I went to the Loch Raven Resevoir two days ago with a couple of friends and my Hasselblad came with me. I loaded it up with some Kodak Tmax 400 film and off we went. I developed them myself that night, which I enjoy immensely, and figured out how to scan them on my cheap flatbed scanner.
I found an old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera when cleaning out my mom’s house, so I loaded it up with some 120 film (with modified spool) and I plan on taking some photos tomorrow with it to test it out. It is supposed to take 620 film, so I had to cut off the edge of the spool for it to fit in the camera.
Since I will be out and about anyway, I loaded some of the same film into my Holga 120n camera. I have never used the 6×4.5 mask with it before, I’ve only ever used it for 6×6 negatives.
I have two boxes of photo chemicals being delivered tomorrow, so I will be able to develop the photos tomorrow night with any luck. The past two times the UPS guy got here, he didn’t just leave the packages here, he left a notice instead. I am going to have to write a note to tell him to leave them this time, so I can do the developing tomorrow rather than have to wait.
I have been working with Fuji FP-100c45 negatives lately. I am ecstatic to have found out about this tecnique, since the Polaroid 55 and 665 packs are beyond expensive. I do have a stock of Polaroid 665 in my fridge, but I do not want to use it except for my next book that I put together.
Process:
1. Take your photo, and overexpose it by 1-1.5 stops. This will make the negative the proper exposure, but overexpose the print. Then, when you pull it from the camera, do not peel it.
2. Tape the photo, negative (black) side up to a piece of glass. Then, brush undiluted bleach onto the black backing, being careful not to let it leak under the photo.
3. Rinse thoroughly with water until all of the black backing has been removed.
4. Peel the photo from the negative.
5. Rinse the negative again until it is clean.
6. Dip into water/photo-flo mixture and then hang to dry.
Once dry, it is like any other negative and can be scanned or printed as such. I used a color negative in the example, but you can also use Fuji FP-100b. This method only works for the 100 speed, and does not work for Fuji FP-3000.
Well, it’s been awhile since I have posted any sort of updates. I haven’t really been doing much other than taking photos. I haven’t gotten any of them developed though, so I can’t post them. I did send one roll of 35mm slide film out to Fuji last Friday, so I am hoping to have that back by this Friday. I’ve never sent film out to be developed before though, so I don’t know how long it will take to get back to my apartment. I believe the plant is in Kansas, which isn’t that far away, but it certainly isn’t right next door either. I also have three rolls of 120 film that I want to get developed tomorrow. I have two rolls of slide film and one roll of color negative.
Other than the photography, I have been interested in doing photo transfers onto wood and canvas. I found a technique that is supposed to work with toner prints, but I haven’t been able to try it yet since I don’t have access to a printer that uses toner instead of ink. I am going to have to go to the print lab to make prints, but I will probably wait until next week to do it.
Once I find where I packed my scanner, I will post some photos.
Well, it’s been awhile since I last updated, so I figured a new photo dump would be an appropriate update.
I have been experimenting even more with Polaroids lately. I find the instant prints to be so easy to do, that I can’t help myself. The convenience is a great aspect of it. However, I certainly wouldn’t turn down using one of my film cameras. I actually have five or six rolls of film that need to be developed. Once Summer gets here, I will have time to develop them and scan them. Until then, Polaroids will be the only thing showing up on the blog.
Did a series for a friend this evening. It gave me an excuse to use my Polaroid SX-70 and some ATZ film.
Well, I have started designing my next two books. One is to display my photography and the other is my newest novel. To do so, and to be comfortable with it, I have studied traditional book design as well as more avant garde book design for awhile now.
The first step in creating a pretentious book is knowing how to pretentiously use white space and the proper text to margin ratio. This goes all the way back to Gutenburg’s time. Since I am making a standard size 6″x9″ book, that means the ratios should be (clockwise from top) 3:2:6:5. Here you can see my layout for spreads including the grid lines, crop lines, and text box (in red.)
The next step is choosing a pretentious font to use for your book. Generally, for moderate pretention, stick to serifed humanist fonts.
Humanist fonts, sometimes referred to as Venetian, appeared during the late 1400s. They were modelled from the more open and airy Italian script of the day. You can determine if a typeface is Humanist several different ways.
The lowercase “e” has a sloping crossbar.
Small x-height
Low contrast between stroke widths
Dark color (Not color in the traditional sense, but of the overall darkness on a page)
For both books, I settled on Adobe Jenson Pro. While it is pretentious, it is still perfectly legible. For a bit of added pretention, you can use blackletter typefaces. These are so pretentious, they are almost impossible to read!
Third, use proportional, “expert” numbers wherever possible. It doesn’t matter if you are using them correctly, you are in it for the pretention!
Next, you want to make sure you are using nonstandard ligatures. A ligature is a special glyph used in place of a pair or group of singles letter such as ffj, ft, fh, fi, fl, and ff. While there are plenty of standard ligatures, they are not nearly pretentious enough! Instead, use the nonstandard ligatures.
Last but not least, is the most important tool of pretention handed down by the gods… discretionary ligatures! These ligatures are so powerful that the sheer amount of pretention contained in just one is enough to split the world in half! They say “Hey, look at me! I know about typography!” more than anything else you could possibly do. Use them wisely.
There you have it. How to master the power of pretention in five easy steps.
You may remember that I wrote several articles awhile ago for Empty Easel. I was contacted by the editor of the site today wanting to know if I would be willing to contribute weekly or bi-weekly reviews of sites in order for the site to remain unbiased; I agreed to do it.
So you may want to take a peek over at Empty Easel to see the reviews I post.
Well, it is time for my yearly attempt at a digital painting. I enjoy doing them, but not enough to actually do them more often. This one has been more fun than normal though for some reason. I think it is because I have been using a lot more layers than normal.
Anandi and I went on another photography excursion, which seems to be our new routine every Friday. This time, however, we left the city. I brought along some of my Polaroid 669 film as well as a pack of 100 Chocolate film. Every time I use the Chocolate, I love it.
