Tag Archives: Kodak Ektar 100

Cameras, Color, DC Cityscapes, Events, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

July 4th – Smithsonian Folklife Festival

July 13, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Every year at the end of June/beginning of July the Smithsonian Institute puts on the Folklife Festival down on the National Mall. They bring in craftspeople from various cultures around the globe to demonstrate ways of life in those cultures, from farming and fishing to music and dance. This year China and Kenya were the countries represented. I went down on the 4th of July this year to take a look and see what was on display.

You could see this pavilion on the mall from 14th Street every day driving by. I wondered what it was all about and had to stop and see it close up. The building is built like a traditional Chinese city gate, but made of a bamboo frame and covered in paper. I never did see what the Zuni Icosahedron thing on the front of the gate meant.

Sometimes it’s just the simple things that attract your attention. This banner flapping in the wind made such a bold graphic statement with its geometry contrasting with the organic cloud forms.

Here are the bamboo wind chimes that filled the structure of the paper gate. One thing that amazed me was how fast they were able to disassemble the gate structure – it was literally up one day, gone the next. You can take that as a commentary on the ephemeral nature of existence if you like.

In the Kenyan area of the festival, they had this traditional fishing boat on display, and Kenyan craftsmen were working on rebuilding it. Not visible here but in the stern were areas that had obviously seen significant wear and tear.

Kenyan Boat, Folklife Festival, Side View

And finally, as part of the Chinese installation, was this figure. I’m calling him Bao’s Big Boy as he looks like a Chinese Bob’s, or perhaps the love child of Bob’s Big Boy and Astroboy if they were to have a relationship. Toss in a dose of Young Pioneer and you’ve nailed it.

Cameras, Color, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Night-time, Photography, Washington DC

Panoramas with a Rolleiflex

July 13, 2014 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

A long time ago, I saw this interesting little gadget sitting in the used equipment case at my local camera store. It was a panorama adapter for Rolleiflex cameras that enabled you to shoot up to a 360-degree panorama on a single roll. It has a built-in bubble level (which is absolutely critical). You put the camera on top, then focus and compose as normal. Once you have the focus and exposure set, you don’t change them (this is also critical). Take the first exposure, then push in the little locking lever, rotate the camera to the next increment on the dial, and take the next picture, and so on until you have shot as many frames as you want to shoot. It is critical to maintain focus and exposure as set on the original frame because changing focus will mean that things in one frame will not be in exactly the same proportion as they were in the previous frame,therefore they will not blend seamlessly. Ditto for exposure – if you change the exposure from frame to frame, ESPECIALLY if you are shooting color film, you’ll never be able to match the frames.

Done right, you get this:

It isn’t perfect because with the long exposures (45-90 seconds each – I forget which I used, but as you can see they’re all exactly the same) traffic patterns don’t flow through the underpass during all three exposures, and the lens flare from the street light in the middle picture doesn’t carry over to the same degree in the left picture, thanks to the lens hood. But you have to look at it to see the three frames separately.

If things aren’t perfect, then you end up with:

While the alignment is pretty close, the color is off a bit on each frame. This took quite a bit of Photoshoppery to get it to match as well as it does. I kind of expected this outcome when trying this shot because I knew the traffic patterns wouldn’t line up from frame to frame, and wanted to see how it would turn out. I think it worked well enough as an effect, but I’m on the fence as to whether I’d try it again.

If you don’t have everything perfectly level, you get:

Also lots of Photoshoppery went into getting the colors and density to match from frame to frame. This one has been rotated and cropped to get it MORE level, but you can see between the oval of the fountain and the overall tilt, it wasn’t level and square enough.

And last but not least, another experiment with disjointed traffic flow around Dupont Circle.

Another part of this experiment was to see how Kodak Ektar 100 does with long night exposures. My previous (and still) favorite for night photos is Portra 160. While Ektar hasn’t dethroned Portra for this purpose, it proves it can stand on its own and I don’t need to carry multiple emulsions with me when I travel to cover every scenario. I can bring a few rolls of Portra 800 for when I need to shoot hand-held in low light, and the Ektar 100 for everything else.

Cameras, Color, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Night-time, Photography, Washington DC

Keeping With the Snow Theme

January 22, 2014 dcphotoartist 2 Comments

… but this time in color. I caught the sunrise reflecting on the windows of the houses at the top of my alley, and tinting the sky.

That inspired me to set back up at twilight and take this version, with the sky gone deep blue but not yet black.

Just so you know, to take these photos I had to set up my tripod in the bathtub and then stand on the rim of the bathtub to be able to compose these shots. The things I do for my readers 😀

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 39 – Staircases at Versailles

December 23, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

These first two are of the service stairs that lead from today’s restaurant and snack bar to the ground floor and the exit to the gardens. By the time I got to the dining room, my feet were screaming at me from all the continuous marching through the palace and across the cobbled courtyards. I did not eat in the main dining room but instead got a sandwich from the cafe. There was no place to sit (the only available tables were the stand-up kind, every chair was taken). Leaving the cafe to be faced with this staircase, then, was suddenly a daunting task. What to do, then, but photograph it?

To proof the images I wanted to scan and print bigger, I had a set of 5×5 inch proof prints made at the time of developing the film. Sometimes, the minilab prints looked better than my final scan results, but more often, they look worse. Based on the minilab prints, I excluded these two from my rough edit. Going back over the film while scanning everything else, I looked at the negatives and they looked good, so I took a whirl and scanned the first one. As it turned out, they were much better than I thought they would be based on the proof prints.

These next two are a memory refresher from an earlier post. With the exception of the last photo in this post, the only staircases I photographed at Versailles, it seems, were service stairs. I guess everyone is content to ignore them and only pay attention to (and mob) the Queen’s Stairs. Their loss, my gain.

When I originally posted this staircase, I mistakenly labeled it “The Queen’s Staircase”. It is not. The Queen’s staircase is far more opulent and magnificent than this, although I wouldn’t complain about having this be the main stairs in my house…

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 37 – Chalon Odds and Ends

December 21, 2013 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

Here are some loose ends from my sojourn in Chalon-sur-Saone. You may remember the Valentin Paint ad in black-and-white – here it is in color.

The black-and-white version, as a refresher:

I couldn’t help but photograph this storefront for the combination of the beautiful if faded 1940s Art Deco facade and the psychologically jarring name. Fagot (pronounced Fah-GO) is a family name, not a slur aimed at someones sexual orientation. Today, instead of the original business that built the building, it is occupied by the offices of a political party.

I’m a sucker for Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture. So when I see a building like this, I have to photograph it.

Apartment Building, Boulevard de la Republique, Chalon

The first and last view you have of Chalon when traveling by rail is of this plaza with the modern arbors forming a tunnel to point you toward the center of town. To camera right is the St. Georges hotel, where I stayed, and to the left across the plaza is the english pub-style restaurant where I had the delicious breaded veal with the pasta the French don’t know quite what to do with. Behind is the Maitre Pierre restaurant you saw in my night photos from the hotel balcony.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 36 – a Courtyard in Chalon

December 21, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Around the corner from the Musee Niepce and the Chalon tourism office, I encountered this fascinating courtyard. Perhaps the single most surprising element was the massive bronze Laocoon statue in an otherwise ordinary if picturesque courtyard. Why and how the statue ended up there is a mystery.

If you remember your mythology, Laocoon was a Trojan priest who predicted the Greek gift of the Trojan horse but was not believed. There are multiple versions of why the gods sent serpents to strangle him and his sons, ranging from dishonesty to defiling temple virgins. Regardless of the why, his story became famous, and has been commemorated in art from ancient times. There is a Roman marble of this scene, probably modeled after a Greek one, which was then emulated multiple times in stone and metal during the Renaissance.

Someone who lives in this courtyard favors geraniums.

Courtyard residences seem to be extremely popular in France. I suppose it’s for the relative privacy you have compared to facing the street, especially in older urban areas where stepping out your front door puts you literally a sidewalks’ breadth away from traffic. And it provides opportunities for parking that you wouldn’t get elsewhere. I think I’d like to live on a courtyard if I lived in Paris, or even in a town like Chalon. Who wouldn’t enjoy walking down the stairs every morning to be greeted by your own classical Greek statue?

