The color version of this is intense – brilliant blue background, orange and white jellies. I like this version over the color one – little details without the distraction of color.
Category: Glimpses
Taking a snap in a restaurant or cafeteria or coffee bar is always interesting just because people are interesting. Catching people in poses, talking to one another, is an endless source of material. A moment caught – a position – an expression – a movement.
I just had to put this photo out there today.
I recently acquired a new-to-me Certo 6 camera, It has the legendary Carl Zeiss Tessar 80mm f2.8 lens. The camera and lens date from around 1953 (give or take). I shot this at f2.8 to check out the DOF and sharpness of the lens. I’m amazed. The Ektar 100 came through, too, with beautiful colors.
The Certo 6 is an odd folder in the sense that it has many features that other folding cameras (bellows cameras) of the same time era do not have. Also, because current 120 film is thinner than that of the 50s, there is a potential for overlap of images – which I did not experience – and other quirks that need to be worked out. I really like folders because they force you to slow down and think, as well as consider what you want to see on your film.
Square format is a compositional challenge as well. As this is part of my first roll through the camera, composition was not of any real importance for me, but using the camera was. For some reason I got only 9 out of 12 exposures on the film, but that is something I think I have figured out, and will run another roll of play film through the camera to check out my ideas . . . like I said, ya gotta think sometimes!
More to come.
Sometimes just pressing that exposure button for no reason produces some interesting results!
Just walked into the scene . . .
In a touching pool at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, these rays fly around under water. You can reach in and touch them – a silky, velvety sensation under your fingers.
Way back when I was a young ‘un, I used to sail with friends out in the Santa Barbara Channel. Wet Wednesdays were the thing! Anyway, even though I get horribly seasick, and really am a landlubber, boats – sailboats in particular – always catch my eye. There is nothing like keeling to one side, wind whipping through your hair, sails snapping, speeding along. Sitting quietly on a boat, too, is wonderful – for me, it makes me really, really sick, but when that scopolamine patch kicks in and the seasickness goes away, it’s pure heaven!
I’ve been so busy playing with my scanned negatives of late that I have not followed up on posting more photos – digital this time – from our trip to Monterey last month. I finally took another look at some of them, and sorted them out. Yesterday’s “On the Roof” was the first one.
Here, the back side of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The tide comes in and out here, and as you can see, you can stand above to look at the shoals below. Sea life, both plant and animal, can be observed here. From where I took this picture, docents have spotting scopes and binoculars so you can look out into the bay. There, seals and otters can be found on rocks or scooting around..
The Aquarium is one of those places that is always worth a visit. Some people like Disneyland – me, I prefer places like this, just because I find the natural world more satisfying than an expensive and crowded playground.
I always find rather severe and contrasty photographs fascinating.
This is an image desaturated to black and white from the Dubble Bubble Gum film I won over a year ago. I cropped it, and cleaned it up a bit for this post, but the original unedited and uncropped version is below!
