K. Praslowicz, Photographer

$12 Bag Of Mystery Slides

Mon, 25 May 2020 18:41:13 Z

Back in February of this year I got a message from one of my friends asking if I wanted to buy this bag of random Kodachrome & Ektachrome slides in a zip-lok bag for $12 he found at a local antique store.

You’re damn right I did! He purchased the slides and shortly after we had what probably looked like a shady daylight drug deal on the side of the road.

I’ve sorted through the bag and have picked and scanned a few of my favorite images to share here today. If you are into watching instead of reading, this is also presented as video content on my YouTube channel.

For what it is worth, I’ve done minimal color correction and zero dust removal from these images. In contemporary fine art photography circles I really hate the modern trend of being lazy and leaving dust on images. But in the case of finding an old bag of snapshots, I don’t think it really takes away from the images.

The Photographs

July 1966

The date range of the images starts with this photograph of a mitre wearing Catholic along with some Knights of Columbus from 1966.

Family Snapshot - July 1990

And the most recent slides in the bag, such as this family photograph, comes from 1990.

Bankette - 1975

Here we have a random photograph of an automated banking unit from 1975. A common thing in this day and age, but I expect this was new and novel enough in 1975 that the photographer needed to take a picture of it to show people back home.

Boy - May 1990

Here we have a photograph of a random boy on the street. The kid has some pretty incredible ninja panda attire.

Bong Bridge Sign - July 1985

Some people posing in front of a sign for the Bong Bridge in Superior, Wisconsin. The slide is stamped with July 1985, but according to Wikipedia the bridge didn’t actually open until October 1985. So I’m guessing this is some kind of “Let’s get a photo with this new thing” snapshot.

Busch Garden. Woman with parrots

A woman at Busch Gardens smothered in Parrots. Or are these Macaws? I don’t know. I’m no birdologist.

Circus World, Baraboo, WI - August 1971

Train car at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Jumping Jet Ski - September 1985

Dude jumping a jet ski! RAD! I can tell that this was taken on Lake Superior as the bridge in the background is the John A. Blatnik Bridge. AKA, the other bridge that connects Duluth and Superior that college kids don’t giggle at when they hear the name.

Junk Pile - June 1974

A big pile of junk. Box in front of it mentions Johnny Horizon. I was unfamiliar with this name, but again Wikipedia to the rescue letting me know that Johnny Horizon was a fictional character for an anti-litter campaign in the 1970s. So I’m guessing all this junk is some sort of anti-litter installation.

Kit Carson's Grave - 1987

Kit Carson’s Grave. 1987. Again, I’m not familiar with who Kit Carson is, but Wikipedia tells me he was a famous 19th-century American frontiersman. I didn’t really expect this bag of slides to be so educational. But here we are!

Woman on a bench - June 1987

A woman sitting on a bench. On a whim I googled “Pancake Chef Restaurant” to see if it was still around to place this photograph. And to my surprise it was! Appears to be taken in Mackinaw City, Michigan where the Pancake Chef restaurant still operates.

Miami Seaquarieum - May 1970

Some tight dolphin action photography from the Miami Seaquarium

Giant Pepsi Can - July 1985

Giant Pepsi-Cola can at some 4th of July festivities.

Perils of Pauline - October 1971

Parade float “Perils of Pauline”. The train has EMU written on it which I guess would mean Easter Michigan University. If true that would put this photograph in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Pizza Hut 30th Anniversary Parade Float - May 1988

Another parade float, this time from 1988 celebrating Pizza Hut’s 30th anniversary during the Golden age of pizza hut & Care Bears cross-branding. If there is a Book-It sticker buried somewhere in this image, then it would be the perfect summation of my childhood.

Polly Miller - February 1976

So there were several slides in the bag of this woman in a classroom just labeled “Polly Miller.” I couldn’t Google-fu a good result as to which Polly Miller this may be, or what her claim to fame would have been that the photographer gave her so many images. If you know, please leave a comment.

Portrait - November 1985

Portrait of a woman at a desk.

Suzuki - October 1975

An older man giving an older woman a ride on a Suzuki motorcycle.

Toxaphene - June 1974

Toxaphene! I don’t know what that word means! Might as well look it up and learn another new thing from this bag-o-slides.

OK. Toxaphene was an insecticide used in the 1960 and 70s which ultimately got banned worldwide because, well it was toxic. Taken during the same month and year as the previous junk pile photograph, so probably part of the same sort of environmental causes public installation.

I dig the cowboy in the background.

Woman in front of an arch

Woman in from of some old arch looking things. No date or info on the slide. I’m not even going to try and guess more about it. But it is interesting how the middle section of this pic is all blurry. There were quite a few other slides in the bag that had this same optical defect. I wonder if the photographer scuffed their lens or something on a vacation and just went with it. Who knows.

Wild - June 1987

And finally, my favorite image of the bunch. This girl wearing a WILD shirt with a dog. The color pop from the shirt. The choice framing to cut off her head. ::chef’s kiss::

I could probably go to the r/analog subreddit today and post this photograph with some made up gear specs and probably get 10,000 upvotes for it.

A Canon Autoboy Goes to Bangkok

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 19:44:36 Z

A recent thrift store find of mine was a Canon Autoboy Zoom 105 camera with some leftover film still in it. In a fortunate turn of events, the film had photos on it when developed, something which hasn't happened to any of the other thrift store cameras with film in it that I've purchased in 2019.

If you want to watch a video version of this post about the adventure of finding the camera and developing the film, you can view this video right here. Otherwise, scroll past if you only want to see the found photos.

So no Vivian Maier-esque cache of incredible fine-art photography was on this roll. Just some casual vacation snapshots featuring this woman who appears on every, single, photo, on this roll of film. (except one)

I purchased the Canon Autoboy camera in thrift in a store near the shores of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. Still, I'm reasonably sure that these waters are not the icy waters and rocky shores of Lake Superior. My initial hunch is that this was somewhere in Southeast Asia, or perhaps Hawaii?

First, let's consider the photographs of the woman again. This entire set of photos gives me a "Lover's Gaze" vibe. Who could be the lover behind the camera? Perhaps it is this man posing in a way that just mere friends seldom pose.

If we zoom in on the man's t-shirt in this photo, we see some text that is nearly illegal due to the grain and age of this film. But what it does say in the smaller text is "Concordia Language Villages."

Concordia Language Villages are language immersion camps located in North Central Minnesota. Who knows, maybe the story here is that she came over to do one of these camps. They met there, started dating, and eventually traveled back to her home country together for this vacation? This, however, is all just guesswork and one of a thousand possible scenarios. But also, not exactly knowing what I am looking and wondering what the story is, is a lot of the fun I have in finding stranger's photographs.

Where were these photographs taken?

So, where were these photographs taken if not in Northern Minnesota? Hunting into the photographs, there wasn't much in terms of clues in the signage. Every word I could find printed somewhere was in English. There was also this coiled flag in front of a police station in this photo, which I couldn't find a match for via some casual Google searches.

The temples they are posing against here were the next clue. Searching again for temples of the various countries in Southeast Asia turned up some images of similar-looking architecture in Thailand and Myanmar.

Then there was this particular photograph that provided the clue I needed.

A search for Thailand Royal Guard rewarded me with various photographs of men in the same outfit guarding the Grand Palace in Bankok. Additional photographs from the roll with the palace in it indeed matched up with the building appearing in these photographs!

When were these photographs taken?

I bet you're thinking Hey you dumb idiot! It says 1990 right on the photographs!""

Yes. I see that, but I have my doubts. For one, when I put the batteries into the camera, the DateTime setting defaulted to January 1st, 1990, formatted with the Japanese characters like we see on these pictures. As we can see in the photos, the dates all increment starting from January 1st, 1990. Putting a new battery in and not bothering to set the date because you don't have a pin or anything small enough available to push the little buttons to does so seems a realistic scenario to me.