Greenery of all kinds, in fact, is a hallmark of the space. These flowering vines had taken over the wall and partially obscured the window into the workshop. If my understanding of French is any good, the workshop behind these windows was a specialist in antiques and restoration. I couldn’t tell if they were open at the time so I didn’t try to venture in.

Another somewhat Swiss-looking architectural element, the peaked gabled windows in the roof:

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 35 – Chalon-sur-Saone, Rue De L’Oratoire

December 19, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Joseph Nicephore Niepce was born in Chalon-sur-Saone on March 7, 1765 in a house at 9 (now 15 in the new address scheme) Rue De L’Oratoire. The house as it stands today is rather nondescript and gives no clue as to the inspiration behind the man who would invent photography. Rue De L’Oratoire is really more of an alley, closed in on one end, and the other opens to a pedestrian-only street.

In this view of number 15, Rue De L’Oratoire, you can see the plaque on the wall indicating the house where Niepce was born.

Niepce's Birthplace, 15 Rue de L'Oratoire — Niepce’s Birthplace, 15 Rue de L’Oratoire

A view of the street, including the house:

Niepce's Birthplace, Rue De L'Oratoire — Niepce’s Birthplace, Rue De L’Oratoire

If you are approaching Rue de L’Oratoire on foot from Rue General Leclerc, there is a driveway into which you can turn, at the end of which is this very ornate iron gate and lamp, guarding a private courtyard. I could not confirm but I believe the front of Niepce’s house faces this courtyard, which is infinitely more appealing than the Rue de L’Oratoire side. I did not photograph the house itself as it is currently lived in by private citizens.

The approach to the Rue de L’Oratoire from Rue General Leclerc is through what is now a car park, at the back of which can be found the Tour Saudon, a medieval tower. I assume the car park was once gardens for the tower. This is a close-up of the iron gate and door to the tower, which again, to the best of my ability to determine, is not open to the public.

Across Rue de L’Oratoire from the Tour Saudon, there is a 17th century courtyard apartment building. I could have spent an entire day just doing a photo essay on this courtyard. I would have loved to have seen inside some of the apartments – what would they look like now, and how would the layers of history be exposed/concealed in such a space?

The red-and-black marble tile paving on the sidewalk inside the carriageway is an enchanting detail to the space, and a very clear sign of its age. It almost feels like you’re looking at a painting, and not the actual stone.

Red and Black Marble Sidewalk, 17th Century Courtyard

The carriageway into the courtyard is, I suspect, the primary means of vehicular ingress and egress to the Rue de L’Oratoire, as the intersecting street at the bottom of the Rue is a pedestrian-only thoroughfare.

Door, Window, Carriageway, 17th Century Courtyard

Staircase Tower Door, 17th Century Courtyard

If you look through the archway over the Rue de L’Oratoire, you can see the pedestrian street, the Rue au Change. If the overpass connecting the apartment building with the building across the street looks Swiss, it should not be surprising in Chalon- it is about 70 miles (120km) to Geneva from Chalon. The building in the courtyard to which the iron gate and lamp at the top of this post is attached on the left looks just like a traditional Swiss chalet that you’d expect to see on an alpine meadow, not in the middle of a French town.

Overpass, Rue de l'Oratoire — Overpass, Rue de l’Oratoire

Architecture, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 34 – Art Nouveau in Chalon-sur-Saone

December 18, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

On the Boulevard de la Republique there is this fascinating Art Nouveau building that stands out amidst its neighbors. Having spent 10 days in Barcelona, perhaps the global epicenter of Art Nouveau, it’s hard not to be sensitive to it. A Gaudi building this isn’t, but the sculptures over the doors that support the first floor balconies are particularly notable – they look like they’re organically emerging from the stone, or perhaps swirling in and out of a magical smoke from some genie’s lamp.

The archway over the building entrance (#18) is obviously stylistically linked to the entrance archway to the courtyard behind the building (#16 Blvd de la Republique), but in no way a mirror.

