Going analog

I recently became the proud owner of a vintage Rolleiflex camera. It's a medium format manual camera known for its twin lens system, which allows you to hold the camera at waist-level and look down to see the large viewfinder made possible through a complex system of mirrors. My model was made sometime between 1951 and 1954 and is in perfect working condition. These cameras are also known for their excellent lenses and durable mechanics. I heard a story that the salesmen used to prove that by setting the camera on the ground and standing on top of it.

The only downside is that there's no light meter of any kind built into it. My other manual camera, a Canon AE-1 from the 1970s, at least has a manual pointer needle to indicate the recommended f-stop. Without one, I'm completely on my own for making accurate calculations of the existing light in order to set the shutter speed and aperture. I haven't really paid attention to these formulas since my first photo classes back in high school, and it certainly isn't something you need to think about much in the digital age. When digital cameras also commonly go up to an ISO of 3200, it's very different to think in terms of a film speed of 160.

So it's amazing that my first roll of film with the Rollei wasn't completely blank or solid black when it came back from being developed. After re-schooling myself on a few basic rules for sunny conditions, I doubled and halved my way to the proper settings for clouds and dappled shade. Not only are most of these photos properly exposed, but the color, sharpness and quality show why these cameras are still highly prized. The only mistake I made had to do with not properly advancing the film. My model was the first to include an automatic counter, based on the thickness of the film roll inside. But that means the amount you wind the film after each frame changes over time. I started off without fully advancing to the next frame, which resulted in one double exposure, and one half-frame, below. But honestly, I think they're still kind of fun photos. Certainly a unique reminder of the surprises film can bring.

All of these photos are from Walden Pond on a partly cloudy day in October. None of these have been altered or edited at all. The color and exposure are all exactly from the negative.

The hunt for red (and yellow and orange) October

This theme was all about the new season. The beginning of October meant summer is officially and fully over, so I decided to embrace it photo-wise. Fall is also my favorite season: dressing in layers, cool sunny days, football Saturdays, a bounty of farm produce, and those colors! Sometimes it's hard work finding signs of fall foliage in the city, especially when the coast is a bit behind the peak season inland. But I lucked out (and maybe also timed this theme) that another instameet was scheduled during the same week with @IGBoston.

I had a great time at the last meet-up and had been looking forward to another one for a while. This is the first one that worked out schedule-wise, and it was planned for the Arnold Arboretum. A literal tree reserve on the outskirts of the city, what better place to find foliage?! It's also a very different subject matter than I normally focus on and gave me a chance to take more portraits and pictorials. I included my favorite shot below, and you can see all the photos from the meet on my Instagram feed.

All the other photos below are from my neighborhood or a quick jaunt to an apple orchard about 20 miles from the city. I wanted to keep it as local as possible, even though there are more beautiful colors out west of the city. I feel like there are so many more fall photos to take, but alas, my time frame is over, and it's on to another theme!

Souvenirs of summer

This theme was way out of my comfort zone. I wanted to do something about summer, especially since I was going into a week with a few days off from work for a staycation, and would be doing a lot of very summer-specific activities. I didn't think just taking photos of summer events would be visually consistent, so I decided on still lifes. A lot of Instagram posts are the very popular shot-from-above photo of food or flowers, so I thought it would be a good aesthetic to try out. There's even a popular hashtag for it, #stillography.

But still lifes are not really my thing. All of my schooling in photojournalism was about not setting up the shot and trying instead to capture the moment as it happened. Creating the images really relied more on my limited background in graphic design than photography. I also found things looked a lot better in my head! A few times, I had a great idea in mind, but when I set it up and shot it, it didn't look as good as I expected. That's totally different from my regular process, where I stop to photograph something because I see it in front of me and it looks interesting and worth documenting.

Still, it was fun to put some of these shots together, and there were more variables under my control. The whole set would have looked better if they were all true still lifes of stationary objects, but the exceptions (the ice cream cone and string of lights) were too summery to pass up.

A moment for reflection

This week’s theme was to search out interesting reflections. This seemed fairly easy, and was further encouraged by the first photo I ended up taking and posting for it, but it turned out to be the most difficult one by far. There seemed to be three reasons behind this:

1. There are really only two kinds of reflections: those off of water and those from windows and glass. That narrows down the options for subject matter and composition, especially when I’m trying to put together a nice series of nine images. It became a struggle to find things that were visually interesting, both on their own and when viewed next to the others.

2. These photos mostly fall under the category of pictorials, which are not really something I gravitate toward in my work. I like pictorial photos and some of my photos could be called "pretty," but I usually like more industrial sites, old buildings and geometric architecture (I still managed to squeeze some in). Photos of rivers and swans are unusual for me.

3. With that in mind, I visualized a few ideas in advance that would have potentially been great, but needed things like raindrops and puffy clouds in a blue sky. These didn’t pan out in the last two weeks, so I was back to square one. I got lucky with a few blue sky days and some unexpected gifts (again, swans), but am curious what the other ideas would have looked like.

After all that, some of these photos got the most likes and comments of all of the ones I’ve posted so far on Instagram, so who knows. See the whole set below, as well as one of my all time favorite photos that first gave me the idea for this theme when I was building the new website.