  So: let that be a lesson to me: stop using twenty year old film!

But worse than these defects is that I shot too close… way, way too close up, given I was shooting with the twin Mamiya 6 rig, which has a stereobase of over 3 inches.  What was I thinking!?  I wanted to have an image that did not include the waist, I just wanted head and shoulders and chest.  I’ve shot that way before doing cha-cha with a motor-drive Hasselblad (baseline of maybe an inch), but here for some reason I thought it would work out with the twin rig.  Silly.  Shooting from farther away might have worked better – if I’d had some longer lenses (e.g. 150 mm).

But still I think the the image is interesting.  Note that even with the far points set at infinity separation – i.e. the edge of her elbow, not four feet away from me, set to infinity separation – the near points could not be brought to be “behind the stereo window.”  So the actual space of her body, which spans a depth of just a foot or 18 inches, in the MF3d view geometry effectively spans five feet to infinity.  There’s a lot of stretch!

This is the way I shot for many years in 35 mm film, using a twin rig of film SLRs.  All those early images of mine look too stretched to me now – but I guess old habits, or old errors die hard.

I hope you can enjoy it anyway.

Lock Machinery, C & O Canal

by Paul Gillis

This device is mounted next to Lock 10 on the old Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, near Cabin John, Maryland.  I think it opened & closed a sluice gate that would flood the lock to raise the canal boats up, as they travelled up the Potomac from Washington.  Unfortunately, the canal fell into disrepair & stopped being used in the early 20th century.  But it was made into a national park, and some of the locks & aqueducts are maintained as historic tourist attractions.

I took this photo with my Sputnik on Provia 100F, around sunset under a cloudy sky.  I think my exposure was 2 seconds.  I carried a digital SLR with me to serve as my exposure meter (and to take a few 2D photos & cha-chas.)

–Paul Gillis

Ring in the Rock

by Paul Gillis

In August I was trying to take some pictures near the Chain Bridge, which crosses the Potomac from Arlington to D.C.  It’s a fairly standard steel girder bridge, but a much earlier bridge at the same spot was a chain suspension bridge, and the name apparently stuck.  I spotted this iron ring embedded in the rock near the western abutment; perhaps it was a part of the old suspension bridge.

Taken with my Sputnik on Provia 100.

–Paul Gillis

Fairview Lake at Dusk

by Paul Gillis

A small lake near my home in Falls Church.  I took this with one of several Sputniks I have, the only one that has had internal flocking & light seals added.  Unfortunately, its lenses don’t seemed to be closely matched, or maybe they just need their relative focus and their shutters adjusted.  This was taken after sunset with a ten second exposure (or maybe longer).  Luckily there wasn’t much wind.

–Paul Gillis

Fountain of Faith

by Paul Gillis

This is just a small part of an amazing sculptural group in the National Memorial Park, a cemetery near my home in Falls Church, Virginia.  It was made by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles in the early 1950’s.  Unfortunately the water works were out of commission when I took this picture.

I shot it in 1999 with two Mamiya C-330’s on a tripod.  That was a massive rig!  I can’t remember what lenses I used, but I think they were short telephotos, maybe 135’s.  After a couple of outings with that setup, I basically gave up on medium format stereo, until my interest was rekindled last year.

–Paul Gillis

Jaguar

by Brian Reynolds
Jaguar

Jaguar

 

While walking into the center of town to visit the local museum my younger daughter and I came across this very nice Jaguar parked in the middle of the town square. Unfortunately it was not parked in a way that would allow me to get the town fountain and the museum in the background. Later, when we got out of the museum, the car was gone.

This was taken with a handheld (string monopod) Sputnik on Fuji Provia 100F (aka RDP III). The film was developed and scanned by TheDarkroom.

University Housing

by Brian Reynolds
University Housing

University Housing

 

Based on Google translate, this building is apparently student housing for a fraternity associated with the university in Heidelberg. It is right next to Heidleberg Castle, where I was standing when I took this photo. I guess I went to the wrong university.

Taken with a Sputnik on Fujifilm Provia 100F (aka RPD III). The film was developed and scanned by TheDarkroom.

Schloss Schramberg Ruins

by Brian Reynolds
Schloss Schramberg Ruins

Schloss Schramberg Ruins

 

These are the ruins of the castle on the hill above the town of Schramberg, Germany. My wife’s maternal Grandfather was from Schramberg, and we have a photo of him from almost 100 years ago sitting on the edge of the ruins with the town down below in the background.

This was taken with a handheld (string monopod) Sputnik on Fuji Provia 100F (aka RDP III).  The film was developed and scanned by TheDarkroom.