While I'm not a fashion expert, the clothing doesn't scream 1990 to me. Maybe a few years later, the mid-1990s at the earlierst perhaps?

Then there are the two automobiles in that one photo. I'm not a car guy, so I can't identify them. But perhaps someone reading this would know the year make and model of them to help establish the possible dates?

Perhaps these are from sometime after 2003?

The night before I was about to publish this post, I received a message from a friend who had already watched the video. He did a little digging and came up with a link indicating that Condordia Language Villages used the slogan "Learn. Reach. Grow." for its international day in 2003.

Fastest Marathon Dressed as a Fast Food Item

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 17:40:00 Z

Humans love to dress up, except that in our society, there usually needs to be a specific reason to dress up once a person gets beyond a certain age. Halloween, of course, is the easiest and most popular excuse to slap on both a RoboCop costume and 18th-century British soldier costume to go as Redcoat RoboCop.

Over the past decade, I've taken a slight fascination with how the adult desire to dress up as something fantastic has been busting past the seems of Halloween. Of course, this often comes in a not so great cultural appropriation form of what we see on Cinco-de-Mayo and the annual controversy over what gets worn at Coachella.

I've also noticed certain other events are becoming more and more costume appropriate, but you got to suffer a little to justify it.

Polar plunges seem to be now an appropriate place to wear a costume, but, you are going to suffer once that costume gets soaked with near-freezing water and keeps it good and close to your skin.

Ape: Polar Plunge 2011

Hot Dog: Polar Plunge 2011

Costumed Running

The other major player in costume suffering is any form of running event from 5ks to marathons.

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man & Ghostbuster, 5k 2011

I hadn't realized how deep down the rabbit hole we've come regarding running in costumes until very recently. The other weekend was the 43rd Grandma's Marathon. And as I sometimes do when it is in town, I'll go and observe it with my camera in tow.

I don't often take many photos of the runners themselves and tend to focus mostly on the spectacle that all the other observers create for the event. But I usually snap a few photographs of random runners, such as this one from this year of a woman dressed as a hot dog.

Running Hot Dog, Duluth, Minnesota, June 2019

What I learned later after scanning and posting the photo on my Instagram, is that what I actually have captured is a new Guinness World Records record-setting run of Fastest marathon dressed as a fast food item (female).

Yes. There is a world record category for running a marathon dressed as a hot dog.

I've also immediately realized that there is a plethora of Guinness World Records that can be set in the running world if you decide you want to combine your marathon with Halloween. Here are a few I've found so far by going down the related records rabbit hole.

Fastest marathon dressed as a nun
Fastest marathon dressed as Elvis
Fastest marathon wearing imitation chainmail
Fastest marathon wearing chainmail
Fastest marathon in cricket uniform
Fastest marathon wearing riot gear
Fastest marathon in scout uniform
Fastest marathon dressed in a police uniform
Fastest marathon in a Kung Fu uniform
Fastest marathon in an animal costume
Fastest marathon dressed as a witch
Fastest half marathon dressed as a gingerbread man
Fastest marathon dressed as a Mr. Potato Head
et. al.

In conclusion

What a time to be alive.
At this point, I'm assuming that I could train enough to barely finish a marathon and get my name in the books as Fastest marathon dressed as a Redcoat RoboCop.

Or maybe I can get a category created for Most medium format film photographs taken during a marathon dressed as a fast food item?

Cheat Sheet For Extending Unicolor C-41 Capacity

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 15:14:03 Z

One day back around 2011, I went to my local thrift store on a tip from a friend that there was a bunch of darkroom equipment currently out on the shelves. I didn't expect much more than maybe some cheap 35mm enlarger or something but figured I'd go check it out anyways. What I ended walking away with for $30 was a Jobo CPE-2 system for processing color film and prints.

If you're not up to speed on photography equipment, the summary you need to know is that this equipment still sells for way more than $30. Today in 2019, kits similar to what I got are actively selling for about $500 on eBay. A nice score!

Although I recognized the value of this piece of equipment, I never really used it as there was a lab locally that would process my c-41 film at a very reasonable price with an hour turn around.

Over time the quality of the films that lab was processing went downhill, and I reached a breaking point when somehow the end of almost every other roll of medium format film would get exposed to the light when during processing and it would ruin the first frame on the roll. This especially unacceptable when I started using the 6x17 format as ruining the first frame meant I was throwing away a quarter of the images on the roll.

Thus, I pulled the CPE-2 out of storage and got to work processing my c-41 at home. I've been using the Unicolor Powder C-41 Film Negative Processing Kit for my chemistry, and so far everything has been easy peasy. With the Jobo regulating the water and chemistry temperatures, it is no different or harder than the black & white film I used to process at home.

With a stated capacity of eight rolls per liter of the chemistry, the kit comes out to about $3.12 per roll. Slightly cheaper than having Citizen's Photo develop the film, but without having to wait a week to ship the film across the country.

But of course, the thrifty do-it-yourselfer's second order of concern is how much can this capacity be extended to drive down the costs?

Well. Luckily for us, other people have already done this legwork. The most comprehensive study I've found on extending the capacity of the unicolor powder kits has already been done by 120studio.com

I've only just begun with seeing how long, and now lazily I can store my chemistry and still get acceptable negatives. But what I want to share is a simple printable sheet that converts the formula provided via the 120studio.com link into an easy to use table to keep wherever you process your film.

Download Uncolor C-41 Extended Development Times Sheet

This should be straight forward, but if you need instructions, the first column is the number of the roll(s) to be processed that your batch of chemistry has seen. The second column is the adjust development time based on the formula provided at 120studio.com. The third through fifth columns are there for you to either checkmark or timestamp when that roll of film was processed so you can easily cross-reference and get the next adjusted time the next time you process film.

No more needing to do math or remember how many rolls you've already processed! And with three big chemistry columns, you can go green and reuse the same sheet for three batches of chemistry!

*Extend your Unicolor chemistry capacity at your own risk.

Raiding The Archive 12: The Album Cover Edition

Sat, 15 Jun 2019 15:23:20 Z

Hey everybody! Its time for another thrilling edition of Raiding The Archives!

This time around, I picked an archive binder my shutting my eyes, spinning around, and pointing until my dizzy finger landed on one. Then I picked a random number on random.org and chose that specific page in the binder to determine what to scan. And if you are thinking, "Wow. That sounds like it looked even more exciting than it sounds!" then you would be correct. And also, you are totally in luck as you can watch the whole thing in the video version of this post.

The page that chosen this time was of some black & white film shot on my Yashicamat 124G split between October and December 2009.

The Mower

The first photo I'm going to show from this roll is one that I did scan and post to Flickr back in 2009 when I took it. It is the epic shot of an old lawn mower parked in front of a dumpster.

This probably would have been an unimportant bit of knowledge, if it hadn't been for that rascal Sam H. See, back in 2009 there was this meme going around where you take a random image from Flickr, a random page from Wikipedia, and the last phrase from the last random quote from this quote generating website. Then, using graphic design skills of any level, mash them all up into an album cover.

This meme is what Sam did to my photo once it was uploaded to Flickr, and this album by Suzi Suzuki was the result.

So in honor of this meme, I am once again going to rebirth it with the remaining photographs that I've scanned during this archive raid.

First up, this photo of someone entering a doorway. All sorts of reflections going on here, including one of my myself if you look carefully.

After giving it a spin through the album meme we get this: Doida Station - Fill The World With Fools

Doida Station - Fill The World With Fools

Next up, this street photo of a young man riding a bike. Key things to make your jaw drop about this photo is not only does he have his own face, but also his shirt has a face. Faces for days.

After giving it a spin through the meme, it is now the cover for RM Turnchapel - If it is to be stopped at all. I decided to give this one all the terrible design flair of someone who was cheap and designed it themselves. Hence, Papyrus.

Doida Station - Fill The World With Fools

Here we have a photograph of Ralph's parking space. This spot is for Ralph, and Ralph ONLY! Don't even think about parking here if your name is Eddie.

