K Gold 200 in colour (and b+w)

Those of a certain age, or good taste in music know I'm listening to a classic Cheap Trick album as I'm writing this. 

When I first started photography I was all about the colour. It's only recently that I've been coming around to the idea that sometimes less is more, that colour can be a distraction. In a recent session with the GW690 I accidentally left a yellow filter on, thinking I was exposing B&W film. I was not. It was Lomo 100 colour, but I rescued it by converting to black and white in Negative Lab Pro. 

Kodak Gold 200 is one of my favourite films. I fell in love with it on a trip to Yukon in 2022, in medium format with my GW690, photos here. Recently it was the film in my carry around camera, a Canon EOS 3 with a 50mm lens.

When I got the the film back from the lab, I'd thought of tweaking my workflow in Lightroom so I could more easily convert to both colour and black and white and see which I liked better. First step is to digitize and import. Make a virtual copy of all of them, and mark with a colour. Use NLP to convert to colour. Or black and white, it doesn't matter. Go back and select the original exposures, and make another virtual copy, mark them with a different colour. Use NLP to convert to colour or black and white, whichever you didn't do.

Now you have 3 copies of each image in a neat row, the original negative, the black and white, and the colour. It's easy to go through one at a time. My system is to mark the ones I want to work with as 1 star. I was surprised at the differences between the two versions, even more than the lack of colour. Most of them it was an easy choice. Other things popped out. I ended up picking 16 colour, and 7 as black and white.

My normal process is to crop out the borders and lightly edit in NLP. Then I'll go into Lightroom, deal with spots and hairs (and there's always at least some) and sometimes tweak the sliders a bit more. Mark with 3 stars to show I've edited, and export. 

1. As you'll see I'm kind of obsessed with reflections, especially during the multiple iterations of the winter to spring transition. 

2.

3. It's easy to see why this one doesn't work in black and white.

4. And this one didn't work in colour, with the trees going this lurid orange. 

5. Water is hard. I've seldom been happy with water photos that are not long exposures, and I've pretty much stopped trying. I'm not sure why I did this one, but it's about the closest I've done that shows what our eyes see. I think it's a slowish exposure, maybe 1/15 or so.

6. Bridge 8, one of the least photogenic bridges in Fish Creek. 

7.

8. Oddly enough the red of the dogwood (I think it's dogwood) doesn't really show up on digital. 

9. An optimistic flower in our garden, in between snowfalls.

10.

11. This was an easy choice, the colour was a swamp.

12. 

13. My favourite two trees in Fish Creek. I'm still working on posing a model on them. Pity it was raining and 6C this morning, me and her bailed.

14. This was hard choice. It's still a bit orange, but the black and white was kind of off as well. It's hard to describe.

15. I'm not sure if the jpeg version in the blog will show the water effect I see in Lightroom. It's like there's a clear shimmer layer on top and the reflection is underneath it. Plus a bit of film grain. Way better in black and white.

16. More reflections in a swamp.

17.

18.

19.

20. There are times I regret carrying only one lens. Look for the heron. Having the 70-200 would have been so much better for the bird, and so much worse for the reflections.

21. Another view of the heron.

22. Reflections in a storm water pond. The grass went kind of orange and the clouds showed up better in this version.

23. Last photo on the roll, and wanted to be done. I went back and forth trying to decide which version was best.

If you're new to the blog and don't want to miss the next one, just leave a comment asking to be added to the blog notification list. Or email me at keith at nucleus.com.

Lomo 100 colour rescue

Film photography, especially medium format, and even more especially large format, which I haven't got to yet and might never, is about mindfulness. Taking ones time with the composition. Making sure everything is right before clicking the shutter button. There are photographers that work through an actual checklist on their phone or taped to the back of the camera.

Let's just say it's a work in progress for me. So far about the only mistake I haven't made with the GW690 is leaving the lens cap on, mainly because I rarely have it on. Only to travel.

So there I was, out for a photo ramble with Sean, thinking we'd work on some long exposures in Carburn Park. The ponds are often really good for reflections. My thinking is that a reflection photo of something is more than twice as good as a photo of the thing by itself. Except the ponds are still mostly covered with ice. We were not deterred, and strolled around looking for compositions anyway. We even found some and ended up having a wonderful afternoon. Sometimes it's more about the people you might be with.

