Bluewave Digital

A year ago, or thereabouts, I was in a panic. I needed film for my intro to film production class, and I hadn't had time to go into the City to procure some. I ended up at a well known film supply shop, but they were all out of most stocks of 16mm. I had my heart set on black and white film, but all they had was Kodak Tri-X 400ISO film. I was going to be shooting outdoors on a bright, sunny day on a Bolex, so I was pretty heartbroken. I bought the stock anyway, because I needed something to shoot on the next day.

Fast forward two weeks when I get my prints back from the lab in LA, and I have one of the prettiest looking films of that batch for that lesson. Sure, I overexposed a few feet of it, but once I got in the groove, I churned out some beautiful looking shots. Ever since then I've had an itch to shoot that stock again, but I never really got the chance in classes, as everyone in my groups wanted to shoot boring ol' Vision 2.

Of course, when I bought my SLR, the first thing I did was buy two rolls of 35mm 400TX. I didn't really get a chance to shoot with the stock until a few weeks ago, when I decided to go crazy and shoot some long exposures at night around campus. First, however, I had to wait for the sun to go down.

Hang gliders are a common sight around where I live

I shot this as the sun was going down, still with enough light to not have to do any sort of long exposure trickery. Finally, though, the magic happened and I got the next two shots.

Stupid tree! Your silhouette is in the way of my sunset!

Ah, much better

After sitting for a while and enjoying the view, I headed off to campus. I got there while it was still light, so the first few shots were brighter than I really wanted.

This place is an almost daily stop for me on my way to work.

Hello building that will probably be under construction for way longer than is scheduled!

In this picture the sky is lit up white. When I took it, the sky was dark.

A little explanation is in order. Once I got onto campus, I was shooting 30 second exposures at f22. I wanted to get puddles of light to contrast with inky blackness. The first two shots didn't quite work out as the sky was still bright enough to expose. However...

Hensil Hall. Creepy enough during the day, downright scary at night.

One of the things you learn in film school at SF State is that because you cannot go off campus with the equipment due to insurance issues, you need to find creative places to shoot that don't look like campus. Behind Thornton and Hensil halls is an area that when shot right can look like it's straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Exhibit A: The greenhouse. Bonus points for having a plant called the corpse flower inside.

Exhibit B: if you were to just frame the top part, it could be from Blade Runner

Exhibit C: This place is sci-fi enough without any imagination. Chemicals and abandoned electronics.

While these were nice, I still hadn't gotten my pools of light and inky blackness shots I really wanted...until I turned around, that is.

That's starting to look more like it.

I moved on from those buildings to my next target. I knew I wanted to shoot in the parking lot because two of the floors have non-functional lights. There was one slot in particular I knew of that has the only functioning light on the first floor. On my way there, however, I decided to take a detour.

Black and white makes everything more frightening

This was exactly what I was looking for. I knew this would look amazing on the TriX, so I shot two, just in case. You can just see a film noir about to happen right here. I eventually made it to the parking lot and started scouting around for places to take pictures.

The last lighted area of the parking lot.

Beyond this stall there was absolute black.

I moved on back to my vehicle, but stopped at the corner to get one last shot before heading out.

The streaks are cars.

This type of picture isn't as dramatic in black and white, but it still looks pretty cool.

Finally, I knew I needed to get one last shot to end the night. There's a place where Market street ends above Castro where you can get an awesome view of the city. I wondered what it would look like on a long exposure, so I drove up and...

On the left you can see the Transamerica Pyramid, and on the right/center is the Bay Bridge.

I have one more roll of Tri-X left, and I'm trying to figure out what to shoot next. The night shoot was fun, but it's a bit tedious hitting the shutter and waiting around for 30 seconds for it to click and advance. Problem is that with Tri-X, you need contrast in your pictures, and the perpetually gray skies of San Francisco (or at the very least on the Pacific side of San Francisco) make for a very even, non-contrasty light. Perhaps I'll just save it up for when the inspiration strikes. Now if only I could finish that roll of Ektar... but that's another blog post for another time.