After the old meme-a-roo, the album that this photo is destined to be used as an album cover is Meanings of minor planet names - My strength lies slowly in my tenacity.

Meanings of minor planet names - My strength lies slowly in my tenacity

You just know this album tries to present itself as being way more profound than it actually is.

And finally, this photo of two men covering up the hedges in the Duluth Rose Gardens.

When memeified, takes on the aura of a very heavy metal album.

Radinovo - Show Your Distrust

Ok. That wraps up this edition of Raiding The Archives. Check out the video version if you're into that sort of thing. And also this blog post I wrote in 2012 doing the same album art game to some other photographs of mine.

Photographing Bar Signs: September Adventures

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:01:15 Z

Last September I did a two day, five-hundred mile drive across Wisconsin to photograph bar signs for my bar sign project. I also packed some video cameras and recorded some behind the scenes footage.

This weekend I finally was able to finish editing this footage into some (hopefully) entertaining mini-documentaries.

Don't forget to read about or watch the video about the background of this project if you haven't.

Day 1

Day 2

All About The Vintage Beer Sign Project

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 01:46:57 Z

Hi. I've uploaded some new video content to my YouTube channel. This time the video is a talk about how I've been working on and photographing for my Vintage Beer Signs Of The Midwest project. Grab a PBR, sit back, and enjoy.

Video Transcription

Hey tube! How's it going? Don't answer that cuz I can't hear you. Last weekend I went out a little, little road trip with my camera and put about five hundred twenty miles on my car and took a bunch of pictures for a project I've been working on. I also did a little behind the scenes footage of this project that I want to cut into some future videos for YouTube, but before I do that I think it would be fun actually just do a little video about the project so when they appear you have some idea what it's all about.

So project spoiler alert: it's about places across the Midwest mostly in Wisconsin that still have a certain type of old Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Style, Blatz, etc. beer signs flying outside of them.

The Project

A little background of how this project came to be. Around October 2017 I felt that I needed to try something different with photography to keep things exciting.

I'd been shooting a lot of 8x10 at the time and just kind of haphazardly been wandering throughout the Great Lakes region looking for stuff to shoot.

I wanted to try a different format, and I realized I'd never used panoramic format outside of the really terrible panoramic that my mom's APS camera did back in the 90s. You know that Kodak thing where it's like smaller than 35mm. Then they faked panoramic by this cropping off the top and bottom, so your pictures look even more disgusting when you got them back?

Yeah! That! I used that, didn't like it. The pictures sucked.

So what I did, I went out I bought myself a legit film camera high-resolution panoramic. The DaYi 617. Straight from China. This camera has a big old strip film about yay big in there, and it makes a nice fat panoramic image.

Having this camera on order, I was thinking about "What am I gonna shoot with this camera?" when it arrives.

For a long time, I've been having this idea of like I want to do something throughout Wisconsin get deep into the rural part of it and make some good imagery. So I was like maybe I could like just do Main Streets of towns under the population of 700?

But, the more that I thought about that it just seemed kind of not that exciting of a subject.

I thought about it some more, and I was thinking about my upbringing because I grew up in population 600 Wisconsin. Another feature of my upbringing is that I lived in a bar my entire life. Not in the bar proper. We had an apartment on top of the bar. But the fun thing was there was no direct exit from the apartment. So to get out of our house good to go through a bar.

Many, many bars back at that time had the old Pabst provided giant light-up PBR sign or Old Style sign depending on which brand got their claws on that bar. And our bar had that, and I realized that like kind of my whole childhood every place we went to was mostly bar to bar for social events, and they all had that sign. To the point that at some point I jokingly started calling it the Wisconsin State flag to have one of those outside of your business.

So I'm thinking about what can I shoot in Wisconsin? I came to the conclusion that I wanted to try normal street scenes, but they all in some way should incorporate that ubiquitous sign that exists throughout the state.

While I was waiting for the camera to arrive, I got the work on Google Maps looking for places to photograph. I started searching for taverns. Flipping into Street View, and if they had one of these signs make a map, make a map. Kept doing that over and over and over and over and over and eventually, I had this giant map with over 400 marks on it that I've still not completed because I haven't really canvassed the southern part of the Wisconsin real well or in the Chicago Illinois area, which I know also has a lot of these signs.

So this project has a very large scope at this moment. I could potentially be shooting this for a long time if I wanted to.

The Map

About making this map. I said most of it is just found by me searching the word tavern, pub, bar, bowling alley and looking at the results. Seeing what has them and then browsing than any other little small town I can find it just using Street View to drive down the Main Street and see what exists there. And I'd say that's probably where 90% of the pins come from. But a lot of these places also exist way outside of any spot that's ever been mapped by Google. So in those cases, I'll have to go to search for their Facebook page, or their Google business profile and then see if somebody at some point had taken a picture of the front of the place that could show up as a sign.

Or in some cases even looking at like just the random pictures people have taken near it of like events and parties there, and just searching in the corners trying to see if I can see the sign hanging out in the background. And, through the process of having the browse a lot of these bars by their customer uploaded imagery, I've kind of reached this conclusion in my head that I think some of the best street photography going on right now is actually on these bars social media pages. Because a lot of them are not taken by anyone who probably thinks they are street photographers. It's just people they're having a good time we have a smartphone shooting their friends but a lot of these pictures just kind of really make me wish I had taken them with like good equipment and high-res and just putting that fine art stamp on it.

So I'd recommend if you got some time to kill just go to Google Maps go to Wisconsin. Search "tavern." Just start browsing their, the pictures. There's a lot of really interesting stuff that's within these albums.

And aside from the picture I've found by browsing Street View, a lot of these are also recorded by a visual identification either by myself driving around or my friends who drive around.

Because it's not uncommon for a lot of places that used to be taverns 20-30 years ago to not be taverns anymore, but they'll still have the sign on it for some reason. Occasionally find like a house that's a converted tavern that still has big old PBR sign floating on it.

So one of the problems I have been having with the Google map view is that a lot of Wisconsin doesn't seem to have been photographed with the Google Street View car since about 2008, 2007. And with a lot of business turnover in the meantime, these signs have disappeared and since then.

For example, the very first, the very first time I went out to shoot this I got the camera I was all excited going to make my first roll film. I picked a little cluster of signs that were only like a 20-minute drive away and like "Yes! I can go shoot all these signs!" I go drive there. I roll in and the whole block is knocked down! There is nothing left! Just dirt. The entire block that had like six signs on it just dead.

I'm like "what the...hmm" So okay. There's also one on the other side of the road. I'll just turn around and shoot that sign.

I turn around and it's gone too! So I'm like "Okay this is my life now." I'm gonna be driving to the middle of nowhere and rolling up to my photo spot it to be gone.

It's kind of a legit concern because outside of a few journeys where I had visually identified that the sign exists and then went back later with my camera, every trip I've taken has at least one sign from Google Maps being dead. So it almost kind of gives me a feeling of like I'm doing a documentary project, but might not be around forever.

But at the same time, there's over 400 of these I've identified so far. So they're probably not gonna all go away in my lifetime. But eventually, if they do it's gonna be a nice little tribute photo series.

Other Peoples' Projects

One would possibly think that like "How has it not been done before? Who hasn't gone out and shot these signs before?" Well, it has been done before. But in different contexts that I've discovered.

One of which is someone around Chicago did one called the Old Style Bar Project where they identified all the bars around Chicago that had an Old Style sign in front and then went into each one, had some drinks. Discussed the place with the owner. Made a little blog post about it. Took some interior photos. It's a neat project, but it seems to have gone dark around the end of 2013.

But the website still does have their map that they made of Old Style signs across Chicago, Milwaukee and into Wisconsin that I've cross-referenced with my own to fill out some gaps that I didn't discover on my own.

The other project I found was a user on Flickr who goes by the username "Great Laker" Who back around 2011 he or she documented a lot of these signs along the eastern coast of Wisconsin between Milwaukee and Green Bay and up into Door County. Their map has been useful for helping me fill in some more gaps of signs I haven't found on my own. And it already seems since 2011 quite a few that they've documented have already disappeared from more recent Google map drive-bys.