Entrance, 18 Boulevard de la Republique, Chalon-sur-Saone

Here is the full facade, so you can appreciate the context of the doorways. I wonder what it housed in the past, and for what purpose it was built. Today there appear to be offices in the building on the lower levels, and possibly apartments on the upper floor.

Facade, Number 16-18 Boulevard de la Republique, Chalon-sur-Saone

I did not see anything else like it in town, in my admittedly extremely brief survey of Chalon, which makes me wonder all the more about the motivation for building it. How did this come to be? It’s obviously prior to the (now gone) Kodak presence in Chalon. It also doesn’t have the feel of being the residence of a single wealthy family, like the Gaudi commissions in Barcelona.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Night-time, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 33 – Chalon-sur-Saone, at night

December 18, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I know, Chalon-sur-Saone is NOT in Paris. It is in fact several hundred kilometers from Paris, and about 120 kilometers from the Swiss border, on the river Saone, which feeds the Rhone. I stayed at the Hotel St.Georges, which is immediately adjacent to the train station. It was the perfect location in town for me because of my travel schedule. It had been rainy off and on the duration of my visit to Chalon. I got lucky when it stopped raining after dinner long enough for me to step out on my balcony and take some night photos. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time you know I like taking night photos- I think they’re particularly poetic with their distorted colors and blurred motion.

Here is the view of the hotel marquee from the balcony of my room. The train station is in the background.

St Georges Hotel Marquee, Railway Station

A view up the Avenue Jean Jaures from my balcony. In the far background on the avenue you can start to see the lights of a traveling carnival that was set up in town.

Avenue Jean Jaures, St. Georges Hotel, Night

A different view of the plaza in front of the hotel. Across the plaza is the British Pub-style restaurant where I had lunch right after my arrival. The food was excellent and cheap (10 euros for a 3-course lunch!), but it cemented in my mind that the French don’t quite know what to do with pasta – the veal cutlet was delicious, but the pasta that accompanied it was bare, and the marinara sauce came in a dipping cup more appropriate for salad dressing on the side rather than an integral part of a pasta dish.

The corner across the street is the Maitre Pierre restaurant, which never seemed busy, and two doors up the Avenue Jean Jaures is an Indian restaurant.

A close-up view of the Maitre Pierre restaurant.

Photo-geek techie note, for those who care: shot with my Rolleiflex 2.8E, using Kodak Ektar 100. I may have said this before, but my favorite film for night photography is Portra 160. I love the way it handles mixed lighting and the extreme contrast you get at night. When I came to Chalon, I wasn’t expecting to do any night photography, so I left all the Portra in Paris, and all I had for color was Ektar 100. You can see from these photos that if that suddenly became my only option for color night photography, I wouldn’t be mad. It’s not a case of not liking Ektar for night photography, just liking Portra more.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 32 – Notre Dame in Color

December 12, 2013 dcphotoartist 2 Comments

Notre Dame looks very different in color than in black-and-white. The stone takes on a different texture, the shapes of the arches and buttresses are somehow different, and I think you feel the age of the place much more. This is, after all, a 900 year old building.

In the garden behind the cathedral, there is an apple tree. The groundskeepers must zealously patrol for fallen fruit, as I never saw one on the ground in a week of passing through. I was talking with someone at work about this apple tree and he observed an irony of having an apple tree in the garden of a cathedral, if you’re into Christian symbolism.

A closer-in view of the rear of the cathedral, including the spire. The towers top out at 226 feet, but the spire and its weather-vane go on to 300 feet tall. I don’t think you realize that when looking at the building because of the relative mass of the towers, and the perspective you have when viewing either spire or towers – you’re always looking up, and at the distances required to see both, the height differential is erased by perspective. You can clearly see in this photo the stacked wedding-cake structure of the building – the lower floor with its side chapels spreads out much wider than the center aisle.

A side view of the cathedral, showing both the towers and the spire. Even from this view it’s hard to see an extra 75 feet of height on the spire.

Another view of the rear, with the apple tree. This one includes people in the garden for perspective.

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