Hosta leaf patterns in black and white
Hosta Study
Category Archives: a32
Busy Pollinator
Close up shot of a honeybee on a dahlia
Keep it down up there, Willya?
Keep it down up there, Willya?
One of the reasons I wanted, and built, this Macrobox was to capture shots of Tess in MF3D. I knew it wouldn’t be an easy pursuit because the moment I started doing something she would be all over it. “No, Tess, I want you *in front* of the camera. Not *on* the camera.” That sort of thing.
I was able to catch her in a quiet moment when the camera and strobes had been pre-set for her position. I like to think that in this shot she is hollering at some kids upstairs to be quiet. In fact I caught her in mid yawn.
Sunset Log, Big Bear Lake, CA
Running out of daylight, but time for one more shot so I grabbed this sunset with the near silhouette of the log along the frozen shoreline of Big Bear Lake in February of 2022. You can see across the big part of the lake in this view and most of the lake is not frozen, just the end where we were. It was a satisfying journey to get out of the cabin and run along the nature trail and get back before the temperatures dropped to single digits. The next day would be great skiing.
Kids on the Log, Big Bear Lake, CA
The kids enjoyed a little climbing adventure on this log. Eventually we settled down into this arranged pose for the cha-cha shot on my Fuji GA645w. It was getting cold and the sun was going down fast. Glad to have this memory of my kids, who are 14,12,11,9 in this picture.
Kids at Frozen Shore, Big Bear Lake, CA
Lucky for me, I was able to encourage and coach my kids into being avid runners. We suited up and ran out to this frozen shoreline of Big Bear Lake before sunset and they were happy to take a break and pose for this cha-cha shot with my Fuji GA645w. I was fortunate the winds had died down and the lake water was still, allowing me to capture this moment from our 4 mile run.
Frozen Log, Big Bear Lake, CA
For ‘Ski Week’ over President’s Day I took my family up to Big Bear Lake for some local skiing. We were lucky to catch a storm and some fresh snow. The weather was cold in the teens and this side of the lake froze over. I got in some running before sunset and took my Fuji GA645w with me. This cha-cha has some nice light and no water movement, so it worked out well. This was also my last roll of Fuji Provia 400x, a favorite film stock of mine. When I got home I looked on eBay and was shocked to see the sky high prices. Those 2D shooters don’t deserve this film; it should be reserved for us 3D people. My 2 cents.
Nik Sekhar A32 Submission
[This post was created by Ian Andvaag on August 2, 2023 to create a place for people to leave comments on Nik Sekhar’s slides. It has been dated to February 4, 2022 which is when Nik had the folio.]
[Flowers Close-Up]
[Front Yard]
[Nik’s Son Holding Cat]
[Star Wars Birthday Cake]
Ray Dillard – Some old, some new, some that didn’t work so well
I continue to experiment with multiple exposures. I had some failed attempts at indoor shots; somewhere my math went horribly wrong! I will continue to work on the math and measurements and make more attempts at indoor multiple exposures.
This first image I have included, titled “Angles”, is a look at shooting not only multiple exposures, but a variety of camera angles. I was interested to try and create a combination of vertical and horizontal lines among obviously diagonally skewed lines. I was also interested in the skewed lines being confused further by clearly being objects that should NOT be skewed. I plan to do more experimenting with this angular approach to multiple exposures. This is from a recent set of experiments. Five exposures on my Sputnik, handheld, with Fuji Velvia 100.
“Angles”
The next image is titled “Global Focus 3”. This variation of an image posted in a previous pass of the folio utilizes a slightly different alignment of the multiple shots. This variation is presented as it solves some of the issues commented on about the original version, while having other issues that worked better in the earlier version Global Focus presented a few years back. Thus is the nature of experimentation! I am a musician who has found experimentation to be a primary element of my 40+ year career of music making. This is just an extension of that reality. Two exposures on my Sputnik with Fuji Velvia 100.
“Global Focus 3”
Metal sculpture by Canadian sculptor Roy Hickling.
The third image I have included is “The Incursion”. This is also an earlier shot where I attempted to carefully place an object in a specific part of another object using a quadruple exposure. It is close to what I had hoped for, but size, perspective, alignment and exposure is a massive set of variables to deal with! Same sort of challenges as found in “Angles” above. Three exposures on my Sputnik with Fuji Velvia 100.
“The Incursion”
Metal sculpture by Canadian sculptor Roy Hickling.
