Even Shooting Sakura Gets a Kind of Poe Riff

Two weekends ago I braved the rain and drizzle to shoot the last of the cherry blossoms at Tamagawa. I think I got a few good shots of the flowers and I got to try working on different lighting style for me. But that Edgar Allan Poe comic with the raven and the Bohemian Rhapsody riff has been floating around FB again and became an ear wig I couldn’t shake. With the crows out in full force and the dreary weather (now I feel like I should break out into a parody of  “The Raven”) sometimes one needs to take a break from the flowers and go gothic mystic. I caught the following image with my Fuji 690 GWIII.

Crows sitting on trees on rainy spring day by Tamagawa, Tokyo, Japan.

This tree was filled with crows but with my typical luck, a bunch of crows took off while I was focusing. A few were kind enough to pose.

I scanned the image under a color film setting and ended up with an interesting sepia tone. The film is Ilford 3200 shot at ISO 1600 and exposed normally.

I’m looking forward to pulling out the dark room equipment and contact printing this image to see what happens.

In case you missed this comic, here is a version from cafepress.com

Designed by Jack Kelly

I finally found an attribution for the image at cafepress.com where it is credited to Jack Kelly. Yay! And I’m so impressed with this person. Not sure if this is the first iteration of this design but I’m happy to have someone to attribute it to.

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Banff and my Spendy Pencil the Fuji GW690III

It’s been a great summer of travel, but one of the tough things about traveling a lot is catching up with everything when you get back and getting time to get the pictures done. The store where I get my film developed takes a bit of effort to get to so I waited to develop my film until I had other errands in the same area. Despite the wait, I was excited to see the results because this was the first time I used the Fuji GW690III in the field. I’d taken it to Canada.

I bought the Fuji GW690III in April this year. I’ve only used a couple times and never far from home because that sucker is HEAVY even though it is a doll. For a range-finder, I find the focus really easy to use. Even complex images like sakura or pine trees seem manageable through this view finder. I also love, love, love the dimensions of this film.

I went hiking with a friend to Johnston Canyon. I was determined to take the Fuji and I’m glad I did even though I only got two rolls of film done. I choose relatively fast film because I wasn’t bringing a tripod. I expected I’d have just enough energy  to go up the trails never mind a tripod.

The first roll was black and white the ever-faithful Ilford 400 Delta.

The second was a film I’ve had good luck with in the past: Lomo redscale ISo 50-200. Despite my wish to shoot fast film, I ended up trying to shoot ISO 25-50. I was lucky that it was a really bright, sunny day. With my exposures, I think I should have got more blue in my photos than the hot red. I adjusted the redness in these photos using Photoshop after scanning the film. Not such a fan of the hot red of some of the photos so I’m not posting them.

 

I had a small accident with the film when dropping it off at the photo store. The glue had dried and come loose ruining the last photo and a bit of light leak on the above right.

I’d like to use this camera more often and carrying it around might be the inspiration I need to get back into the weight room.

Cheers!

L.

The light leak pattern is kind of interesting, but honestly, I’m more fascinated with where the numbers came from.

p.s.  This is what it looks like when the glue tab keeping your 120 film spool sealed gets loose.