My thought was that I was going to expose black and white, and to that end I put on a yellow filter to increase contrast, along with a 10 stop ND filter for a bright sunny day with light clouds. The foil around the film roll said Lomo 100, which I knew. However I had forgotten they had come out of a box labeled color some time ago, and did not notice that it said Lomo colour 100 on the backing paper when I loaded it. Oops.

Most of these exposures are about 30 seconds, with the longest about 50 seconds. Even though the Viewfinder app gives exposure settings, and can compensate for ND filters up to 10 stops, it doesn't add in colour filters and doesn't calculate reciprocity failure. I think I read somewhere that a yellow filter is a third to half stop. I couldn't find any hard reciprocity data, the closest I could find is that some people treat it like an ISO 200 film. So I arbitrarily added some seconds to the exposure time. Other than the weird  colour, the exposures seem to have come out well enough. I figure that between NLP and Lightroom, there's lots of latitude for fixing exposure, as long as you err on the over exposure side.

Running the negatives through Negative Lab Pro as colour was lurid and otherworldly to say the least. I was mostly doing reflections of trees in the water, and that lens is sharp sharp sharp. The sense of space and light was interesting, but a bit off putting. Nothing I could do in NLP or Lightroom could fix that. The solution is to drop out colour and convert the negative to black and white right from the start. I was more careful the second time with dust, and ended up with cleaner scans, so that much was to the good.

These are lightly edited in NLP and Lightroom. I'm thinking I really should get Nic Silver Efex. I'm coming to like black and white more and more. 

1A.

1B. This is the original scan and edit. Imagine, if you will, that lurid sickly sky and reflection of the sky in the remaining photos. 

2. We worked our way around the big pond. Sean was trying to get a streak of colour from walkers and bikers, but I don't know how that worked out. How long to wait for the light, or for the missing element in your composition to come along, or for the aurora borealis to flare up, is often a topic of discussion when more than one photographer is present. Even though the path is visible in most of these photos, and there were a ton of people out enjoying the beautiful day, none of them show up, which is what I intended, so I'm happy about that. I had been thinking of scenes where there are obviously people, but the exposure is long enough that they move quicker than the film catches them.

3. Yes, there are homes that back onto the park. That would be nice to walk out a back gate into a lovely park.

4. There's some interesting gnarly trees.

5.

6. From the north end of the park it's a short walk to the Bow River, and we strolled along downstream. This is a quiet branch of the river.

7.

8. Our eyes could see the ripples and waves as the river crosses over the rocks going off to the left, but none of that shows up here. Water can be difficult.

9. Almost back to the car, we stopped at the bridge over this little slough.

10.

11A.

11B.

The astute will have noticed that 11 A and B are almost the same photo. The difference is I took the filter off for this last photo on the roll and edited it for colour. I had belatedly thought that I should get at least one normal exposure to see what this film looks like. My thinking is that it looks a bit like Ektar 100, which I'm not terribly fond of. It makes the grass look a bit more orange than it really is, and seems kind of harsh. A plus for Lomo is that the film lies flat which makes digitizing easier. 

I suppose I should note that I'm not trying to produce a print here. There's still some dust spots, and the shadows are a bit dark. I should probably do a better job of cleaning the various filters. With a bit of work I could probably increase the contrast in the sky, but doing that between the tree branches is tricky. 

My plan is to give the ponds a couple weeks for the ice to clear and try again, this time taking out some of the Lomo 100 earl grey. I kind of like the look of the naked branches, so after ice and before leaves is perfect. Let me know if you live in Calgary and want to come along.

MC winter photo session

There I was on Thursday, working on an essay for my other blog (on the drought and the price of water) when I got a text from Michelle, my favourite model, and best run and swim buddy ever, if you haven't been following along in the other blog for the last decade or so. 

