Stumbled across this old shot today. It’s fun to revisit old work. I suggest it. This is from a mini working vacation with some photo friends last summer.

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speaking of africa, here’s a shot of me shooting in uganda that sarah snapped. glad she documented this..there are typically very few shots of me. note the ultralong™ socks.

I finally launched a 4x5 section on my site. It’s still very much in progress, but for the sake of making myself work on it, I went ahead and made it public. Still working on galleries that make more sense for editorial, etc, but these shots made me super happy to create. The gallery will be updated as I work through new orders and rescan some of the images. As it is now, there are plenty of artifacts / newton rings, etc, but I’m trying to let go of needing it all to be perfect. That’s it for now!

4x5s are here.

Branden on the Legotron, shot on Kodak Portra 160

In an attempt to stay positive about Kodak, I thought maybe today was a decent day to post one of the images I’ve shot in color on the Legotron. Kodak sent over a few sheets for me to test out a while back and I’m just now getting around to really do anything with the stuff I’ve shot so far.

This first shot is Branden. I took some sheets on my normal field camera also to be able to compare color and all that stuff, but I’m still working on getting super clean scans for color 4x5. Black & white and color film stocks are different and despite being able to get great scans now out of BW, color is still eluding me—damn Newton rings.

I’ve got to say though, I absolutely ADORE the weird color shifts that come from light leaks and colored blocks. A bunch of people who have seen the camera have told me that I should rather have black blocks inside the camera, or spray it flat black. But perfection is the absolute last thing I’m after with this camera! All these weird lines and blotches. Love it!

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Stephanie at home, from the last roll of 2011 / first roll of 2012.

I’ve been trying different methods of getting good 4x5 scans for ages with results that were never fully satisfactory. I finally decided to pull the trigger on a big piece of Anti-Newton Ring glass for sandwiching my negatives and I’m pleased to find that this will very likely work perfectly, at least for my black and white negatives. I haven’t gotten color negs to show up without Newton Rings yet, and that may end up being remedied by yet another piece of ANR glass, but then I’ll have to figure out precise heights for shims so I can get proper focus from our scanner. I have a bit of color to scan so I wish I had this sorted now (I’m trying hard to get this Kodak 160 scanned so I can review it for them, shot on the Legotron and a normal field camera) but for now I can at least knock out black and white in a way that pleases me. IF YOU KNOW A GREAT WAY OF SCANNING 4x5 COLOR NEGATIVES ON A FLATBED, PLEASE TELL ME.

Enough nerdery. This shot was from a Halloween skate comp at the now-defunct Shoe Factory spot here in Birmingham. The skate was actually to raise money to move the ramps to a new location (which is important, because the ramps actually got thrown away before being salvaged for the Shoe Factory spot). It was put on by Faith Skate Supply, who is also currently pimping out a very worthy cause—A.Skate. In short, A.Skate has an opportunity to build an Autism-friendly, handicap accessible skate park, but they need your votes to help win the Pepsi contest. Hit that link to see the (EASY!) ways to vote!

And seriously, if you’ve got color 4x5 scanning tips, I’m all ears.

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camera building inspiration