Bricks

Another photo from my long-delayed and light-damaged roll of XP2 film; it was taken during the summer at the Leslie Street Spit. This was the trip (and the camera) that sparked the idea that eventually became my 'Lakefill' series.

Skating

We're on the brink of the middle of January, and this is the first day that Toronto has finally had its first real attempt at a snow storm. It seemed like a good day for scanning film of people skating at city hall.

It took me almost a year to finish a single roll of film, for a total of nine exposures. I have two backs for my GX680, and the one with black and white film didn't see much use.

There was a problem with this film, and since there's no way to know if it was user or equipment error, I'm going to blame the camera. It wasn't fully advanced when I opened the back, causing light damage to the unprocessed film.

(I actually quite like the results.)

#481, TD Centre

Winter doesn't end, it just becomes less frequent. The snow has melted and reappeared twice since this photo was taken just a couple of weeks ago.

#072; Pink, White, and Blue

I've been singularly unproductive recently, but have been spending a little time going through some of my negatives now that I have a new film holder for my flatbed scanner. Film likes to curl, and newly-developed film often has a very strong arch to it that can take it out of a scanner's depth of field. Scanning negatives that are older, have been stored flat, and using a holder with a glass plate gives much sharper results.

Compare this photo with its earlier incarnation to see what a difference in sharpness it can make.

The tones are also different, but that's just me going for a less pastel look now that the petals are crisper.

#103, Rhino

Motion blur isn't usually a problem with rhinos, but this was taken at 1/4 second.

#104, Rhino

Not the decisive moment.

#108, Orangutan

I like this photo, but it makes me sad.

#889, Pink, White, and Blue

Playing with the GX680 for close-up work is a challenge, but entertaining. This image is softer than I would like, but I'm not sure which of the many possible causes is to blame. (More specifically, I know that it's user error, but I'm not sure which error it is.)

#893, Hammer

One of my favourite tools - non-photographic ones, anyway.

This is a second-hand hammer that was given to me by a construction worker. Well, left behind more than given, but same difference. I don't think I've ever used it, but it's always handy in Penny's workbench.

#872, Spadina Station

Spadina station, southbound platform.

#876, Museum Subway

Every now and then I like to carry my little Fujifilm around with me.

Ideally I'll use it in places where I can sit down a lot.

New Colour (Portra 400)

I got a roll of a brand-new 35mm colour film when I was in New York back in October `10, and couldn't wait to get my hands on it for my medium format camera. Naturally, the week that it was first available found Toronto in a greyed-out snowy mood.

Fortunately for me, there's always construction sites.

I have now standardized on Ektar 100 in 135, Portra 400 in 120, and XP2 in both formats. Once the new Portra is out for 135 format I'll always keep a roll or two on-hand, but it won't be replacing Ektar as my general small-format colour film. The rare exception might be if I use both formats for a major project, but that's something that would take a lot of thinking.

There are solid reasons for using different film in different formats. My rangefinder is typically used at f/1.5-f/8, so iso100 film helps me keep the shutter speeds in check. My 135 cameras both have very accurate meters, giving me a lot of control over Ektar which changes its character when it's over-exposed. In contrast my medium format camera typically lives between f/11 and f/32, so even with a tripod the faster iso400 films are an advantage. Portra is also very forgiving with over-exposure, which makes a huge difference when I can only work in whole stops on a meterless camera. It still doesn't quite have the magic that the fickle Ektar does for me, but having negatives five times the size of 35mm supplies quite a bit of its own magic, and the colour of this latest Portra is beautiful. I can depend on it for great results from a single exposure in a way that I can't with Ektar or chromes.

And in case anyone wonders why I'm going into such detail here, this is a companion post to my Portra 400 article on Thews' Reviews.

#878, Yonge Closed

From Tuesday, the day after the fire.

By thursday they had taken down the top floor of the building, and fenced off the far side of the street to allow pedestrians to get past. The progress on the building has fallen out of the news, but I doubt that there'll be much left to see tomorrow, one week from when the building burned.

(1040) #430, Towers

Construction continues. (Compare with December 2005.)

The 'weekly project' idea has run its course. I'll still make every effort to post new photos at least once a week, especially by Sunday - starting again in mid-November. Until then, no promises.

#428, Skyline With Beams

My favourite view of the city, constantly changing.

This photo blog has now been running for over six years, easily making it the longest-running project I've ever done.

To mark the anniversary, I took my camera down to the Bathurst Street Bridge one more time. This image is another take on one of my favourites from the place where I've logged more photos per square meter than anywhere else in the city. The area has changed a lot, and there's more of the same still to come.

#429, Tobacco

In keeping with the recent streak of photos that fall down in some way (see the two posts below, #464 and #025), this is one that's an absolute disaster that I still think worked out okay in the end.

I'm a novice photographer: I shift and change constantly, working with new equipment and starting over far more often than I should. (If only I could enjoy monogamy in my photography as much as I do in the rest of my life!) This was taken with a Fuji GX680III, a monster of a medium-format film camera that's completely set me back to zero. There's so much that can go wrong that I'm not even sure what the problems are. The dirty tobacco-stained colour is probably from a bad scan, but I can't say for sure because I'm also using an unfamiliar film in a camera without a light meter, and this negative has some serious exposure issues that probably resulted from my not securing the bellows properly when I changed lenses at the end of my previous roll. Although I try not to use with violent connotations to describe my photography - like 'shoot' - I can only say that I had to beat this image into submission.

But when I set up the camera to take this photo, I was looking for a way to convey the removal of the Harley Davidson dealership, driven out by land values and encroaching condominiums, as a desolate and negative thing. I didn't expect the result to look like this, but I don't mind that it does.

One thing's for sure: now that my personal photography is 95% film, my lemon-to-lemonade ratio has skyrocketed.

#464, Between Signs

There's a popular argument that the camera doesn't matter: a great photographer with a bad camera will still be great, and an incompetent with a great camera will still do badly.

That's 89% nonsense.

But the fact is that this was taken with a great camera, which the photographer wasted by missing the focus.

C'est la vie.

(1039) #815, Lash Miller

I'm falling into a nice rhythm, taking photos on the weekends and developing them during the week. Film can be fun.

#463, Sid Smith #2

A companion image to one that I took about six weeks ago, which shows a wider view of Sidney Smith Hall.

What's really remarkable is the similarity between the two images. Everything about how they were taken is different: camera, film, and scanner; time of day and time of year; different tempos, one being a walk-by shooting and the other bound to a tripod; even the film formats and shapes aren't the same. Yet I like to think that there's an essential link beyond the subject that marks them clearly as the product of the same photographer.

But I probably flatter myself - unless the link is that others wouldn't have taken one photo, let alone two.

#709, Steel

I'm learning to embrace imperfection.