Finally broke down and bought an external flash!

I started taking live music photos digitally with a point and shoot in 2008 until I got a Canon Rebel in 2010. I have been using the built in flash since then. I won’t use the flash at all if the venue lighting is good enough, but it is almost always not! But 13 years is a long time to use my built in flash.

The thought of buying an external flash crossed my mind many times, but I kept saying to myself, “Ahhh my camera is already a pain in the ass to lug around and I don’t want to add another piece to it! Then it won’t fit in my camera bag anymore. Then I will have to learn how to use them damn thing!” Of course, these excuses have kept me from taking better quality photos. Some pictures would look nicer if the flash wasn’t so harsh.

My images have pretty much looked the same for many years. I haven’t spent much money on new gear. I feel like the quality of my images should have improved over time. My subjects deserve better. So I did it today! I went to Mike’s Camera and bought an external flash! I’ll need to do a lot of experimenting with it to get good results, but I am excited I am doing something to improve my photography. It’s been way too long.

A lot of shows!

I have been kind of going to a lot of shows and haven’t really been making a point to post here about them. I do post on Instagram, however, because I really don’t know who even visits my website.

You should visit my GALLERY to check out everything I’ve done lately. I’ll try to be more active about posting here, because there is always a story behind everything, and I should take the time to share it.

There’s a few things I need to be working on. I want to do more weird shoots. I also need to finish that double exposure film experiment I started and have not finished because I am too busy being extra picky. I also have a roll of 110 red lobster film that I need to use! I’d like to use that for something cool, though. The 110 camera I have does not have a flash, so it has to be outdoors during day. It’s expired, as well, so the images should look really nice.

Anyways, here is a random picture I took at the Cancer Christ show on Sunday night.

Something a little different

I had a photoshoot that was a bit different than my usual extreme music or weird shoots! I shouldn’t even say weird shoots because I haven’t even really been doing shoots lately, although I’d love to.

I had the opportunity to photograph a rock climber named Cory! I had never photographed anyone climbing anything before, except for maybe stage divers climbing on people’s heads. I also love nature, so I was excited to try something new.

I was quite nervous watching him climb, although he is really used to it and made it look easy. I found it very fascinating to see him analyze the rocks and plan out what he was going to do before he did it.

To see more of these, visit my gallery HERE. I took them in color but made black and white versions of some.

I had a really great time and was pretty amazed by what he can do. He briefly shared a bit with me about climbing photography and said the best pictures are taken from above, meaning the photographer would have to be on the top, meaning the photographer would have to climb there. I don’t know how I feel about that because I’m afraid of heights and would probably panic and need to be rescued. The pictures may be worth trying, though!

Thanks, Cory!

@seecoryclimb

Been a bit busy lately!

It’s like I forgot how long I had not been able to attend shows during the pandemic. There have been so many shows lately and I have been enjoying it!

I think my shitty camera is getting old. The flash has been either too bright or not bright enough. I don’t even like using my flash, but…dark venues.

I have a film camera I am supposed to be doing a double exposure experiment on and I have been slacking off on it. I am still working on the first round. I can’t wait until I am done with it so I can see how it turns out.

I have a photoshoot coming up next weekend and I am stoked. It should turn out really well!

Here’s some pics I took of Slege last night:

Slege – Bandcamp

Film failure

I used a roll of film and it didn’t turn out so well. It was an expired roll of Ilford FP4 Plus 125 Black and White. It expired last Summer. I had it for a few years and never got around to using it. I believe there were a few things that happened that caused these images to fail.

Film:

I went to the river with a small tripod and my goal was to carefully set everything up to experiment. Not only did I kind of have to pee, but there were people occasionally passing by, and I didn’t want to be seen photographing myself because that feels weird. I would have preferred to have brought someone along to photograph, but it was a spontaneous decision to go there. So I was rushed and definitely not putting the care into it that I should have. Not to mention, I was really wanting to try out the multiple exposure setting and completely forgot! Dammit! So I still have to explore that another day.

So here’s the stupid things I did:

Instead of shooting in manual mode, I shot in aperture priority mode. Because of lazy reasons. And I didn’t even use the tripod I brought! I set the camera on the damn ground! I barely took the time to verify things were focused. I’m so terrible. I kinda wanted to get it done and over with so no one would see me. I would have been so much more relaxed if someone was there with me and also if I didn’t have to pee. I believe I also lost enthusiasm because it’s hard to photograph film when you’re not behind the camera and can see how things look. It takes more patience than I had at that time.

I did take some rather nice pictures on my cell phone just to make sure I had something good to keep from my visit there if my film images were a fail. And they were!!

Processing the film:

The chemicals I used were new. I haven’t developed anything in quite a while and forgot how long I used to leave the negatives in the developer. I took a guess and did it for 4 minutes. I should have done some reading to refresh my memory on everything, but I did not. I remember when I used to develop film before and got pretty causal about it and the images still looked fine, but I should have still refreshed my memory. I could see images on the negatives before I hung them out to dry, so at least there was that.

I busted out with my lousy, cheap Jumbl scanner, scanned the negatives, and was disturbed by how terrible they came out! Overexposed and super grainy! Ugh! They look like something someone created on their cheap cell phone, changed to black and white, and constrated the shit out of it for bottom-of-the-barrel black metal aesthetic. This was a fail.

I need to revisit some film processing knowledge, get a better scanner, and stop expecting good results if I am going to rush myself and not put real effort into things. I’ll have to revisit the 35mm self timer experiment when I have a lot more time on my hands.

My shoot with Eva

Eva and I had been discussing doing a shoot for quite some time, and most of the delay had to do with my needing to get the motivation to shoot again. One of my biggest problems with wanting to do shoots is overthinking everything and imagining things need to be much more complicated, when things could really be simple and be just fine. So we went with simple!
She brought her own beauty and vibe, a nice, timeless style dress that went great with the look we were going for, and she selected a nice location. To add the finishing touches, she brought a few items along to use as props. We really hoped for fog that morning! We had always talked about doing a shoot with fog to add to the mood, and it had been foggy lately, but not that morning! I recall feeling bitter on my way to work the week following this shoot because the fog had returned that morning and I thought, “How convenient!”

I had a great time collaborating with Eva and we quickly got some great images in a short amount of time. I used my digital camera and that roll of Wolfman 35 film by Film Photography Project.
Here are images from both!

I believe I had my aperture setting too low for some of the film images because they turned out a little dark, but I still got some great images, so everything turned out okay. I need to have a little more patience with the 35mm camera until I get more familiar with it. I still guess my way around it because I only used it a small handful of times.

More images can be viewed here: Eva’s Photo Shoot
When I dropped this film off to be processed, I bought another roll of film…Revolog Tesla 2!