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.

Directly across the highway from us is an abandoned property that has fell into complete disrepair.  This is a storage unit on the property that’s falling over and the house is falling apart as well.  It appears as though somebody had started building it during the boom then gave up when everything went bust.  It has to be the largest home I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes.

Tonight my wife and I went south of Calgary to High River where a good friend of our’s, Mali Vargas, was having a solo show at Evanescence Gallery.  The show was great and congratulations to Mali for getting all the work together!

On the way I had seen the most incredible lighting develop I had ever seen in my entire life.  It was a shame that I was neither prepared nor had the time to stop and photograph what was happening in the sky.  Thankfully my wife was driving and I did what I abhor:  I shot photographs from a moving car.  This one photograph turned out fairly well.  This is how the photograph came out from the camera.  No adjustments to anything, those colours were this crazy in real life.  Shot with a Sigma DP2 (Foveon).

The end of summer is almost here.  The wheat is starting to turn gold and there are hints of yellow on the trees.  This was shot today on my way in to work at around 9:30am.  The light was just beautiful and I ended up being 10 minutes late for work to get this picture.  Shot with a 5D and Ziess 35mm T* 2.0 ZE.

Unfortunately my colour prints won’t be seeing the net too frequently because they’re just going to be too damned big to scan.  I’m getting pretty close to requiring a separate portfolio site with a selection of works available for purchase as prints.  This weekend I’ll be printing an edition of 16×20′s of Winter Wetland – Turner Valley, a 4×5 film shot taken during the winter in Turnery Valley, located in Alberta, Canada. It’s an extremely sharp shot and from the proofs I’ve printed it’s MUCH more sharp than the detail my V700 can record, even at 80 “megapixels”. I can’t wait!

I may have possibly sold some work at a recent show which will be great because the money will go straight into colour 4×5 sheet film and a few other things I need for my colour film process. Unlike with a digital workflow colour film needs to be balanced before taking the shot or else strange cross curves develop. I’ve seen the results where it can be described as cyan hilights and red shadows. While in photoshop you can just create colour balance layer and adjust the hilight and shadow colour balance you can only apply overall colour adjustments in the darkroom. This means the light needs to be measured before hand for it’s colour temperature then colour correcting filters screwed onto the camera’s lens. It’s not a big deal because it already takes me a long while to take pictures with the large format Wista 45SP. Note that I didn’t pay that price for my camera. I paid about $350 for mine, including a multicoated fujinon 180mm lens, and mine was manufactured in the 1970′s. Despite it’s age it performs admirably and many people still shoot with this system today. The camera’s remained virtually unchanged since the 1970′s and there’s no reason to change it. Large format is the only area of photography where you can buy a Schneider lens for under $400 and get better pictures than the Leica boys do. I love it :).

On a side note:  I realized when printing some proofs of this image that I’ve been circulating the above version on the net with the hill on the left.  Unfortunately this wasn’t how the landscape was and I printed the proofs with the image flipped, putting the hill on the right as it should be.  I have a feeling the composition will work in a very similar manner for those who haven’t seen the image before but it looks like a completely different image to me.  This image has been viewed for so long and so many times by me that it looks completely alien when reversed.  Just thought I’d mention that.

See that little spot where the rain’s coming down?  Calgary was right there.  Shot with my Sigma DP2.   Stitched with PTGui.  Blended & processed with Photoshop.  I still have yet to print this.  I’ll be buying ink on payday.  It’ll be about 13×28 inches.

I was heading home on Thursday and thankfully I brought a half decent camera with me.  During the day I heard thunderous claps as rain was pouring down upon everything and the sky was full of grey mess.  It even hailed for a short bit and all I could think about was “what will this look like on my way home?”  As I was driving home I could just barely see the storm clouds and thankfully they were travelling slower than my car.  By the time I reached home I had them right above me, requiring me to lean myself forward in the driver’s seat to look up through the windshield to view them in their entirety.  They were so large!

So I shot twenty-four exposures as fast as I could, about 2-3 seconds between each exposure then spend the evening massaging them into place to produce this image.  It’s available in an open edition, printed with my new Epson R3000 with archival K3 inks at 13×27″.  I’m pricing it at $350 with acid-free mat and backing or $600 framed.  I have a pretty good connection for framing so let me know if you’re interested in framing one of these.  I can get something pretty snazzy at a good price ;).

There’s been a lot of water this year, more so than last.  Since I live and work in rural Alberta I see these little pockets of marshland every day when I drive to and from work.

This is from a roll of Fuji Superia film I found kicking around the house.  It’s probably 8 years expired yet still produced some good results.  Shot with a Zeiss 35mm T* Distagon on a Canon Elan 7e film body.  Scanned with an old LS-2000 scanner.

I tried a scan with my V700 but it looked like crap and was sharp to a lousy 1.3 megapixels.  Plus almost every last bit of shadow detail was lost.  The LS-2000 is pixel sharp to about 9 megapixels where the film is flat, almost as sharp as my 5D.  I’m pining for an old Nikon 8000 ED.  Then I should get some seriously sharp scans that will rival my 5D.

This is sort of a “trigger” work.  By trigger, it means I’ve decided to pull the trigger on the subject matter of a large print body of work.  I’ve wanted to come up with a series of 30×40 colour prints for a while but I had to decide on the subject matter.  I think Turner Valley will be the subject matter and I’m putting together an AFA application now.

Shot in Turner Valley, Canada.  I’m starting to develop a softspot for the landscape in this region.  It’s very “brokeback mountain” like.

Wista 45SP 4×5 Camera.  Schneider 90mm Super Angulon.  Fuji 160S.  DIY C41.  V700 scan.  Doing your own C41 is as easy as this video makes it look.