Blog

The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)

Sunset at mt. Fuji

fuji-sunset.jpg

I tell you I'm a bit hacked off with this Ektar 100 film. This is the 2nd roll I've shot of the stuff and this time I pushed it 2 stops. Should be no issues given I push another neg film and have never had problems. I have, however, had issues with getting Ektar developed at Horiuchi Color before. SO, this time I figured I'd go to the source and get it done at Kodak. Well, the bloody neg has blotches all over it. Spend a good 20 mins touching the crap out of it to make it look half ok. The OTHER issue is that they decided to charge me 1449 for ONE roll! And this is development only. I must say, I do like the colours I managed to squeeze out of the film but not if I'm going to get bent over a table on the price and they do a shoddy job of it to boot (the development not bending you over a table. That they are good at).I think I'll have to give Ektar a miss from this point on. Shame.

Uchujin

adrian.jpg

See his genius at work here -> UchujinWhile I was in the film archives the other day I found a few shots I forgot to scan. A case that so often happens to me "ah, not bad, I'll do that one last". As usual, I forget or run out of time. Figured it would be nice to add to the rest of the shots considering everyone else got a look-in a while back on the blog.

Tokyo tower part 2

tokyo-tower-closeup.jpg

This is what I love about old cameras and film. You can't plan this type of old feeling you get from this type of combination. The random combination of film age, film type, developer, fix, fix age, fix duration, developer duration etc. etc. all add up to a look that makes film special. You can photoshop all you want but you're not going to get the same happy accidents you do when you play with the real thing.

Subway collapse

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From an ongoing series that doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end. This guy at first glanced looked drunk but after closer inspection seemed to have something else wrong with him.This was taken at about 8:45am which, as you can see from the onlookers reaction, gained a bit of attention. He managed to get on the train and pass out again and then somehow remembered his station and got off only to pass out again on the platform. Never a dull moment in Tokyo.

Olympus pen-s half frame

[gallery] Before I took some time off from shooting (something I badly needed) I was testing out an old Olympus Pen-s half frame camera. With all the talk of the new Olympus pen digital I thought I'd give the camera a try for the second time. My first attempts were not great as it doesn't have a meter, has a shutter limit of 250th/sec and has a tiny ring where the aperture of the lens can be changed with a lot of effort. After more than a month on the shelf I thought I'd develop 2 of the films I'd shot with it to see what I had. I've not had a chance to go through them all yet but I did find this semi focused feel quite appealing. These 3 frames are actually taken in succession which, judging by the other frames further on in the film seems to be a reflection of my ability to gauge light and set the camera correctly. I think my speed judgment is off a bit but I'm not minding that I got these wrong :-)

I'll likely be posting experimental stuff up here for a bit while I get to work on the other projects I have lined up.

half frame- set
half frame- set

Another great quote

"A successful artist is a person who is able to create something that manifests their truth...a perception that they feel they need to bring to the world. A successful creative person is someone who continues to create no matter what happens. I respect many artists. They are not all extremely successful in the art market, or in the art status structure. Some are, and some aren't. Some of the ones I respect have been overlooked. But I still consider them to be successful, because they have succeeded to give the world their vision, even though the world does not always acknowledge their worth...In other words, I define a successful career as much more than just external validation." -- Jan Harrison

Stolen from http://www.aphotoeditor.com/ again!

Quote of the week

"I really miss 4×5 – it’s beautiful. The slowing down of the process; taking time to make a composition, lining things up, doing Polaroids (I love that smell – I wish they made a men’s fragrance)."Taekn from the end of this post.

Possibly the end

Well, that was fun.Lots of work. Not a great deal of reward. A lot learned. A few friends made. LOTS of time wasted. Photography, I need a rest. Thanks for all the kind words over the several years. Time to get on with my life. Bye.

Tokyo Tower

tokyo-tower.jpg

So I modified a Kodak No. 2A Folding Autographic Brownie so that it would take Fuji instant film. Lots of electrical tape and a few tests later I worked out the 3 fstop settings and the basic focal lengths. I've not shot a lot with it yet but as it's a bellows camera a thought occurred to me while trying to shot with it this weekend. If I could some how take the thing off it's rails I might be able to twist the lens around a bit and get something different. So I now have a very random tilt shift lens. Took several shots to get one steady enough to use.