The Photographs

So, The last thing I want to go over is the stylistic choice of how I'm choosing to photograph these signs. When I tell people that I'm working on a project where I'm taking pictures of the old bar signs in front of bars in Wisconsin, I imagine what they imagine is how the Great Laker images look. Where it's just a close, zoomed in photo of the sign. Not much context outside of it. It's all about the sign and nothing but the sign. But that's not the way I usually work in my photography. I like to take a subject get a wide lens. Back off a little bit and then present it amongst its environment to get a whole picture of where this thing exists at that moment, and not just be about that thing.

So this wider view that I usually take has been a pretty conscious decision in my career of shooting photographs. Sometimes when I take these pictures and throw them into the fine art rings, people like the critiquers get like confused that "Why isn't the subject taking up more of the frame? Are you too timid to get close to it?"

But, I mean it's a conscious choice I'm making the shoot wider in most situations.

I get this like feeling that "good photographers" have this expectation that you have get big zoomy lenses that can really get you into the subject. Or just you know punch in there and fill everything up. Just only focus on that one thing in a way that grandma can't with their little snapshot camera.

But Dammit! I like my snapshots! And the panoramic here, the wide-angle does a mother good snapshot. That takes a lot of setting up, and focusing, and metering, and all that jazz.

The Hill House Pub & Grill, Boyd, Wisconsin, December 2017

The sign is often very, very small in the resulting image. I might be able to philosophize that although I market the project of being about these signs, is actually about the towns, the roads, the rural areas where these signs exist. And they're just there to give it some unity.

I hope people understand that even though I say it's about the signs, it's about the signs. It's about Midwest and Wisconsin, urban and rural landscape in general. It's just that the signs are so everywhere that you can't escape them really.

So I think that just about covers what I want to cover about this project. About how I've identified locations and make my images.

So if you have any questions please feel free to ask them in the comments and if you're not subscribed to my channel please do that so you can get notified when the behind-the-scenes videos drop. Along with any other crazy yellings I decided to upload. Also hit the description. I'll have links to all the projects I've mentioned throughout this. A link to the map I'm building with all the sign locations. Alright see you later!

Biking With Cameras: Rolleiflex SLX

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 22:55:30 Z

I've been wanting to write some content about biking with various film cameras for some time now but never was quite able to package it up in a way that I thought worked.

Then I got a GoPro.

So what if I just take that GoPro and shoot some videos of using various film cameras via bicycle? Perfect!

Here is the first video I've made while carrying my Rolleiflex SLX. The images taken during the video will be available to look below in the post. Don't scroll before watching if you don't want any spoilers!

Photography Entomology

Sat, 08 Sep 2018 00:39:23 Z

I think one of my absolute least favorite words in the world of photography is "Shutterbug."

Why just focus on the shutter? The shutter is just one tiny aspect of what it takes to create a photograph.

And what kind of bug? Are you aware of just how many kinds of bugs exist on this planet?

I feel that photography is such a broad subject that it needs some alternative, more niche Photography-Insect terms to describe photographers.

I propose the following:

Leicalice
Apertureaphid
Lenslocust
Filmflea
Bokehbee
Streetphotographystrepsipteran
Canonant
Decisivemomentmoth
Cirkutcricket
Holgaweevel
Largeformathorsefly
Nikonnit
Clickroach
HDRstinkbug
Exposureearwig
Hyperfocalfly
Selfiespider
Depthoffieldpsocid
Mirrorlessmayfly
Viewfindergrasshopper

Don't call me a "Shutterbug." Call me a "Clickroach" instead.

Raiding The Archive 11: June 2009

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 15:43:38 Z

Boy Howdy. Has it really been 633 days since my last archive raiding post? Lets reset that clock and hopefully not take another 633 days before the next one!

Today's randomly drawn sheet of negatives comes from a day in June 2009 where I took a little street photography stroll through downtown Duluth and Canal Park.

Sorry tech heads, I have no memory of what exact gear I was using for this adventure. Most likely my Leica M6 with some Voigtländer glass, but I dunno. I don't keep notes. The film used was Arista Pro 400.

Enough gear. Let's look at pictures!

Of all the photographs I scanned on this roll, I only recall seeing one before. Rediscovering things I've seen a decade ago and have forgotten about is always an interesting part of this exercise.

Miscellaneous photos from June 2009

It's me! I must have given someone my camera to snap a pic.

Old poster for a lost cat named Blue.

The skywalk being constructed over Lake Avenue.

A man with a cooler that looks like a DieHard battery.

A running girl.

The construction of the Amsoil Arena.

A dog running near Old Lifty.

A man who is looking at a duck.

Presumedly the same duck, now flying away in front of a Bix truck.

Packing a Wista VX into a Lowepro Flipside 400 AW II

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 14:32:19 Z

Recently I acquired a Wista VX camera, and several new lenses to finally make an adult out of my 4x5 large format kit. But, as with every new camera kit I put together, I hit that point where I realize that none of the bags I own are adequate for it.

There are several large backpacks on the market that I know would fit the kit without issue, but I wanted something that was about as small as I could get, and still fit everything I need into it. The problem with searching smaller packs these days is that most of them are designed and laid out for the typical DSLR camera kits, instead of wacky shaped large format cameras. So, much like trying on new pants, I usually prefer to be able to go into a store and try them on.

This time, however, I did some crawling on the internet forums to see what other people have done to put the same camera into a backpack. I found one person, who across several different photography forums, swearing by a Lowepro 400 Flipside as a compact backpack to fit into his Wista RF kit.

It looked like just what I wanted, and B&H had the Mark I version of the Flipside at 50% off! ORDERED!

Then a week later I received an e-mail letting me know that the mark I backpack I ordered was now discontinued and out of stock. There were plenty of LowePro 400 Flipsides on eBay for the same price as B&H, but they all felt a bit like the sketchy Chinese knockoff packs. So I bit the bullet and paid full retail on the newer Lowepro Flipside 400 AW II from a reputable source.

When the backpack arrived, I unboxed it and looked it over. The size of the bag was about as big as I wanted to go, but it felt like getting all my gear into it might not be possible. Here is the way that all the inserts looked when the backpack was received.

The only way to find out was to get packing. The inserts will need to be rearranged to fit the following camera gear into the backpack.

Wista VX 4x5 folding field camera
Nikon 90mm f/4.5 NIKKOR-SW lens
Nikon 150mm f/5.6 Nikkor-W Lens
Fuji 250mm f/6.7 Fujinon-W Lens
Fuji 400mm f/8 Fujinon-T Lens
Light Meter
Loupe
Four or more standard film holders

Will it fit?

It only took me three attempts to figure out a layout that allowed all the Four lens Wista VX kit I wanted to fit into the Lowepro 400 AW II Flipside backpack, to fit in the backpack.

And before you hit the comments section to yell "YOU CHEAT. I ONLY SEE THREE LENSES!!!" I did employ this one weird trick whereby reversing the Nikon 150mm f/5.6 Nikkor-W Lens; it can fold up inside the Wista VX camera body. Thus, negating any additional space needed to store the lens.

Need More?

I also chronicled the journey of arranging the backpack to fit my large format kit in video form.

PS: Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Backpack Update

So I have had a few opportunities since making this post to actually get out into the field using the Lowepro Flipside 400 with my 4x5 camera. So far I'm really impressed with this backpack as it is a pleasure to work with.

The size is exactly what I wanted, and working out of it on the ground with the flap open is very easy. I haven't yet tried the flipside feature where the photographer can open the backpack to access everything while still attached to their hip. This isn't a feature I bought the backpack for, so in all honesty, I may never even try it.

