Need an Idea

Iced Plant

So I want to try Stephen Schaub’s overlapping frame panorama technique and I need a cool subject to take a picture of. If any of you are in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area and know of a cool place I can head to, please leave a comment or if you know how to get ahold of me by other means, do that too. I already have a panorama of the Cedar River at Palisades, so I don’t want to recreate that. I need something that has an object that would make an interesting foreground subject. I had an idea of the Gazebo at the top of the hill at Palisades, but after thinking about it, I’m not sure if it’ll work out to well.

New Panorama Technique

Sunrise at a One Room School House

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about photography recently and it’s been quite an enjoyable experience. After looking at the blog of Chris, I saw on his blogroll a blog called figital revolution. Figital Revolution is an interesting blog by Stephen Schaub and has some neat ideas about combining film and digital processes to create hybrid art.

One of the more interesting ideas I saw was the in camera panoramas. It’s such a great idea, I have to try it out; but as Stephen suggests in the blog, test it out on your model of camera. He’s shooting with point and shoots and rangefinders and I have an SLR. I know how I’m going to test it, load the ME with one of the bad rolls of Kodak Max 400 and set the shutter to bulb so I can draw on the film where i’m getting overlaps when I try the technique.

I know emulation is the best form of flattery, so I’m hoping I can take his technique and do something neat and different with it, what that is, I have no idea until I try it.

Portraits, what!?

Lilly on a log – Fuji S1 Pro (ISO 320, f/8, 1/250, Natural Light)

After reading Kirk Tuck’s blog and the recent set of portraits of Lilly, I am sort of on this portrait kick. Rebel Photo Club has a portrait shoot on the agenda sometime, so I threw it by Eric that we go all out and do something fashion related in the alleys in downtown Cedar Rapids. I know, fashion shoots in alley’s are kind of cliche’, but we’re a bunch of amateurs and we’ve never done it. Sort of odd that I want to do a bunch of portraits as I much prefer landscapes, but I need to expand my horizons.

So in going all out, we’re going to try and get in touch with one of the local colleges fashion schools and see if the students want to model off their designs and a semi unique setting. Erica did inform me that college let out yesterday for the summer, so we may be screwed there, but who knows, always worth a shot to ask. One thing I need to do is see if you need a permit to take over downtown with a bunch of cameras and lighting equipment. In addition to that, I have to come up with funds to get some 100 speed slide and black and white film.

I’m rolling with all film since I really want to shoot the Bronica ETRS for portraits even if I’m stuck at 75mm. My Camputron 135mm f/2.8 M42 lens went to shit so it won’t focus to infinity anymore, not that it matters for portraits, but focus problems in general will make life difficult.

I’m not that great with off camera lighting, since I have this notion that it’s insanely more difficult with film than digital. The times I put the flash on the hotshoe and have rolled with Erica’s D80 and my ME Super keeping the settings consistent, I’ve been good to go. This morning I threw my umbrella up next to Lilly’s new play kitchen to document how domestic she has become in the 3 days of having it. On a side note, I had no mis-fires with the Cactus Radio Triggers I got for my flash, but I did have it fire 3 times in a row at two separate times. The pictures below are the three best shots of the 10 or so I was able to take. If I were to draw a lighting diagram, it would have a bunch of squiggly lines where she was standing since it was constant motion.