revjim.net

The shoot went really well yesterday.

Julie, Nick-the-Log and I got to Celestial Park about 45 minutes early. This was good. It gave me time to meter for light, fix her make-up, and look around a bit for good light, interesting backgrounds and what not. I burned some time getting the basics out of the way: head shot from the front, head shot profile, 3/4 shot from the front, 3/4 profile, 3/4 head turned, etc. I played a little and took some interesting shots for myself. Kari showed up, and after very brief introductions, we carried on.

She had a nice smile and quiet but direct demeanor. She was very pleasant and a bit witty at times. Of course we were both very caught up in the task at hand, and so we didn't have a lot of time to talk. Kari setup almost all of the images once she showed up. She and I had prearranged that it would work that way, as I was certain she was better at directing than I was. It was very helpful to watch her work with Julie because I could see how she controlled the situation. What did she do to direct Julie this way or that way? How did she lead from one image to another? What did she do to invoke the attitude from Julie that she wanted to see? At times, the two of them working together seemed more inspiring than Julie alone.

After the shoot, the four of us went to La Madeline to get something to eat.

Since I no longer live by myself in a two bedroom apartment, and I am not in school, I no longer have access to a dark room. Even though I have one of the best photo labs in America (BWC) less than 15 minutes from my apartment, it is too hard and too expensive to get them to do rolls and rolls of black and white. Because of this, I shot color negative film for the first time in ages last night. I wasn't sure what to buy. I remembered someone recommending FujiColor 100 (yes the standard crap you can pick up anywhere) so I thought I would give it a shot.

I believe this film is more suited for landscape images. The colors were not very vibrant, and skin tones were not what I would like them to be.

I also learned that I need to get faster at metering light myself so that I wont feel inclined to use automatic aperture priority metering in rushed situations. We were working with rather difficult lighting situations, which may account for some of the inaccuracies of my N90s, but I found that of the images the camera metered automatically, it exposed them differently than I would have about 30% of the time… maybe a little less. Of the images I metered manually, I only messed up one, and even then, only by 1/2 a step at most.

Sometime today I will scan as many of these as I can. I am not sure where I am going to put them all, as the server I am using is complaining that I am over my quota, which is really not the case. I tried to fix it last night, but to no avail. If my cable modem wasn't being retarded for the second week in a row, I would serve them from here, but when you get 7Kbps at GOOD times with 50% packet loss at best, it isn't a very good idea.

I had a great time Kari. If you decide to go out to the train station sometime soon, and don't mind company, give me a call. If you wait too long, I might just go without you ;).