I also didn't have high expectations for the tripod tie-downs on the backpack given that I have a large Induro AT-413 tripod with a big Manfrotto 229 3-way head. I figured that using the tripod feature the proper way, with the feet of the tripod in the little pouch/flap that hangs off the bottom of the backpack would cause the tripod to tower over my head and be awkwardly top-heavy, which it was. However, once I turned the tripod over so that the heavy Manfrotto head was at the bottom of the pack, and put one of the handles into the pouch/flap, the tripod actually fits very comfortably onto the backpack.

Musicians Wanted

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 19:13:36 Z

Recently I've been thinking about what kind of photography projects I should take up for the next few years. One lesson I've learned about myself while working on Watershed and the Midwest Beer Sign projects is that the further I need to travel for my subjects, the longer it is going to take to finish the project. Traveling is great, but I am not great at traveling.

So while thinking of what I can photograph without needing to travel much outside the Duluth/Superior area, I think I need to revisit the environmental portrait work I was doing in 2011-2013.

This time around though I want to narrow my focus onto musicians in the environments that they work on their music while they aren't on stage.

So if you are a performing musician who is reading this, I want to photograph you and your band in your rehearsal spaces. Or in that spot at the end of the bed where you somehow write all your best pieces when you aren't with your band. Or in the van that you live out of as you in drive it back and forth across the country while on tours. Or in the studio working on a new album.

This project is open to musicians in any genre, and at any career level.

I expect I'll be ready to start photographing near the end of July, but in the meantime, please fill out the following form if you are interested in being a subject. Photographing will mainly take place in the Duluth/Superior area, but feel free to sign up if you are outside of the region. I do sometimes travel and would like to know where potential subjects are when I do. Ask any questions in the comments below, or through my contact form.

Other Things

In case we don't know each other, I've been photographing the Duluth music scene for many years now, and currently am a committee member who helps organize the Duluth Homegrown Music Festival. I got street cred.

I'll be shooting these with a large format film camera. It is a big, slow camera that I put a lot of effort into getting each exposure I make right. Sessions tend to be short as I often only make one to four exposures per subject.

Anonymous Photographs: The Austin Texas Edition

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 21:57:25 Z

I recently took a trip to Austin Texas for a few days. I did a lot of neat things while I was there such as eating tacos, sweating, observing gentrification, wondering why Texas highway exchanges are a hundred feet tall, and seeing the Chili's at 45th and Lamar.

I also spent some time in various thrift and antique stores and came home with a pile of found photographs to add to my collection that I will be sharing in this blog post.

An interesting aside on the topic of collecting other people's photographs for a moment. One store in Austin had a bucket of 35mm slides next to a light board that could be used to easily inspect and slides for purchase. Given that I've been to enough stores that make seeing the goods a chore for potential buyers, it was nice to see a place doing this.

However, they also wanted $5.00 per slide, so maybe they were a bit too self-aware. For context, I only paid $4 for the entire vintage cat collection that I posted last fall. Although I imagine I'd sell my entire negative archive for $5/frame right now if someone offered to buy it at the price.

The Small Photographs

Ok. Let's get to the anonymous photographs that I brought home from Texas. I'll start with the small black & white prints I acquired.

To segue from the aforementioned vintage cat collection, here are the Texas photographs containing cats.

Woman with a big fluffy cat in front of a Christmas Tree, December 1955

What I believe to be the same big fluffy cat. No date on this print, but if you look close you can see that it has the same couch and curtains as the previous photo with the woman.

Speaking of Christmas trees, here is a photo of a man putting the star onto one. December 1954.

Five men posing with a car that says WOLF on it.

Two men on the street showing how to properly dress while wearing a fedora. Utica, N.Y. 1939 is penciled in on the backside.

A woman with some large gift boxes set out in front of her.

A Polaroid of a well-dressed woman on her knees begging? Praying?

A well-dressed man who appears to be smoking a pipe while gardening.

The Color Photographs

I picked up a few color photographs this time around. Such as this Polaroid marked 1980 of a man sleeping in a chair.

And this neat snapshot from some sort of party that doesn't have a year on it.

The Large Prints

Everything I've posted so far has been small prints of no more than five inches on any edge. I did find a few larger photographs this time that I feel are the cornerstones of this haul.

The first is this 5x7 of two well-dressed women hamming it up for the camera.

The second, measuring in at 10x10 inches is a portrait of an older couple of which the man appears to be VERY tall. This print is also the largest anonymous photo I think I've ever purchased. If I didn't recently acquire a drum scanner I would have had to have taken a poorly lit photo of it as it is too big to fit on my Epson flatbed.

This concludes the Texas collection. Let me know your favorite and any theories about what is going on in any of the photographs in the comments.

4 Reasons Why Film Photography Is Just Plain Stupid

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 23:26:32 Z

Adorama recently published a blog post titled 5 Reasons Why I Am Never Going Back to Film Photography which has caused quite a stir in the film photography world. This post has really opened my eyes and has gotten me thinking about just how useless film photography is. So I've decided to throw my hat into the ring as well and bring up a few additional reasons why film photography should finally go away for good.

My Emil Praslowicz Tribute Edition Leica M3

Here are four reasons why film photography is just outright stupid.

1. Dead People Have Probably Used The Gear

Very few companies are manufacturing new film cameras in this day and age. I know I have only once bought a new-in-box film camera, and that was way back around 2003. With so much of our gear being sixty or more years old and purchased used, it is very likely someone who is now dead was a previous owner.

This fact opens up all sorts of doors to hauntings that makes me somewhat scared to use film cameras. Who knows what kind of evil plan the previous owner is waiting to spring on me while out in the field while using their camera? Did you know even know that the "keh" in keh.com originally stood for "Keep `em Haunted"?

Buying the latest and greatest DSLR or mirrorless camera brand new every two years sure does ease my mind over not being haunted by some long passed photographer.

Film: 0. Digital: 1

My 2016 panic induced film stash purchase

2. Constant Dread That Film Will Go Away

Is it worth the constant stress and fear of wondering if this year is the year that digital will finally win the great film vs. digital battle? Will this year be the year that all photographic film vanishes from the face of the Earth and all the skills I've learned to use it end up being for naught?

This unneeded stress has just been ravaging my emotional wellbeing for eighteen years now! Every year I drain my savings filling up a freezer for the inevitable downfall of film, and every year it never happens. I can't live like this anymore. It is far too nerve-wracking.

Film: 0. Digital: 2

3. Film Passes Much More Painfully Through The Body

As photographers, we have all had that moment where we are drinking coffee while working on post-processing some pics or doing some other arduous task that needs to be done to promote our art. Then we reach for the coffee mug to take a sip and, whoops, we accidentally grab a roll of film and swallow it instead! How embarrassing.

Back in the film days, this was a very uncomfortable turn of events as the film canister makes its way through our digestive system. And damn weren't you glad when it was only 35mm instead of a roll of medium format? Those longer medium format spindles are brutal all the way through.

Nowadays when we do this with an SD card, it is hardly a thing. Sure we might have to wait an extra day or two to post process those 12,000 images we took that kid's birthday party last week, but at least the card is still usable after a mild scrubbing. That never worked back in the film days.

Film: 0. Digital: 3

4. All Those Assault Charges

What is the first thought you have whenever you buy a new piece of vintage, built like a tank, camera gear? That's right; it is "If anyone comes after me I can just hit them with it and keep on shooting!"

Sure sounds good in theory, until the day comes where mistake people who walk through your shot as a literal assault on your art. Then you lose your cool and start to swing around that heavy Pentax 6x7 by its strap knocking out every man, woman, and child between your tripod and Horseshoe Bend while screaming "BACK OFF YOU ASSHOLES I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER TRYING TO GET A VERY IMPORTANT SHOT HERE BEFORE THE SUN GOES DOWN!" Oh how quickly one discovers how much film they won't be able to stockpile next year because they lose all their money paying multiple assault fines.

I know that with my lightweight plastic feeling Fuji XE-2, I've never thought that it would make a suitable weapon, and thus this has never happened. I just shoot the scene and remove the people later in Photoshop.