Thanks to Steve Lederman for scanning these images for me!
Steve also developed some of the film for me in his home-basement-lab and used his superior skills to aid in some of the mounting.
Stereoscopic Creatures And Beasts, Or Where To Find Them
“BAR BAND“
Another pinhole picture, to the delight of some, and much to the chagrin of others. This is the mighty Heavyweights Brass Band entertaining a throng at Toronto’s Rail Path, an activity that started with the COVID 19 lockdown. The band decided to rehearse outdoors; a crowd soon gathered and threw money at them, so they made their Rail Path get-together into a weekly ritual. Seen here are Tom Richards, sousaphone, Lowell Whitty, drums, and Paul Metcalfe, tenor saxophone. Not pictured; John Pittman, trumpet, and RJ Satchithananthan, trombone. The image was a bit difficult to mount with the 3D World mounts – the step at the bottom left juts out on the left image more so than on the right image. I did try to use a cardboard close-up mount, but then a good portion of the image was lost. Just don’t glance down at the bottom left hand corner and you’ll be fine.
Captured with Clint O’Connor’s Limited Edition Stereo Flyer (#11 out of 100), on a Gorillapod, 2 second exposure, expired Fuji Provia 100F. Processed in my JOBO unit.
“MONOCHROME LAKE“
This was shot in a remote region of Northern Ontario, situated on Monochrome Lake, not to be confused with Black Lake, Mono Lake, Grey Lake or Gray Lake. The dumping of nuclear waste in the region caused the vegetation to devoid itself of its photosynthetic pigments, chlorophylls a & b, resulting in its inability to preferentially absorb light. This manifests as foliage with a very grey appearance. Monochrome Lake has experienced its fifteen minutes of fame – it was used as the location for the incredibly popular “Creature From The Black And White Lagoon” 3D movie franchise. It has also been featured in some episodes of the television series “Black And White Mirror”, currently streaming on one or another of those television streaming services that streams television. I guess that’s technically more than fifteen minutes of fame, as those “Creature” movies are well over an hour each. But I digress. Just in case you think I’m trying to hand you another one of my tall tales, I shot this image on Velvia 100 to prove that the area really looks like this in person. There. I knew that would convince you.
Captured with a Sputnik, handheld, on Velvia 100. Processed in my JOBO CPP2 unit.
“BEWARE OF DUCK“
I wanted to obtain some sunflowers, as one is wont to do, and was shadowed by a highly-trained, very aggressive Attack Duck. It was a situation most fowl! I was operating on a wing and a prayer as it tried to egg me on! When I finished gathering the sunflowers I told it to send me the bill!
Captured with a 3D World TL120-1 modified with a Thurston lens board and Mamiya 55mm lenses (TL120-55) on EGGspired KoDUCK E100G, sunny 16 (Sunflower 16) rule, processed in my Jobo CPP2 unit.
“SCREAMING HEADS TWO“
A wide angle cha-cha experiment. The lower left hand corner has an issue, so don’t glance down there. I’m sensing a theme! I shot this handheld, so perhaps it’s time to invest in a slider bar. From my similar submission to the recent Dragon Folio loop:
“Every year, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day falls on the last Sunday in April. It is an excuse for my daughter and I to spend a day together photographing various locations in Ontario using pinhole cameras. I will usually pack a “lensed” camera in addition to my pinhole camera(s). On WPPD 2019 we visited artist Peter Camani’s residence which hosts his grand scale outdoor art exhibition. There are various shapes of cast concrete screaming heads situated throughout his 310-acre property near Burk’s Falls, Ontario, each sculpture being in the 15-20 foot tall range. On this occasion I had packed my Hasselblad SWC, and I can’t remember if I was consciously trying to capture a stereo cha-cha image or not. In any case, I found an uncut roll of film with three pairs of images that looked like they might work as stereo pairs. Despite some anomalies between the left and right chips, my brain can fuse these images into a stereo image. Hasselblad SWC, yellow or orange drop-in filter, expired Kodak Aerochrome film, home processed with a Jobo CPP2 unit.”
Bridges
Charles Bridge Hyper
This is the famous Charles Bridge(Karluv Most) in Prague. I have photographed this bridge from many angles, finally in hyper.
This was shot with my Lubitel rig, although this one was done cha-cha style. It is on Provia f100 film, but shutter speed, aperture and stereo base are long forgotten. This slide was a challenge to mount, but had I cropped it a bit more, I probably could have saved some serious frustration.
