What A Cute Couple (168/365)

My morning bird shots will be coming to a close for the Summer. It’s bloody hot in the mornings now, and I’m not happy about it. One of life’s true little pleasures for me is sitting outside in the morning watching the birds with my coffee and camera.

This nice couple gave me a few shots this morning. As you can see, the female is in focus, but the male, not so much. My shallow depth of field bit me. My plane of focus was so narrow that their being offset just a touch was enough to throw the male out of focus. But it’s my shot of the day nonetheless.

Film Journey: Got my first roll of Portra 400 back from the lab today. These would be the first pictures taken with my Grandfathers Rolleiflex in over 40 years, I believe. I didn’t take the time to take good photos because I just wanted to make sure the camera was working, didn’t have light leaks, and that my light metering technique was at least in the ballpark. (Grandpa Leamer, your beautiful Rollei still takes great pictures…)

Still waiting on the Ilford B&W negatives/scans.

Down in Stray Pixels, I’ll put the one shot that is even slightly worth showing. I’m very happy with my exposure and with the sharpness. Love that tight grain. But, boy, did I have to straighten the photos. There is a learning curve dealing with a waist-level viewfinder!

If you’re a film person, you’ll laugh at my observations, but I haven’t shot film since high school and college. It’s funny to me that I’ve been shooting digitally and using film emulation on some shots. Then I get these scans back and stare at them, thinking, “This is the real deal, real Kodak Portra, no simulation needed.”

Photography is a funny thing these days. Digital, film, emulations, filters, recipes, A.I., apps. Even shooting film and scanning negatives to make them digital so you can post them is funny to me. You take negatives, scan them, and then you can still tweak to some degree, colors, brightness, sharpness, etc. Are they film shots still? (That’s rhetorical). You have purists who think most of this is sacrilegious.

I’m not in any camp. I love photography. I don’t care how you do it. In fact, tell me how you do it. Tell me your process. I’m curious about your art and how you make it. It’s yours. Don’t let anybody tell you your art is less than because you don’t follow their rules. We all have our preferences and beliefs. I respect yours, and maybe I’ll even adopt some of yours if they make sense to me. I always try to follow the mantra of “Strong Opinions, Loosely Held.” Be open to change, to new data, to new ideas. It will make you a better person and photographer.

I’m really enjoying my photography journey these days. Digital shooting, Rolleiflex, (BeerPan coming someday (35mm Pano)), printing, film, negatives, scanning, it’s just all really interesting and fun exploring as much as I can. Heck, I’m watching a very in-depth Large Format Photography course right now, and there may be even more variety in the future. I’m just say’n: the 4x5 and 6x17 stuff looks awfully fun.

Anyway, I’m babbling now. Go take some pictures.

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