Today was a very busy day. This morning I went out to Glen Echo Photoworks to help out with the open house. We had a lot of folks come through asking about my upcoming classes and about the prints I brought along.
Then I went to dinner with my parents for their 50th anniversary at Blacksalt, which is a fancy fish and seafood restaurant here in DC. I had made the reservations and told the restaurant about the anniversary in advance, so they prepared special menus that said Happy 50th Anniversary on them, and when dessert came out, they specially decorated the plate with chocolate sauce.
The photo relevance here is that I brought the Rollei along to take their photo at the table. I’ll have the film dropped off Tuesday and get it back later this week.
On the way home, I detoured back to Glen Echo and waited for the neon lights to come on so I could burn through some more of that 5×7 Portra I have sitting around. And burn through it I did. I also stopped off in Georgetown and shot some more on the waterfront, and even grabbed a couple of sheets in the rain. I’m really looking forward to seeing those!
I was out running errands yesterday, and after a successful outing to Home Despot (yes, I know how I spelled it…) to get new paint for the bedroom (Martha Stewart Living colors if you must know, Azurite (dark blue, not quite Navy) for the accent wall and the entryway, and Etched Glass (very pale blue) for the main walls), I came home to find a football game in progress at the neighboring high school. The high school has about four parking spaces, all of which are currently demolished during renovations of the school, so anyone who drove to the game parked in the neighborhood. Meaning that I had to double-park to unload the paint, then drive around in circles for fifteen minutes before giving up.
This was actually the good thing – I gave up, and drove down to Chinatown (well, DC’s ersatz Chinatown wannabe – there’s maybe eight chinese restaurants, and the Chinatown Arch, and then to keep it looking “like Chinatown”, the CVS, the Irish Pub, Fuddruckers, and Hooters (yes there’s a Hooters in DC’s Chinatown) all have duplicate signage in Chinese characters). There’s plenty of colorful neon signs in Chinatown so I figured it would be a target-rich environment for doing some night photography. And lo-and-behold, what did I happen to have in the trunk of my car but my 5×7, pre-loaded with some Kodak Portra 160 from a previous outing that was fruitless.
This was particularly successful as it provided me with an opportunity to test out the lenses I just got back from being serviced. I had sent off the shutters to my Turner Reich 12/19/25 triple convertible, Kodak 12″ commercial Ektar and 14″ Commercial Ektar. I didn’t have the 14″ Commercial Ektar with me because it won’t fit on the 5×7’s front standard – it’s a big fat lens in a #5 Ilex shutter, and the Canham takes a Linhof Technika lensboard. Meaning the lensboard can’t take the 14″ Commercial Ektar in itself, and the lens is so heavy it might torque itself off the front standard if given half a chance. The 12″ Commercial Ektar though is in a #4 shutter, which is a fair sight smaller. What a difference two inches makes! I’ll have to take the film in to Dodge/Chrome on Monday after work.
So, long story short, the football game that kept me from parking got me out of the house and off my ass, and I had a productive evening shooting perhaps seven sheets of 5×7 color. Thank You Cardozo High football team!
Ag fairs are a long-running tradition in the United States. They’re getting harder to find now, especially near urban areas on the coasts, as agricultural regions disappear. And really, there’s not that much agricultural to the Montgomery County Fair these days – it’s mostly just the midway with the rides and games and heart-stoppingly unhealthy food. It had been ages since I went to one, so it was a nice trip down nostalgia lane, and they make for a great opportunity to shoot wild colors at night. The Montgomery County Fair is held in Gaithersburg every summer, and while the area used to be semi-rural, it is now very much a part of the Washington DC megalopolis. It’s not an exurb or even an outer suburb anymore.
Merry Go RoundWin Big PrizesPizza, NachosSuper Shot – Starting OutSuper Shot – HalfwaySuper Shot – Almost ThereSuper Shot – At The Top
I’d have included the Super Shot dropping but it happens so fast it’s hard to time it and get a good picture with motion blur that makes sense – setting up a tripod in the middle of the midway to take that shot would probably get you ejected by security for obstructing traffic.
I shot all of these hand-held, with my Contax RTS III and 50mm f1.4 lens. most were shot at f1.4. My film of choice is Kodak Portra 160, not only because it’s very fine-grained but also because it has a remarkable talent for handling mixed lighting conditions.
Ok – I managed to get my FotoWeekDC portfolio contest entry submitted. With three hours to spare, give or take. I’m submitting nine images from my Colors of Night series. I finally got to take advantage of my (rather pricey) large format film holders for my scanner, and re-scanned some of my 5×7 negatives from San Francisco. I submitted 5 San Francisco and 4 Washington DC night shots. Fingers crossed, they’ll go over well.
I’ve been having so much fun with my night photography. I’m really digging the results I get with my RB67 and Kodak Portra 160.
Studio Theater, from 14th StreetBarrel House LiquorsStudio Theater, from P StreetPearl Dive Oyster Palace, Vespa, 14th StreetNeon, Glen Echo Park14th & Rhode Island Avenue, Moon
And last but not least, two of these things are not like the others. One is a daytime image I shot of one of the older, more original, and most brightly colored food trucks here in DC – Fojol Brothers. They have three different trucks each catering a different ethnic cuisine – Benethiopia (Ethiopian), Merlindia (Indian) and Volathai (Thai). The bright colors and shiny metal, plus the repetition of the circles and semi-circles just cried out for an abstract treatment, so here it is…
Abstract, Fojol Brothers truck, Merlindia
And last but not least, the happy accident: I was a dingbat and triple-exposed the same frame. But it turned out really neat in the end!
