News

Or rather lack thereof. I broke my left hand recently, fortunately not my shooting hand, but it's impacted my ability to shoot all the same. So nothing worth posting for a while (like anything I shoot is worth posting) but here is a shot I attempted in a cast.

FWIW, shooting with one hand is difficult with a heavy camera.

Chocolate

Always a bit of mystery involved in buying a used lens. Like Tom Hanks said, "Used lenses are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get" (well, that's not exactly what he said, but it's close enough.)

In any case, this shot is from a used 24-70mm Tamron. Tamron lenses are all over the map quality/sharpness wise, simply because Tamron doesn't make all their own lenses. They are more than happy to slap their name on someone else's product, quality control be darned. Some Tamron lenses, the 70-300mm to cite a prime example, are pure garbage, chromatic aberrations abound and soft is the order of the day. Some, like this one that I picked up for a song and dance, is nice.

The advent of the Internet allows us to do research on a lens before buying it and save us the headache of buying a bad lens, but if you're like me, I like chocolate assortment sampler packs.

By the way, don't ask me why this head is on the side of a building, I have no idea.

DSSP

Different Statue, Same Problem. Too much clutter. I'm sure a pro could work with the background and make it blend, but I'm not that good yet. I had to settle for a tightly cropped shot.

Still, not too bad in my opinion. The wide open nature of the 50mm is a real help in situations like these, allowing me to lose what clutter there is into a formless and non-distracting blur.

Legion

Most of the Angels at the cemetery have been female so this one, male, caught my eye. Again, a too cluttered background prevented a wider angle shot, but you can see one of his wings to the right of his chin.

Looks a little like the Archangel Micheal in the just released film "Legion" (I'll save you 10$, don't bother seeing it) so that was still fresh in my mind when I went Angel hunting in the cemetery.

Busy

Most of the statues at the cemetery have space around them, giving me flexibility to compose the shot. Not this one, it was crowded in tight and behind the plinth were trees and other clutter, so I had to get in tight and stand rather awkwardly for the shot.

Ah the things I do for my audience! Kidding of course, I don't have an audience.

Isolation

This statue wasn't at the best position to photograph, it's way too high but with the sun behind me and reflecting off the statue, the background fades away and (I think) really brings out the contrast between man-made and Nature.

Ok, that came off as too pretentious, I just like the colour contrast between statue and tree :)

Obsession

Although it may seem like I'm obsessed with the local cemetery and B/W film, I'm not (really!) it is just that B/W seems to work rather well for the sombre subject at hand.

More from a sunny day exploring there. Morning sun gave strong shadows on this and the following (although to be contextually correct, preceding) statues.

Kodak BW400CN film, Nikon F4s and the 'nifty fifty' 50mm lens

Torchlight

Was at a smoky jazz lounge the other day. Okay not really, but they had a band playing jazz. Here is the sax player at rest. It's funny how good our eyes can be, in the dim of the lounge, I could see perfectly, but the camera had difficulty. Shooting 400 speed film, with a wide open aperture (1.8) I couldn't get anything less than 1/6 second, which makes handholding neigh impossible.

I'm not happy with the sharpness of the image, but in such a dimly lit place, this was the best I could do.

Depth

Another statue from the local cemetery. It's interesting the depth of colours and decay on those I have seen. I presumed they were all made from marble and possibly copper, but who knows? In any case the weathering had a dimension and an age to the statue, as seen here.

Continuation

A re-visit of one of the Angels with the lford film. The grain effect is less obvious here than in some of the other images I took. I wonder where on the East Coast is the oldest cemetery? I would suspect that the older the place, the more ornate the monuments. That would be a good place to go for photography. Maybe even visit New Orleans as everyone is buried above ground.