For the Exposure 2012 Photography Festival I’m one of the participating artists in Glimpse, a group show of five artists at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery.  The artists will be Kurtis Lesick, Kai Scholefield, Erin Wallace, Aynsley Stelfox and myself.  The show has multiple opening receptions to allow for the busy Exposure Festival schedule:

• Friday, Feb 3: 5-9pm
• Saturday, Feb 4: 4-8pm
• Sunday, Feb 5: 2-5pm

The show runs until February 25th and I will be present for the 3 opening receptions.  Ruberto Ostberg Gallery is located at 2108 18th St NW, Calgary AB, 403-289-3388

I have a show opening on Friday, February 3rd at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery.  It’s a group show featuring photographic based work for the 2012 Exposure Festival.  The festival will be occuring during the month of February and takes place in Calgary, Canmore and Banff.  Many galleries participate in the festival so it’s a great time of year to see a lot of local photographic work.  You can gallery hop from Calgary and Banff and probably see 20 galleries’ works in only two days.  Great stuff!

The above is an 8×10 proof print of one of the works I will be exhibiting at the show.  I pulled out all the stops in the darkroom to get this one to work.  It’s a 4×5 shot of a very contrasty subject.  I had to combine contrast reduction masking with dodging to get the sky detail to show up, the shadowed foreground to show up, and all without exhibiting strange tones.  I’m very excited that the image turned out as rich as it did.  Shots like these renew my faith in film photography.

It wasn’t until I began shooting 135 film with 36 shots per roll that I started to create a contact sheet for every batch of film shot.  I would instead look at the negatives and try to judge which ones to print 8×10 proof prints from.  This has turned out to be very time consuming with roll film and it’s much easier to run a contact sheet then choose images from that for proofing or even straight printing.  Plus it’s good to see how the colour balance and exposure changes from shot to shot making it possible to adjust the colour balance & exposure for direct prints.  I’m starting to “nail it” when guestimating exposure & colour balance just because I now run contact sheets from every roll I shoot.

These all were shot with a Voigtlander Bessa R4a and a Voigtlander 21mm Color Skopar rangefinder lens.  This lens is turning out to be just as sharp (if not sharper) than my Zeiss 35mm Distagon 2.0 I used on Canon.  Very nice lens at an amazing price.

I’ve got some more toys.  This was shot on Ektar 100 with a Voigtlander Bessa R4A, a Voigtlander 21mm Color Skopar 4P lens on Ektar 100.  The voigtlander came about because I’m switching out my Canon 5D DSLR for a smaller, mirrorless Sony Nex-5N.  The resolution’s better, the dynamic range is about as good and I can slap on tons of cool lenses like this Voigtlander 21mm.  Plus with the extra cash from selling the kit off I picked up a rangefinder film body so I can finally start getting into M mount glass.

I’ve fought with Ektar in the past and haven’t been too pleased with the results.  I’ve discovered that it was my lack of experience that was at fault.  When I heard the stuff’s as finicky as slide film I figured I should give it another chance.  The Bessa has a TTL meter so it’s tough to make a mistake on the exposure.  Too little exposure and it takes on a red cast.  Too much and it takes on a cyan cast.  Expose it just right and it’s a great 35mm film that works well for 14 inch enlargements!  The grain is so fine that it’s very hard to spot when enlarged to 14 inches.

This is probably going to be my “small works” kit and my first camera I reach for when doing a site survey, looking for new subject matter.  I’ll post my thoughts on it and the Nex-5N once I have some more use out of it.

I haven’t disappeared I’ve just been working very hard.  I’m working on printing a load of 16x20s of the back yard body I’ve been working on.  I was worried about the snowy winter causing problems with the subject matter but I actually thoroughly enjoy the snowy photographs and have had good feedback on them.  The Mamiya 7II is getting more use than the 4×5 now and frankly the 6×7 negatives this beast produces are perfectly fine for 16×20 enlargements.  It’s been a wonderful system to shoot photos with as well.  It stays out of my way and lets me concentrate on the subject matter as I’m shooting in the field.  The DSLR offers a sort of “distraction” when the mirror slaps up during the shot.  Looking through a rangefinder provides an uninterrupted view when the shutter is fired.  I hear a click and the viewfinder image is undisturbed.  I really like it.

This V700 is still producing problems with colour balancing.  The scans are pretty sharp with good information recorded but the consistency from film frame to film frame is very poor.  The scans don’t do the images justice compared to the darkroom enlargements.  I’d like to get something like a Nikon Coolscan 8000 some day but that’s money that can go towards paper & film.

I’ve got some work on display at a group show titled Less Than, at Dade Art and Design Lab. The show opens tonight and will run until December 23rd. Artwork by local, Calgary artists will be shown and all the works are less than $1000.

Be sure to check out the show!

I’m going to miss autumn.  This was one of my last shots when the leaves were still on the trees and before the time change.  The time change always messes up my shooting because I miss the power hour in the morning and by the time I’m done work it’s dark.

On another note I hired an assistant, Alex Moon, to help with my printing.  Getting a print washer and dryer would have cost more than hiring somebody to wash my prints as they come out of the roller transport plus it gives somebody work.  I need to ramp up my production because I have a show to prepare for in February and I’d like to get as much work done as possible much before then.

Southern Alberta’s prairie landscape is flat causing me to often look to the skies for interesting subject matter.  The other day I was driving home on Memorial Drive when I saw this sky.  I quickly veered off at the next exit which happened to be the zoo and shot this picture.  I have another shot I’m working on from the same roll that’s hopefully going to turn out like this one.  The sky looked just as though somebody painted it.

For those interested it was shot with a Mamiya 7II on expired Kodak 400NC.  it’s a film scan.  I don’t know if I could do a darkroom print like this but I’m going to try.

I’m really loving this Autumn light.  We had our first day of snow today but hopefully we’ll get to see light like this for another few weeks.  This was shot on some expired Kodak 400NC that Noah Addis gave me when he sold me his Mamiya 7II system.  The cross curves are pretty strong giving some very blue/cyan shadows and warm hilights.  The effect is of a benefit in this picture.