Charles Bridge Prague
Another hyper shot of Charles Bridge (Karluv Most), probably on the same day, from my Lubitel rig. My bar maxes out at about 18″ which this could be.
Stag Bridge in Pisek, South Bohemia.
This bridge is older (late 13th century) than Charles Bridge in Prague (early 15th century), but built in the same style. The river Otava, which it spans, flows into the Vltava river, so a riverboat traveling downstream will arrive quickly in Prague to pass under the younger cousin Charles Bridge.
TL120 on Provia f100 film
Rural Scarborough Suspension Bridge
Keeping with the bridge theme I decided to include this image from last fall. It was intended as a fall colour shot but I decided to also include this rural bridge in suburban Scarborough (a suburb of Toronto). This area is difficult to develop, so while it is only a short distance from the ever expanding subdivisions, I hope this quaint bridge carries on for a long time. There are two other, similar bridges nearby, one of which is 15 seconds drive up the road.
Shot with my TL120 on Provia f100
Ian Andvaag A32 submission
Boreal Floor. Velvia 100, TL120.
From the Esker. Provia 100F, TL120 cha-cha
Two of my contributions to this loop, Boreal Floor and From the Esker were taken at Narrow Hills Provincial Park in northern Saskatchewan. The latter was taken from an esker (ridge of earth pushed up by the last glacier) that runs along the park. It provides a nice vantage point looking over the boreal forest and numerous small lakes. Here I attempted a hyper stereo with my TL-120 by covering one lens and moving the tripod about a metre between exposures. There was a significant amount of smoke from wildfires in the area when I last visited the park, so unfortunately the sky was washed out and featureless in all of my slides.
Crested Wheat Corral. Superpan 200, reversal processed in D67. TL-120 with Hoya R72 filters.
Web. Provia 100F, TL120.
The other two images were taken at Grasslands National Park very near the Saskatchewan-Montana border. Crested Wheat Corral is in the west block of the park where the remains of several small ranches can be found. The area is very arid, and ranchers tried tilling the soil to improve the pasture, but this turned out to be a poor practice. They introduced Crested Wheatgrass (native to Russia) to the disturbed soil with limited success, but it did prevent further erosion. Large portions of the park still contains undisturbed virgin prairie, which is probably one of the most disturbed landscape types on the globe due to its agricultural usefulness. It’s somewhat off-topic for MF3D, but I made a surprisingly successful silver gelatin print from this slide by making an internegative. I think that this approach yields much better results than a direct reversal print.
Web was taken in the East block of the park in the early morning sunlight. I’ve been trying to branch out a bit and experiment with limited depth of field shots, in particular close-ups. I’m not sure if I’ve found much success. I think the image could have been improved by stopping down another stop to get a faster shutter speed, as I was not able to freeze the web’s motion in the gentle breeze, despite waiting several minutes for the wind to die down.
Spring 2021 – Melting Out
Following the Year That Didn’t Happen, I have a mashup of things from the past, which seemed relevant to the present.
Prototyping Tl120-55 – When I got my TL120-55 lens boards back, I mounted a set of lenses on it as best I could and set out to find a suitable test subject. This receding line of houses and railings was my choice. There was lots of depth, good light, and an abundance of textures. After studying it for lens and camera defects, the image really began to grow on me. I pulled it back out because emerging from Covid feels (to me) a bit like melting out of a snowy winter.
It is a quintessential Juneau scene. A row of company cabins, set on the mountain side, each having been modified by different owners over the years. The tight-fitting porches with their mildewing railings, the scrape of snow we hope will melt soon, and the road diving before climbing back up the ridge on the other side.
Story Time With Linda – This image captures 1st and 2nd graders, trailside for a snack and story break. Those children are now grown, and to the best of my knowledge they all survived the year just past. Having watched them all mature through the years, I can say you’re looking at nurses, ballerinas, musicians, geologists, biologists, paramedics, Broadway performers, and smoke jumpers. And I don’t think you can tell from that image who went down which path. (Probably taken with my Sputnik as no one had a TL120-1 in 2005.)
Satendam – And finally, an image of what we didn’t see in the year just past. We didn’t see security fencing, rows and rows of diesel buses, or thousands of disembarking passengers each day. We had days as sunny and glorious as this, but they were quieter with far less competition for the space and beauty. I expect 2022 will see the buses back in force, and the town again shaded by ships. I suspect we’ll be ready for it. (Rolleidoscop)