Here are some of my color images of Washington DC – some of these images will be going into my Artomatic show in May, along with some of my images in San Francisco.
Capitol Bikeshare, 7-Eleven WindowsCapitol Bikeshare, Rhode Island AvenueFountain, Capitol Columns, US ArboretumCapitol Columns, US ArboretumRosslyn, Potomac RiverUnder the Whitehurst FreewayKennedy Center, Potomac River, NightEarth mover, NightWater Street, GeorgetownWashington Harbor, Cherry Blossoms, Taxi
These are part of an ongoing series I’ve been working on of Washington DC, by day and by night. All these were shot with a Mamiya RB67. My film of preference is Kodak Portra 160nc because it does such a great job with handling diverse light-sources. The two bikeshare photos are on Fuji NPS 160. I was trying them out side-by-side, to see which I like better. I think the Fuji still has a little bit of a green cast to it, so I think I’m going to stick to the Kodak.
I was out to my parents’ house this weekend for Easter dinner, and I found my stash of stereoviews I had been keeping there. I thought I’d scan in a few of them to add to the online collection here. These are from Washington DC, my guess is mostly from the 1920s and 1930s, although the one of the Library of Congress as viewed from the Capitol dome could be as old as the 1890s.
The US Capitol Dome reflected in the rain
I love this shot because it represents a personal passion when photographing- nighttime photography. It’s just a great shot of the Capitol dome all illuminated, reflecting in the wet street.
Capitol Hill Aerial View
Here’s an aerial view of Capitol Hill, looking west. In the immediate foreground, starting with the US Capitol as the 12 O’clock position, going clockwise, is the US Senate offices, the US Supreme Court (the very bright white building, which stands today on the grounds of the former Old Brick Capitol Prison, home to civil war spies among others), across the street and a little more to the foreground is the Folger Shakespeare Library, and then continuing on is the Library of Congress, and finishing up to the left and slightly into the background/west of the US Capitol are two of the US Congress office buildings. On the right, far in the distance, is the Natural History Museum, and the big gulf between it and the Capitol shows these to have been taken before 1937, as the National Gallery of Art building was begun at that time and opened to the public in 1941.
Library of Congress, as seen from the Capitol dome
Last but not least, we have the Library of Congress, as seen from the top of the US Capitol dome. The view is looking east down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Anacostia River. This, the main building of the Library of Congress (LoC) is one of the most spectacular buildings in Washington DC, and if you are ever here, well worth the visit for the architecture alone, if not for one of the special exhibits they routinely have on display. When I went in last year to see a photography exhibit (and yes, the LoC is one of the great photography museums of the world, but much of their collection is viewable by appointment only), they had the reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library that he donated upon his death to form the nucleus of the LoC collection. In comparison to today’s LoC, which has a copy of every book, magazine and newspaper published since the 1870s, and a healthy selection of those before as well, Jefferson’s collection was a meager 6500 books, what he lacked in quantity he made up for in quality. He had his own organizational scheme for his library, arranged by topic. It’s a fascinating display and worthwhile for any bibliophile. For more information about the exhibit, see the LOC Website
Windows, Jin Wang BoutiqueHotel Triton, Grant Street
All of these were shot with my 240mm Voigtlander Heliar f4.5 lens. It is fast becoming one of my favorite lenses for its rendition of out-of-focus areas. I knew it was a legendary lens for black-and-white shooting, but was unsure how it would render color. As you can see here, it does a beautiful job with color, despite being uncoated. It does give a slightly vintage look to the color palette, but some of that might also be the film I’m using – Kodak Portra 160 NC.
Maru Sushi, Powell StreetGrant Hotel and the Nob Hill Theater, Bush Street
While I was out shooting these photos, I was approached by a number of people to talk about the camera, which I’ve come to expect. ALMOST all of them are very interested in what I’m doing, what’s the story of the camera, how old is it, etc. And then you get the occasional joker, like the fools driving past me in their Porsche sedan who had to roll down the window and shout, “Haven’t you heard of a thing called digital? Why haven’t you gotten with the program yet?” To which I responded – ” This (my 5×7) is a half a Gigapixel”. I smiled politely, turned my back, and muttered to myself, “so bite me”. Which is actually a bit of an understatement – a 2000 dpi scan of a 5×7 negative is 1.4 gigapixels.
Dupont Circle Underpass, Connecticut Avenue, Night
Some of my prints from the shoot on Saturday night. These are all palladium prints. The images were shot with my Canham 5×12. All images were taken around Dupont Circle. You can see from the bus photo that these were obviously long time exposures (the bus was somewhere north of 2 minutes, in multiple snaps of 30+ seconds each). The bus was an experiment that didn’t produce the expected result, but in a bout of serendipity turned out something just as cool as my original concept. I was hoping the bus sitting still as passengers boarded would record as a solid object. Instead, it became something far more abstract in the final image – you can recognize the bus, in pieces. It became an essay on motion, transportation and “transit/ion” by virtue of its self-deconstruction.
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