Many others much greater than I have written extensively on this topic, but I too am a firm believer that you should always challenge yourself, always be trying new things, exploring new ideas. I’ve been needing an excuse to do some of this lately and the bare walls at Reliance became that excuse. The room calls for black and white anyways, but I made that a hard rule because I am so comfortable in color these days. I tried to focus on tonality and mood and blocked color out of my mind. Exposure became different, post processing became different, everything was different and I loved it. Here’s some of the early results:
Nerd alert: the first chunk that isn’t landscape-ish was processed in color in C1 to get ideal contrast and then converted to BW in DXO with the Ilford Delta 400 emulation and grain, which I’m loving no matter how uncool it may be. (it’s like the line 6 of photography) The landscape-y ones were mostly blended exposures from ACR, which I usually NEVER use.
OH! I almost forgot, a quick restaurant review: The Swing Inn Cafe in old town. This is my new favorite place, it’s like a time warp to the 50′s. It’s not 50′s diner-esque, which I hate, but it just feels untouched from a very long time ago. Everything is what you’d want from a place like this, the food is decent, no frills, probably drenched in butter, the service is good but not overly attentive, and the vibe is chill. Feels like a place you could hang out at all day. Coffee wasn’t half bad either.
This one is one of my favs, it’s hard to see but there’s an old truck driving away way off to the right side.
You got some nice shots in here. Great use of shadows. Seems like you got some good tonality it the landscape shots. I would love to see some of these printed. Funny. One of my favorite films to shoot with is Ilford’s Delta 3200. For 400 black and white I usually go with HP5. I like the texture of the grain more. Especially on my Mamiya C330 TLR. I tried using the emulation in DxO and wasn’t that impressed. Didn’t like what it did to the highlights. If you really want to push yourself to try and do something new I would suggest shooting some real silver film. There is nothing like it. You would be welcome to come over and use my stuff to process it. I think you may still have that roll I gave you? May have been fuji film… Can’t remember.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwrightphoto/3076271863/
(A recent photo I took of a mutual friend on Ilford HP5)
I know, you’re so right. I need to mess with real film, I know the DXO stuff isn’t close. Like I said, very similar to Line 6 (guitar amp emulators, cheesy). The work of Jose Villa is making me want to mess with film more lately too, I gotta just do it. And yes, I do still have that roll of film from you! I’m gonna shoot it up starting today. I totally want to come over and process it, that sounds rad. Blah. I wish I had more time for everything.
Me too! There is so much in this life and so little time and for some reason life just keeps on coming at you. It’s relentless. Just wait until you have kids! Oh wow! I can’t imagine! You talk to Aaron Rugh since he had his baby?