The sky was overcast and gray all day for solstice, which reminded me of Paris. Looking through my photos taken from a riverboat on our last day in Paris back in June, I noticed that there was lots of love along the Seine despite the gray sky and rain.
Cranes hanging out in a cornfield and tree farm.
Those specs that look like I could have a very dirty sensor are actually birds flying over downtown Albuquerque with the sunset lighting up the Manzanos in the background.
When you live out in the sticks.
I ran out to get the mail this afternoon, which would normally take about 15 minutes, but I got distracted by the light, drove up to the north end of Corrales, and got back with the mail about an hour and a half after I left.
Snow, snowmen, and wintery landscapes at sunset.
I’ve been searching for a reasonably priced case for my 4X5 view camera. Most of the cases made for 4X5 view cameras that would fit this model were more than double what I paid for the camera and lens for cases in good condition, and $100 or more for cases that were pretty old and beat up. After lots of searching I found the above instrument case that had the right dimensions for $25 with free shipping. I got a call from the reception desk that I had a package that is really heavy up front. I was wondering what came in that would be heavy. I walked up front to find the case, and when I picked it up it is was very light. I asked Beth about it and she said that the delivery guy wrestled it in through the front door on a dolly, and then used both hands and his legs to slide it off the dolly like it weighed a ton. Either he was paying attention to the “Delicate Unit Handle with Care” sign by the handle on the lid, or he was a drama queen. Besides being a great price, very sturdy and light weight, this case has been all over the world with stickers from airports in China, Columbia, Chile, and the Dominican Republic that we were able to easily identify. With a little cutting on the foam, it’s a perfect fit for the camera with room to add compartments for film holders, dark cloth and other accessories.
The photo below is a 4X5 view camera selfie of sorts.
I find it interesting how digital cameras, and using cell phones to do photos, has changed the way people photograph each other, the attractions they visit, and themselves. I took most of these photos of people photographing each other, or taking a break from photographing each other, at the Musée d’Orsay. I like the photos in B&W because they have a 60’s look with people using modern digital cameras and phones to do their photos and then check out the results.
Winter is upon us with cold temperatures, snow flurries, cloudy skies and gray light. The Sandias have been covered with clouds most of the day, and even with the thermostat set at 70 F (21 C), it felt cold in the house all day without the sun shinning through the windows.
I processed a batch of 4X5 negatives I took of the Sandias and a railroad bridge with my 4X5 view camera over the past few weeks. Since I don’t have a scanner that is made to scan 4X5 negatives, I did “ghetto scanning” of the negatives by making a film holder out of a sheet of card stock, placing the holder and a negative on my old Epson 1260 scanner, placing a sheet of paper over the holder and negative, and holding a lamp with a 25 watt light bulb over the paper the negative is under as a back light while scanning the negative. The scanner is set for reflective scanning, so it doesn’t quite focus on the negative with a backlight, but the process sort of works, giving the resulting images a vintage look.
Since I’m still learning how to process 4X5 film using a daylight processing tank, when I first pulled the negatives out of the tank after the final rinse, they were purple in the middle. Oops! I hadn’t fixed them quite long enough, and I needed to agitate the tank more during the fixing process. So the negatives went back into the tank for another round of fix with more aggressive agitation. After another round of hypo-clearing agent and another rinse, all the purple was gone, but the double round of fixing left the negatives a bit uneven.
Then there’s the issue that the lamp I’m using for the “ghetto scanning” doesn’t fully cover the negatives, so I get bright edges on the images in the resulting scans. I did a little “burning” around the edges in Photoshop to even things out, which worked a pretty well on some images, and didn’t make much difference on others.
Off Center & Not Even 