Film: 0. Digital: 4

Checkmate Film Photographers!

Also please remember to support my growing family by buying a book about how to best master digital photography.

The Photography Flubs in Babylon Berlin

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 18:10:22 Z

The other night I finished my binge of the sixteen episodes of the German crime noir series Babylon Berlin that is currently on Netflix.

Set in 1929 during the Weimar Republic, it was a nice change of pace to see a show about living in early 20th century Germany where Nazism hasn't taken hold yet. Despite a few tropes and plot armor in the later episodes, I enjoyed the series quite a bit and will be waiting for upcoming seasons. But I am not here today to review Babylon Berlin.

Today I am writing about some of the photography depicted during the show. Or more precisely, some of the photography flubs that happened during Babylon Berlin. They don't take away from the viewing experience for the typical viewer, but this is the kind of stuff that I always seem to notice in film.

The Press

First up is some commentary on the press swarms that happen a few times in Babylon Berlin. All and all, par for the course. These press photographers wielding large-format press cameras seemed to make the same goofs that every movie that has a swarm of them makes.

Bellows racked out to the max.

Press photographers walking around with all the bellows of their camera showing is probably the most common offense in movies featuring press cameras. A press photographer of the time would typically use a lens with a normal to slightly wide-angle view. Focussing those lenses so that all of the camera's bellows are extended means that the camera is focussed on a point a little more than a hand's length from the camera.

Here is a camera focused to about 7-10 feet away

Here is the same camera focused to about a foot away.

See the difference?

No one ever seems to reload film or change the flash bulb after taking a photo.

Perhaps there were a few hotshot photographers would roll up to a newsworthy event, fire one exposure, and then go home and call it a day? But I'm guessing it was more common that they would want to take at least take a few exposures to make sure something was in focus and usable?

These were the days of single-use flashbulbs and sheet film holders. After every exposure, the photographer needs to replace the bulb film before taking the next exposure. All the press photographers in Babylon Berlin seem to make an exposure, and then just stand around looking for the next shot. Buddy! You need new film for when that next moment happens! The old mantra "F/8 and be there." is no good if your camera doesn't have unexposed film in it.

Time Travel

The camera in the screenshot above also appears to be a Pacemaker Speed Graphic with side mount rangefinder. The whoopsie here being that that the release date of the model with the gray aluminum front standard and lens boards was 1947; just a mere eighteen years after this scene takes place. Using the wrong models for the period is quite common.

Alright, let's move away from the extras who were given cameras and not instructed on how to use authentically operate and focus on one of the named characters of the show.

Gräf

Meet Gräf, the resident police photographer who needs a lock on his door to stop people from walking into his darkroom and ruining his work.

Gräf on The Airplane

We get to see Mr. Gräf operating in the field with his cameras a few times throughout Babylon Berlin. One of these moments is during an aerial recon mission in an airplane. For this mission, Gräf uses what appears to be a period correct Leica 1A.

A neat feature of these early cameras was the collapsable lens which you can see in the above image. The lens can be pushed into the body when not in use to reduce the profile of the camera for transportation.

However, failure to extend the lens before use is just going to get you some unusable photos. But surely Gräf is a pro and won't forget to extend his lens. Right, Gräf?

Gräf. Your lens. You need to extend your lens!

Gräf!!!! NOOO!!!!

This mishandling of the Leica by not extending the collapsing lens can only mean one of two things.

A) Gräf's nerves got the best of him during the mission, and he forgot to set his camera up correctly. He blows it, and the mission was a failure.
B) The props people didn't know how to use the camera and/or never instructed the actor about how to use it.

Spoiler: The photos still turned out in the end. So option B.

Gräf at The Crime Scene

Midway through the series, we get to see Mr. Gräf in the field photographing at a crime scene. Unlike the press photographs from earlier, he is seen changing his flashbulbs between exposures! Huzzah!

However, during this scene, something seems fishy about our friend Gräf's camera.

That's a nice looking 6x6 folding medium format camera he is using here. Appears to be a good German made Zeiss Nettar 517/16 or 518/16.

However, the release date for these models of the Zeiss Nettar cameras was 1949 at the earliest. Twenty years after he was photographing that crime scene with the camera.

So how did the photographer get one in 1929? Again, there can only be one of two possible explanations.

A) Gräf knows how to time travel, and used it to go to sometime after 1949 to get some sweet photography gear.
B) The props people just said "This funny looking camera looks old enough. Use this. Anachronism schmanachronism."

Spoiler: Gräf never tips off anyone about what was going to happen to Germany in the next fifteen years. So option B.

Also of note. For some reason, after Gräf takes a photo with the Nettar, it makes the sound that a 35mm lever advance camera would make to advance to the next frame. Even though this camera would not make that sound, and his hand isn't even on the film advance knob. Perhaps it melded with a different 35mm camera we also attempted to bring back from the future during the return warp?

Conclusion

That is all I noticed for photography flubs and anachronisms in Babylon Berlin. And just to reiterate, this post is light-hearted, a bit educational, and shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the series. It was still an excellent television series that I recommend checking out.

Found Photos, Vintage Cat Edition

Sun, 19 Nov 2017 22:04:00 Z

Are you ready for another round of freshly scanned vintage color slides? Of course, you are! Last time it was a trove of one family's photos. This time: KITTIES!!!

I came across a lot of Kodachromes from the 1950s-1970s consisting entirely of vintage cat photos. If you thought that humanity's love of taking pictures of their cats in all kinds of everyday situations was a modern thing that only kids on the internet do, think again!

An aspect that drew me toward this set of vintage cat photos is their casual, almost street photography style presentation of the animals. I love that many of them use a no-frills, front and center flash with compositions reminiscent of William Eggleston's work. I love how many of the photos show more than just the cats. How the artifacts of the 1950s and 60s exist alongside the cats in the photographs. The typical pink bathroom tile of the era. The 1950s style Zenith Radio. All of these little things seem to elevate the photos about cats to something more than just cat photos.

I'm presenting the images a little differently this time by including the entire slide mount in the photos. I'm doing this since every slide was hand annotated with the animal's names, and in a few cases, the location where the photo was taken also written in the caption. Something about seeing these notes somehow makes the images feel complete to me.

Thanks to all the notes of the cats' names, it is clear that there were a few major players in the life of this photographer. I'll get to those cats later, and will start off the sharing with all the images of cats who only appear once in the collection.

The Single Appearance Cats

Puz-a-Puza (Tiger) In Washbasin -1955

Molly - 1958

Mrs. Cadawalder - 1965

Midnight - 1957

Jockey - Morristown

"Angel/Miss Barbara" - Barbara Zuchowski

Two Long Haired Kittens

Three Kittens - 1969

Siamese Kitty

One cat to appear more than once is a Siamese named Kitty who appears in the early 1970s. Only two images in the collection of this cat.

Kitty - 1972

Lovie & Kitty - 1972

Pursilla and The White Kittens

The second significant player in this collection of cat slides is a white cat named Pursilla. Pursilla also had a litter or two of adorable white kittens who often appear without ever being given names, and are only collectively referred to as White Kittens on the slides.

Pursilla & White Kittens - 1969

Purr & White Kittens - 1969

Velinda & White Kittens - 1969

Two White Kittens 1968

Pursilla & White Kittens - 1968

Three Kittens In Easter Basket - 1969

Kittens In Bookshelf - 1969

Meow: The Cat

The real star of these slides is a cat named Meow. Meow first appears in the late 50s as a kitten and makes appearances as late at 1969*. The photos of Meow also seem to have the most casual cat-living feel out of all the photos.

Also of note of the Meow photos is that he is a cat who got to travel. Most of the photos have no location information given, whereas the annotation on several of the photographs indicates them as being taken in Orland, and Lake Gage Indiana. Perhaps the family moved several times during Meows life? Or maybe, as I suspect, they would bring Meow on trips. With only a few of the photos having the location marked, it seems to say to me that the unmarked slides were taken at their home, wherever that was. Taking the cat away from home was a unique enough event that they needed to record this information.

