Film Pics

I finished off the Fuji QuickSnap disposable – somehow winding past 4 exposures – and by recommendation of a friend, was told to take them to Shoppers Drug Mart at King & Yonge. Apparently a lot of photographers use this place. They scan them to 1544x1024 jpeg files for ‘low-res’ meaning essentially they will print small, nothing pertaining to the quality I think. More than enough resolution for web usage. They look pretty accurate and / or pleasing so I left them untouched, some small crops and downsized.

   

 

Do I even need to voice the complaints? I was so happy with them for a first roll! Ok, they’re only sharp near the centre. Whoopee…I hope that’s where my subject’s face is. Not sure who the girl is, but I’ve seen her there many times before and was very willing for a photo. There’s my first discovery about this camera: can’t use them in poorly lit situations. Luckly I wasn’t trying to test its limits too much; I mean I already knew ISO 400 on my own digital doesn’t get you anywhere in low-light. That one was salvageable, but others I took were grain washout.

Already on my second roll! This has definitely mixed up my style some and inspired me to try new things.

New Toys

Not to dis my digital, but the way I operate it isn’t very conducive to taking instantaneous shots. I got a couple nice starter shots by using Portrait mode and the other settings I described, but when I was in Loblaws today I saw a rack of instant single-use film cameras. I never ruled out touching film; I love the colour rendition and latitude. The side of the box said “Superia X-TRA” rated at ISO 400 which I think is a general purpose film. This also makes it a very general purpose camera since the ISO rating is very high for daylight shooting, I just hope the grain isn’t too visible in the end result.



What you get with cameras like these is one split-second shot with no shutter lag or viewfinder blanking. The lens in disposables is also pre-focused meaning anything from one metre away to infinity (background and skies) should be sharp. Of course they are what they are and I’m expecting obvious optical distortions and vignetting, but I won’t know how severe until I finish off this roll.

Googling afterwards, I found Ken Rockwell reviewed this disposable in Nov 2008. The body is different and he didn’t say which ISO 400 film, but I’m guessing Superia still, no reason why it shouldn’t be. I like what he said here about it:

More importantly, if you've gotten bored, befuddled, or otherwise disenchanted with with all the irrelevant computer crap that seems to have replaced actually taking pictures, grab a QuickSnap. It will get you back to the reason you started photography in the first place. Shoot with a QuickSnap, and all the fun and excitement of when we all first started photography is back again!

He continues ranting (it’s truth, I feel it…) for a few more lines if you scroll to Nov 3 2008 here. It’s at the bottom of the page.

Expect People

Lately I’ve had an inner urge to want to photograph random – willing – people. Not some voyeuristic shots pawned off as portraits.
Partly inspired by Gene’s portraits at Starbucks which make fantastic backdrops and a random encounter with my old Starbucks manager, Martin, who ran the Port Credit store for a couple years. Here’s that initial shot to begin them with:



As far as my camera goes, best thing to do is put the mode dial on Portrait and fire off three JPEG’s in continuous mode just in case their eyes blink in one of the shots. The Fuji (S6000fd) tends towards cool tones, but Portrait mode gives a very pleasing rendition, in my judgment. Only parameter adjusted was exposure for +0.20 and White Balance left as it was.

The rest were taken today; two volunteered, one random:

I have a lot to learn and can see this as becoming a very fulfilling project…uh portraits around Port Credit? I’m sure getting to one or two persons a day wouldn’t be difficult and the flocks of photographers walking about at dusk are always willing subjects!

Lesson Learned

It’s pretty cool that our Farmer’s Markets opened last weekend. Our very first in Port Credit and a larger one in the Square One mall parking lot. However, it is UNCOOL that some vendors are miraculously selling things out of season like: corn, blueberries, and grapes to name a few things I’d loooove to have now. I ended up buying some blueberries which tasted like beach sand and citric acid, puh. Ok 1) I will not return to that vendor 2) if you don’t have anything worth selling I can buy from your neighbour and 3) this isn’t like sourcing truffles – if you’re the only one selling blueberries you’ve got a problem.

Now I take with me a super useful list of what’s in season:

Blueberries $2.50?!?!?!? OMGWUT? NO!
A grape vine longer than my vacuum cord for $3?!?! Don’t buy’em!

Traffic Light

I usually avoid shooting at high noon, but this shadow of a traffic light today was ridiculous…

Reminds me of a nautilus.

Below The Bridge

Not that my blog title is in any way bizzare, but I like double meanings and that's what it is...

I love talking about and sharing music, at least that's what I think most of my brain is filled with, but the outlook is bleak for finding mates who share the same enthusiasm for weirdass classical music as I do. At work I was trying to describe a composer I listen to to another usher. To put it best, Giacinto Scelsi writes music around a note, for example A, using accidentals, quarter-tones or any method to slightly alter the pitch; and instead of creating melody/harmony by changing the pitch (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) he would change how the note is played. Yeah, sounds monotonous and hideous already. I inevitably gave up trying to make it sound like the next iteration of Haydn and lent her a CD instead. It wasn't epic fail, more like trying to describe the sea to a blind person.

A few days later I wrote back with some bits about the composer and was reminded of this pretty wicked technique he used on the violins in a piece called 'Ohoi' (for 16 strings, from 1966). I don't have any formal training besides a love of music FOREVER and hoarding CD booklets like pogs. Now this recording on YouTube isn't the one I know, but it'll do. Around 7:20 if you crank it up you can hear bows making rubbing sounds below the bridge. If you play ANY stringed instrument you'd know that you can't make notes on this part because the strings are too tight. In my gigantic opinion, he uses the rubbing effect of the bows in attempt to create sound which is nearly out of aural hearing. MP3 and its psychoacoustic compression is similar where it throws out samples in the lows and highs, but we still perceive the information as being there because of how our hearing works. Anyway, I thought it was a great way of expressing something in the music that couldn't literally be played (a transcendence?).

So that's the title of my blog; if you'd rather think of it as a gremlin with one claw ready to grab your heel and pull you into a canal, go for it.

Why Exist? To have a blog where I can unabashedly post thoughts and not cater to just a photo blog which I had in the past. This kept me from really integrating my life into it and since I don't know what the hell Photography is after two years maybe it'll make me a better Photographer. What I think I know about Photography is; in regards to technical, composition, aesthetics, blah: when it matters, none of that matters.

My old blog: http://verylittlebrain.blogspot.com/