She said, 

"I have a photo shoot idea… Might you be curious? I would love to capture a photo in a snowstorm in all black-and-white. Me wearing black, the white snow swirling around and in the background, and just have my red hair being the only thing that’s coloured in the photo. Maybe lipstick to any idea how to technically accomplish this?"

Well, holy doodle! Photographers live for such things. I nearly sprained a finger typing yes. We texted back and forth a bit and it turned out she also wanted to show off a corset she had made. Duh!

1. Here's one of the last photos.

As an aside, it's been snowing off and on here for the better part of a week, so the odds of at least some snow swirling around were pretty good. I was hoping for some big fat fluffy flakes gently drifting down, camera on a tripod, for a slightly long exposure to increase the swirl effect. Or maybe an HDR of 3 different exposures, maybe merged, maybe not. Plus the snow covers all the ugly half melted ground.

We both had things on Thursday afternoon. My eyes are good, thank you very much, only a small change to the astigmatism part of the prescription. I might not have needed new glasses, but these are 3 years old, and the coatings are starting to wear off. Plus there's a sale in April. I digress. She had a thing Friday morning.

We met up about noon, so less than 24 hours from idea to making it happen. Never let it be said we are sloths when it comes to a great idea. There were a few more ideas generated. Her skirt had an interesting pattern on it that I wanted to try to capture. I can see it in Lightroom, not so sure if it will show up here. I had figured out a location and we were off. It wasn't the snow we dreamed of, but it was off and on. You can see the flakes in some of the photos. The overcast skies and snow created wonderful soft light.

We started on the path at the south end of my neighbourhood, on the edge of the hill going down into Fish Creek. I wanted an uncluttered white background to show off the black and red. We had fun trying different ideas just to see how they would turn out. Some worked well, some not so well, but that's the fun of collaboration. One of the things I love about Michelle is that she can project so many different moods, fun, joyous, serious, sultry, mysterious. I can make up a story, and she can project the image. 

Just so you know. Michelle is a real woman of an age to be thinking seriously about retirement. Her skin has tried to kill her at least once that I know of. A Photoshop pro could smooth out her skin and make her look like a teenager, but we both wanted the photos to be of her, not some fanboy Photoshopped version of her. Neither are were we trying to look like the cover of some fashion magazine. They have what I consider to be normal editing in Lightroom and nothing more. The trickiest thing was tweaking the sliders to affect how the skirt pattern would show up. 

The main point was to have fun and and with a bonus if we generated some images that we liked. Both of us are really pleased about the whole thing. You can get Michelle's perspective on her blog here. I have to say I'm enormously flattered.

2A. Yes she is enjoying herself, trying to create a swirl of snow on her own.

2B. Same photo converted to black and white, just because.

3. It wasn't actually that cold out, so no, she's not freezing her shoulders off.

4. You might be thinking indoors, against seamless paper, but no, outdoors. See above.

5. We moved down into Fish Creek, thinking about picnic tables, a bench, and a bridge. 

6A. She found these trees and they turned out to make a great frame.

6B. I decided to try this one in B&W as well.

7.

8.  We spent lots of time with the bridge and nearby bench.

9. 

10.

11.

12.

13. She had just refreshed the hair dye and wanted to show it off. Other than slightly tweaking the white balance, I've not adjusted the colour at all. 

14. I liked what the skirt is doing here.

15.

16.

17. These two didn't know what to think. We had a few other passers by during the session, with one woman watching for a few minutes while her dog did it's business. 

18.

19.

20.

There are many more photos, of course. I didn't want to overload this post, so there will be some showing up in the Of the Day section in posts on my other blog. 

Technical end notes. I started with the 100 mm lens because I was thinking a static portrait at first. Then we realized we wanted the freedom for her to move around a bit, so I switched to the 70-200. No tripod, no HDR. I'd even brought a film camera with colour film in it, but once I got started I didn't even think of it. Much like the double exposure session a couple weeks ago, this was NOT a serious gig, working through a shot list for a paying client, with makeup artists, assistants, and entourage standing there watching us, checking the time because they get paid by the hour. Mostly it was us making it up as we went along. The important part was to have fun exploring an idea, and we did, and I'd do it again, using some of her vision board photos as inspiration. Yay us!