Meow in Wanda's Hand - 1958

Meow On Radio - 1958

Wanda & Meow - Dinner - 1959

Meow In Letterbox - 1959

Meow on Packing Box - 1959

Meow on Coffee Table - 1959

Meow - Aquarium

Meow By Lamp - 1960

Meow In Bag, Orland - 1961

Meow - Lake Gage - 1962

*The 1969 image mentioned above was omitted due to the slide being unusable due to underexposure.

While working on these vintage cat photos of Meow, I started caring about this cat named Meow's life. Given the average lifespan of felines, it is very likely that Meow passed away before I was even born. With this in mind, I started speculating if anyone in the family even remembers this cat anymore? Could it be that I am the first person to pay respects to this animal in nearly forty years?

Found photos are an interesting journey.

Night Photography: Dealing With Yellow Light

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 18:36:15 Z

One of the first forms of photography I specialized in during the 2000s was night photography. I haven't done anything in the genre since March or April 2011 when I finished shooting for Those Dark Winter Nights.

I started off shooting in color for my night photography but shifted to using black & white film once I made the jump from 35mm film to medium format film. Possibly due to lying to myself that black & white gives a photograph more soul or something, but most likely because I was cheap back then, and color film cost more than black & white film.

One of my early color night photographs. Taken summer 2002 in Wausau, WI

I've been thinking about night photography lately. I want to get back in the groove of doing it again and have been doing some due diligence to get up and running before I start shooting.

As I've reached a point in my photography where black & white has almost zero appeal to me, I intend for my night photography to be all color, and on film. Big, beautiful medium format film.

Yellow Lights

One of the issues I recall dealing with regarding using color film in urban settings at night is answering the question "Do I try to compensate for the strong yellow-hued street lights or not?"

Duluth Oriental Grocery, Duluth, Minnesota, June 2007

There is an argument to be had here. Yes, most street lights are very yellow in their color balance. Do I shoot without a filter and capture the yellow? Or do I try to adjust using filters or Photoshop to present the image more in line with how someone's brain who isn't aware of color shifts might interpret the scene?

An even more interesting thought I had about this involves the march of technology. Around here, more and more of the yellow sodium-vapor street lamps are getting replaced with high intensity, bluer/whiter lamps. What if I spend all this time trying to balance out the old ugly yellow tones in the lights, but then regret the choice decades down the road once they are all gone because the yellow now serves as a timestamp of an era that no longer exists?

Enough philosophizing. Let's get technical.

Hoya 80B filter vs NiSi Natural Night Filter

So back in my day, the two common solutions to the yellow light problem was to a) Shoot with tungsten balanced film, or b) throw an 80a, 80b, or 80c filter on the lens.

I'm not even sure if tungsten film is available anymore, but don't care if it is. I never really liked using and always went the route of an 80b filter.

But once again the times be changing. Since I last did night photography, it seems a few companies such as NiSi and Lonely Speck have been producing a new* kind of filter. A filter that cuts out light pollution by cutting out the spectrum of light that the sodium-vapor lamps put out. Yay technology! (*I'm assuming they are new. It is possible these used to exist and I just never heard of them. Peace)

While these light pollution filters are targetted towards use in astrophotography, I figured it might be interesting to see if they have a better effect on urban night scenes than the humble 80b filter does.

I call the 80B filter humble because whereas I paid $14 for my 82mm Hoya 80B filter, the 82mm NiSi Natural Night filter runs around $170. Not exactly a budget priced filter, but if the effect is good enough over the classic 80b, I could see it being worth the value. I managed to snag the NiSi filter used on eBay for a considerable discount. Had I not, I doubt I'd ever have bought one, and this part of the post would have ceased to exist.

With an 80b and Natural Night filter in hand, I put my Fuji X-E2 to good use making the first pass at comparing these filters. The first row if the file straight out of the camera (SOOC). The second row is the same file with some very quick color balance done to it.

Science Stuff: Since my goal was to try and replicate what would happen with color slide film, I did none of that shooting to RAW funny business. Straight to jpg with the white balance set to daylight.

First set up is under a sodium vapor lamp. The unfiltered image is about as yellow as I'd expect if I had gotten some slide film back. 80B appears the most natural, and the NiSi has the pink cast. I think that for a digital photographer working from a RAW file, the SOOC images should not matter much and they'll be adjusting the white balance during post. However, because I intend to use slide film for my next generation of night photos, I want the SOOC capture to be as close to natural as possible. If only because they then look the best while on the light table. Oh, and also because I prefer not to have to muck around with the images in Photoshop as much as possible.

No Filter, SOOC

80B Filter, SOOC

Natural Night Filter, SOOC

No Filter, Adjusted

80B Filter, Adjusted

Natural Night Filter, Adjusted

After a little bit of cleanup, they all look pretty good, but I prefer the photo taken with the 80B filter. Seems to preserve just a touch of the yellow in the foreground snow. The Natural Night filter looks good, but if you look closely at the white house in the background, there is a magenta shift on it. This seems to be inline with what Blake Rudis found while testing the filter in an urban setting as well.

And here is a similar comparison taken under a more modern street lamp that is more or a natural blue/white hue. Again I feel that the 80B filter wins. And also I seemed to have captured the silhouette of a man hiding in the wet spots on the road.

No Filter, SOOC

80B Filter, SOOC

Natural Night Filter, SOOC

No Filter, Adjusted

80B Filter, Adjusted

Natural Night Filter, Adjusted

Coming out of these first round of tests between Hoya 80b vs. NiSi Natural Night Filter I have a preference towards the humble 80B.

But, I am not going to call it yet as actually using film will throw a few more variables into the mix. Such as how the color balance film I end up using (Fuji Provia 100F) differs from my X-E2's sensor. Along with influence on color from any reciprocity characteristics of the film.

So hang tight. Once I get the medium format rig set up that I want to shoot night with, I'll do the same test again on film and see if the light pollution filter performs any differently. If the clouds ever clear up around here, I also want to try the three filters again with a scene with more sky in it.

One Last Thing About Advancing Technology

Earlier I remarked about the last time I set out to do night photos. The month in the date is significant because it happened right before I got my first smartphone in May 2011. It has dawned on me that I've never done night photography while having the option to be able to occupy myself with something else while standing around waiting for the long exposures to complete. An exciting prospect? Or just means for me to have unwanted light trails through the scenes as I was too distracted to block the camera as cars past?

19th Century Cameras and Bicycles

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 05:07:21 Z

Today on the blog I'm going to explore a little bit into the relationship of bicyles and photography back during the early days of photography. A time when bicycles were not light, and camera gear was not simple or compact. Lets start with this advertisement for a camera to mount of one's penny farthing bicycle from 1887.

Scovill's Amateur Specialties

Photographic Outfits for Bicyclists.

WITH WHICH TO SECURE MEMENTOES OF PLEASANT EXCURSIONS.

So popular has amateur photography become among wheelmen, that the two amusements are now often combined. The Camera allows unbounded opportunities to the amateur bicyclist to gather choice landscape views.

BICYCLISTS' "POCKET" PHOTO-OUTFIT,

Consisted of a 3 1/4x4 1/2 "Pocket" Camera, with Double Dry Plate Holder, with Patent Registering Slides and Hinged Ground Glass. This Camera weighs only 12 ounces.

A UNIVERSAL JOIN BICYCLE ATTACHMENT.
A S. M. C. INSTANTANEOUS LENS, with Stops.

The "Pocket" Bicycle Camera weighs only 12 ounces.

PRICE ... $12.00

NICKEL-PLATED BICYCLE ADJUSTABLE SUPPORT .....$1.00

This has no loose pieces, and is so accurately made as to have no side play.

THE "MIGNON" BICYCLISTS' PHOTO-OUTFIT,

(complete).

