Well, This One Works

Must have really braced the elbows against the body on this one. I managed to stop the trees from shaking, but not my whirlwind of a daughter. Shot with the Holga in Bronson Park.

Details, Details

Well, first it appears that the new Blogger Beta takes liberties with images that the earlier version did not. This image of a tree somewhere on Ventura Boulevard, shot with the Mamiya, should appear full-frame. *

In any case, here's a shot of a tree somewhere on Ventura Boulevard, shot with the Mamiya. Have yet to have any of the big camera's images enlarged, but am excited to see the clarity the large format and crisp lens offer.

*A note - if you click on the image, it will appear in full frame.

The Final Throes

Another Holga shot, and one taken so long ago I can't remember where or when or, frankly, why. But I like the way it turned out.

Return of the Holga

OK, I guess this is what it was meant to do. The sharp(ish) images it first gave me were a tease. The image above was shot on the street near Senor Fish downtown, and I have no idea what got in the way at the bottom - or if anything did.

This image is a true Holga product, at least judging by all those Holga sites on the Web. An editor I used to know in New York, a publisher of photo books for Norton, was something of an amateur photographer himself. He showed me some pictures once that he took - literally shot from the hip - of unsuspecting passersby and I thought I'd give it a shot here with the unobtrusive Holga. Two things about that: More people on the streets in New York, makes for more opportunities; a quiet Leica or something like that will actually et you see the people you're shooting. But anyway, I thought my fading Holga gave me a cool one, shot on the street near Parker Center. A caution, again: these were scanned from the contact sheet.

Something About a Train

Many years ago, in another city in another life, I worked with a photographer named David Plowden. Extraordinary landscapes and images of decaying Americana - barns, factories, small towns and trains. A PBS affiliate in Michigan, I think, did a documentary on him that showed how painstaking the construction of great images can be - should be. I thought of him as I tried my best to be patient waiting for this train, waiting for the positioning to be just right. Also shot out in Riverside. This image, too, will look better smaller - it was scanned from the contact sheet.

Film vs. Digital*

The color rolls came back from processing, and since it was the first one I'd shot I didn't ask for much - machine prints only - so the reproduction is not the finest. That said, I wonder how easy it is to discern between the two. To be fair, I'm posting images at a reduced dpi, so none look as good as they could. But still - any guesses? *Edited - the side-by-side style was messing my format...

With Apologies...

... to Hockney's Pearblossom Highway. I liked the choices this one offered up.

And Another

The desert is, well, pretty desert-y. Low scrub, rocks. Whole swaths of the place are blackened - trees, rocks, the road in many areas - but it looks like a charred version of itself, rather than the kind of devastation you see in the wake of a fire in a thick forest.

Pushing Boundaries

The intent here, in addition to trying out new things to make pictures with, is to document the Los Angeles I see. I'm pushing the limits a little here. This morning I threw the Nikon and the Mamiya into the car and headed out to Banning, or Cabazon - well, Riverside County - to see the damage. I'm hoping the film, the first time I've done 6.45x6.45 and, I hope, have the metering system down, lives up to expectations. I shot some of the same locations with both cameras, including the bush, above, that seems to have somehow survived the blaze more intact than its cousin a few feet behind. Shot just off Route 243.

I've noticed that in posts with multiple images, only the one at the top can be enlarged by clicking on it, so I'm uploading the four images I like best from today's shoot in separate posts.