It’s been a while since my last post. With work going crazy and then a trip down to Southern California, I wasn’t really able to shoot much. However, here are a few selections from two different rolls I shot in the past month or so.
These first shots were an experiment. I’m still working through the large order of Legacy Pro 400 film, half of which is now completely expired. I decided I was going to play around with this roll, though.
When I shot the film, I exposed it at ISO 200, even though it’s an ISO 400 film and I had my lab pull it one stop. My intention was to lessen the crazy contrast this film had before, and I think it worked.
It was slightly overcast that day, but still enough sun to pose a problem. However, the details of the windmill came out rather nicely here.
There’s a lot of texture here.
Sometimes when you’re wandering around Golden Gate park, it feels like you’re lost in the woods.
The more I look at this image, the more it weirds me out. The fact that it’s out of focus almost makes it seem like those tilt-shift miniatures that have become so popular lately, but in reality, this building is much taller than I am.
If I’m in the park, I can’t resist paying the squirrels a visit.
These two were chasing each other around.
It seems so cold…
I’m not even entirely sure what happened here aside from crazy lighting.
The black and white makes this bridge seem a lot more dramatic than it actually is.
Most of these were shot using my pentagon 50mm f1.8. Now that I know how to use it, I’ve been experimenting with it more.
The bokeh of this lens is pretty crazy and shows it’s Zeiss roots.
I really like the clover around the redwoods for some reason.
The detail in the leaf is pretty amazing.
After this trip, I went down south for the holidays.
One of my family’s traditions is making tamales. Being Guatemalan, our tamales are quite different than the Mexican kind that are more common in California.
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A leftover banana leaf.
Since neither my sister nor I were down early enough, my mother conscripted my father into helping cook them.
Cooking takes a rather long time and is done over a flame. At this point I had run out of black and white film and had transitioned into my standby favorite, Kodak Portra 400.
My mother, as always, sets an amazing table.
Festivities were had and I came back up north to celebrate the new year. On new year’s day, we decided that we needed to get SF Zoo membership, so we did.
Not having exhausted the roll down south, I decided to press on.
The zoo pictures were mostly taken with my Pentacon 135mm, as it’s hard to get up close to a zoo creature.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not a turkey.
The squirrel’s South American cousin, capybara.
Some of the Zoo’s rather large penguin population.
It amused us how much the tiger was acting like a plain, domestic cat.
Inside the cat house, however, it was dinner time.
And outside…
…the fishing cat was just chilling out.
Zebra.
These photos were just a random selection from over the winter. I’ve started working on a 366 project this year where I take one photograph per day, but as I’m shooting on film, I probably won’t be able to post until about a week into each month, starting in February. This month has been a little difficult to get started, but I’m sure I’ll find some focus over the coming months.