Consisting of a 3 1/4x4 1/2 Finely Polished Mahogany Camera, with Swing Back, Vertical Shifting Fron, Hinged Ground Glass, Folding Bed, with Patemt Latch, Rack and Pinion Movement (Front Focus).

A Universal Joint Bicycle Attachment.
A Morrison Bicycle Lens, pronounced by authorities on optics to be without a peer.
A Camera Saddle Bag lined with flannel, to prevent marring of the fine finish of the camera.

Price of "Mignon" Bicyclist's Photo-Outfit Complete, $50.00
Without Lens, $25.00

With the lenses just described, sharp pictures can be obtained which will make fine transparencies and lanrertn slides, or the can be nelarged up to 8x10 size.

My first thought of looking at this picture is that such a handlebar setup must be a nightmare to compose and focus with. Especially given the very flow emulsions photographer were dealing with in the 19th century. It seems that others of this time period would also agree, as a similar sentiment against handlebar mounted cameras is expressed in this 1897 essay about combining bicycling and photography.

CYCLE AND CAMERA BY DR. HUGO ERICHSEN

The bicycle is come to stay, not only for business purposes and cheap transportation, but as a blessed means of recreation to countless townspeople, who are cooped up in their work-rooms during the day, and can only enjoy an outing during the evening and on Sunday. The immense popularity which the bicycle has enjoyed during the past year has caused manufacturers to vie with each other in the production of various appliances to the "steel pony" and the outfit of the cyclist. One of the latest additions to the cyclist's equipment is the bicycle camera. I am aware of the fact that a bicycle camera was on the market for many years, but it was not as practicable as the latter invention, which may be called perfect.

I have seen two bicycle cameras, both of the same pattern and both marvels of compactness. They are of the folding kind, 4 x 5 in size. and fit in a small leather case, in which there is also room for two or three plate-holders. This case can conveniently be attached to the frame of the "machine," just behind the tool case, where it is out of the way and does not interfere with the legs. It is also provided with straps, so it can be carried on the back if preferable. These cameras retail at a reasonable price. They are not cheap, but they are well made and serviceable.

It is not my purpose, however, to call attention to the cameras only, but to dilate upon the advantages which they offer to amateur photographers who own a wheel. By means of the bicycle the amateur is enabled to reach scenery which is inaccessible to the ordinary traveller, and to take photographs of beautiful landscapes that are out of the reach of the average amateur photographer. The greatest gems may be found out of the beaten track.

Mayhap our photo-cyclist is an industrious clerk who shoves a quill all day long in a dingy city office during the week. But Sunday finds him on the road before sunrise. He reaches his destination in the coolness of the morning, spends the day in angling, photographing the pretty girls and perpetuating beautiful landscapes, and returns home in the evening when the sun is no longer terrible. On reaching his room he takes a cold sponge bath and then enjoys a sound sleep, and the morning finds him back at the office in the pink of condition, while the other clerks look jaded and worn. During the following evenings he develops the plates he took on the Sabbath, revives the beautiful sights he saw, and recalls the experiences he had, and thus lives over again the day he spent so happily. And when winter comes, he has a batch of interesting photographs to show for his summer's work.

I believe the average amateur lacks incentive. He wants some stimulant to make him work and to call forth his best efforts. And I believe that a bicycle will furnish this incentive. It will take him to scenes that he will itch to photograph, if he takes the slightest interest in the art-science.

I disbelieve in the common practice of fastening the camera on to the handle-bars, of focusing, and then steadying the bicycle with one hand while an exposure is made. That will do well enough for snap shots, but it will not do at all for time-exposures. It is a much better plan to carry a compact tripod strapped to the handlebars and to use that when necessary.

The Photographic Times: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Interests of Artistic and Scientific Photography. Vol 29. January, 1897

By mentioning putting all the gear under the seat, it seems that he would no longer be referencing the big wheel penny farthing bicycles of the first advertisement I posted, but a bicycle of the same proportions that we still use today.

By 1897, Kodak had already introduced a full line of cameras and camera cases targetted at cyclists riding the more modern bicycle design like we still use today. In addition to the modern bicycles, Kodak also pushed a cartridge camera system for cyclists. Smaller compact cameras that used roll film that can be loaded in daylight. Neatly enough, this roll film was only four years prior to the format of roll film that I still use today when I go photographing via bicycle.

When the cycle paths lie deep with snow; when the steed of steel has been carefully put away for the season, when the leafless trees bow before the wintry blast and the night wind whistles weirdly in the chimney till its moan dies away in a ghostly cadence—tis then that the cycler in his cozy corner by the glowing fire lives over again his pleasant days awheel. Once more he is out among the fields, flying upon his air-shod steed along a smooth stretch of road, or lolling lazily beneath the friendly shade of a giant oak. He smiles quietly as he recalls his struggles with a punctured tire, the seemingly endless hills which he climbed under a blazing sun—time leaving to his memory only the humorous side of his mishaps and softening their hardships. Regretfully he sighs as he recalls the fact that he has nothing but his poor unreliable memory to bring back those pleasant scenes. No pictures of the river with which he grew to be so friendly in his rambles awheel along its banks—no pictures of its quiet pools, its rippling runs or roaring rapids. No pictures of the quaint inn where he stopped to dine or of the quiet village street—no pictures of the green fields, the quiet cattle contentedly chewing the cud as they stood mid-leg in the limpid brook and no pictures of the friends whose gay companionship added so much to the pleasures of his outings. Each winter he has resolved that another summer he would add a camera to his outfit, but when the riding season has opened the inconvenient size and shape of the cameras, their bulky accessories, the trappy methods of attaching them to the wheel have discouraged him, and another summer slips away with no suitable mementoes of his wheeling trips.

But in 1897 he will carry a camera—a Bicycle Kodak. The Bicycle Kodaks are so light as to add no preceptible weight to the wheel and for 1897 we have prepared a line of carrying cases for them that are light, convenient and practical. They are the result of a long series of experiments, are made to withstand wear and tear and have been given severe tests on all kinds of roads.

The cameras for which they are made are of the latest models and are all constructed on our Film Cartridge System by which they can be Loaded in Daylight. For all tourists they are the best and most convenient cameras made—for the wheelman they are the only practical instruments.

A roll of film for 12 exposures weighs but a few ounces, where an equivalent in glass plates would weigh pounds, it may be carried in the pocket without the inconvenience and being as flexible as paper it cannot break—an obvious advantage over glass plates.

Bicycle Kodaks. Eastman Kodak Company, 1897

Memory Card Dump #11

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 05:10:09 Z

Are you ready for another memory card dump? That's right. You know you are.

The 11th of my memory card dumps covers the end of September 2016 through the end of November 2016. Highlights include a few events I photographed for Commune, a concert headlined by Peelander-Z, and a canoing trip into the Sylvania Wilderness. And, as usual, a bunch of cat stuff.

The previous memory card dumps can be found in this playlist.

Raiding the Archives 10: Street Photography in Canal Park

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 08:31:26 Z

So tonight I intentionally dug deep back into my black & white street photography days. The hope was to find a photograph already existed in my early street photography gallery so that I could rescan it and bump up the resolution, or find a forgotten gem to add to the gallery.

The sheet that I actually ended up grabbing at random didn't contain any images already in the gallery. However, it was from one of the freakishly successful days that I ever had in Canal Park back in May 2008 that contained a lot of images that I had uploaded to Flickr back in the day. So, baby, like the McRib, they're back! This time in glorious high(er) definition than the original 500 pixel wide images I uploaded nearly a decade ago to Flickr.

Boy in a Nike Jacket, Duluth, Minnesota, May 2008

The face of the man holding the boy's hand is still one of the most intense stares I think I've ever received.

Woman With Binoculars, Duluth, Minnesota, May 2008

I had forgotten about this group who spent years in Canal Park and the surrounding area yelling at people about how they were going to hell. Eventually, a journalist dug deep and discovered that the leader of the group was a registered sex offender. Haven't seen them around since that revelation came to light.

Texting Woman With a Dog , Duluth, Minnesota, May 2008