A Special Photo

Sunday (Easter) I made a special photo that I want to share.

For a little context, I met a nice young woman named Meagan about 5 1/2 years ago. On one of our first dates, we found a cool burnt-out church in Waycross:

It was a neat place and I liked to shoot photos inside the church:

Over the years we made many stops to this church when visiting Waycross. This was one of my favorite photos from there:

On Sunday we were visiting Meagan's family north of this church. As we traveled south the weather was terrible. The rain was so bad I could hardly drive. Amazingly the rain stopped suddenly when we arrived.

I brought my Chamonix 4x5 and set it up to take a few photos. I used my 58mm f/5.6 XL lens. I had thrown an air bulb release into my bag so told Meagan we could take a picture together.

Preparing to press the shutter, I pretended to drop the air release.

Meagan was surprised when I did this:

(She said yes.)

Thanks for reading my blog!

Abandoned House near Homerville, GA

Meagan and I drive to Waycross often to visit her parents. The road between Valdosta and Waycross is pretty interesting and has many small cities on the way.

Many years ago, we stopped at an old abandoned house right off the main highway. It was tucked away in the woods and you could just barely see it from the road. I had just started shooting film seriously and shot a few photos of that house. I had also just bought some materials to develop my own film. I had no idea what I was doing, but I managed to get something on the film. Here is an incredibly dusty scan from way back then:

So when we passed by this house again, I thought it'd be great to stop. The forest around the house had been cut back and a huge swath of the forest behind the house was being logged. Here's a shot from the back of the house:

I've learned a bit over the years! I was shooting with my Rolleiflex and 7.5cm f/3.5 Tessar lens and Tri-X 400, developed in SPUR HRX. The door was open...so I looked in:

Since I could get in, I decided to go ahead and look around. Here are some images from around the house:

It was really dark in there of course and I could barely shoot these without a tripod. It was fun to shoot film again here, after having learned so much in the last 5 years or so.

Various 35mm photos from the past couple of months

Haven't had a lot of time lately to shoot or post images. I had a bout of the flu last week which I'm still trying to get over completely.

Here's some 35mm Portra 160 I shot in a few different places with my M6 and either a screwmount 35mm f/2.8 Jupiter 8 (prewar Biogon copy) or 50mm f/1.1 Nokton:

I also got a couple additional Contax rangefinder lenses to add to my collection that I wanted to try. Firstly was a 5cm f/2.8 collapsible tessar, a black and nickel one made for the Contax I (f) like I have. This lens is frankly not very good but it's got some funky bokeh and collapses practically completely into the body. I also finally found a cheap 21mm f/4.5 Biogon (complete with a lovely turret viewfinder) and that lens is really nice. Anyway, here's some Tri-X 400 developed in Spur HRX shot with these two lenses with the Contax I:

 

Finally, here's a few photos I took with my F2 and mostly a 5cm f/2 or 3.5cm f/2.8, as well as a couple with the F-mount 15mm f/4.5 Heliar, on T-Max 100 developed in FX-39. These shots are around some abandoned houses near where I work (as were some of the above photos):

 

 

Okay that's enough for today. Hopefully I'll have part 3 of my Florida Keys work ready next week.

Old abandoned houses near VSU

I was going through some of my old film scans and found quite a number of things I shot and never posted that were of interest. Almost always when I haven't posted here, I have actually been shooting, but just didn't get around to posting anything. I'm going to try to post some old stuff that I forgot about in the next few weeks.

Back in February I took a few documentary shots of some of the old houses across the street from the Fine Arts building. These houses - and more importantly, the land that they sit on - were purchased by a company to build a complex on with living and retail spaces. There was some outcry to save the old historic homes, so they were offered for only $10 - you just had to haul them away!

No one took them up on that offer, but even now, 7 months later, nothing has been done about them. I'm not sure what is going to happen to them.

Here are a few negatives from my Yashica 124G and Ektar film:

I also took some digital images inside one of the houses - here's three from my D800E, and either 17-35mm f/2.8 or 16mm f/3.5 AI: