I don’t mean to return to the same photographic subjects over and over, but my dirty secret is that I don’t always feel terribly inspired when I’m trying out a new old camera. Especially when I don’t enjoy a particular camera and just want to get my test roll over with, I go back to familiar, nearby subjects. I used to frequently shoot the anonymous office building in which I worked, until I changed jobs recently. Another regular subject is the shed in my back yard.
This set on Flickr shows all of my shed shots. I find the color shots to be especially interesting, because the shed’s shade of blue varies so much from shot to shot. So much goes into color rendition – how much light there is, where the light is coming from, how the light strikes the shed, how the lens interprets that light, and how the film’s characteristics render the colors. The processing and scanning can influence color too. And I can alter it all pretty significantly in Photoshop, though normally the most I do there is a little cropping and maybe a little white-balance correction. These photos are all essentially just how the processor sent them to me, yet the shed’s stain is a different shade of blue in each photo.
Kodak Signet 40, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, Costco processing/scanning, April 2011.
Minolta Hi-Matic 7, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, Costco processing/scanning, October 2011.
Minolta SR-T 101, MC Rokkor-PF 50mm f/1.7, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, The Darkroom processing/scanning, June 2012.
Pentax ME, Pentax-M 28mm f/2.8, Kodak Ektar 100, CVS processing/scanning, November 2012.
Canon Dial 35-2, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, CVS processing/scanning, January 2013.
