Medium Format

First Photo Session In The Sun

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It felt really good to do my first photo session of the year in full bright sun. I don’t know what it is about this year, but maybe for the first time ever the long gray winter was bringing me down a little bit. So getting some vitamin D on my skin with a camera in tow and working with one of my favorite people, St. Merrique, all equaled a really good day.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Rollei RPX 100 in medium format.

We got started a little later in the morning that I typically would have liked. I’m a little bit of a monster in that sense as I like to get started around 5am whenever possible. What can I say? I like that golden early morning light with dramatic shadows. Not to mention it is far and away easier to avoid people in the early morning hours. In this case we hit the road at 9am and by the time we got out to Rooster Rock to start exposing images the sun was a bit high in the sky and burning brightly. Not in any way what-so-ever the end of the world though. Heck, in many ways the bright overhead light is what made these photographs interesting.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Rollei RPX 100 in medium format.

Whenever I work with Merrique I like to use at least one roll of Rollei RPX 100. Aside from being a model, Merrique is a talented photographer as well and we’ve had long poetic conversations about how beautiful Rollei film is, making it one of our favorite films despite its relatively high costs. It’s only fitting. Developed in Rodinal, Rollei RPX gives a silver rich look with plenty of tonal range that looks completely glorious in print. I added just a touch of contrast with these by adding a light yellow filter to the front of the lens.

I plan on going into the darkroom in the next few weeks and printing these images. I think they’re going to look really great in a classic frame with an off white matte.

Hasselblad 150mm f/4 "Portrait" Lens

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I’ve been using the Hasselblad 500c/m for most of my work the past six or seven years now. As a complete camera system it checks most boxes for me. The camera itself is relatively light (for a medium format camera), the ergonomics feel intuitive, and the the overall system itself is capable of doing just about every subject I have an interest in exploring. Maybe best of all, the available lenses on the “V System” are all rather excellent. All the samples I have tried of every focal length have had a performance level that far exceeds my own skills as a photographer.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford HP5 120 film.

Like most people who buy a Hassselblad 500c/m (or any other camera in the V S System lineup) my copy came with the standard 80mm f/2.8. This is the lens I’ve used for about 85% of the work I’ve done with the camera. It’s one of those lenses that sets the benchmark for all the others. It’s sharp, contrasty, has really nice bokeh, and is so common that picking one up isn’t a huge financial flex. The focal length is considered “normal”, i.e. it has a field of view relatively close to the human eye. If want to work with a Hasselblad, this is probably the place to start and I wouldn’t be surprised if it lived on your camera body most of the time.

That being said, over the years I’ve acquired a few other lenses for my Hasselblad kit. Typically I’ve only pulled out my wallet when I’ve come across good deals that are hard to pass up. There is a lot of used Hasselblad gear floating around out there and with some patience deals can be found. For example, I picked up the 150mm f/4 lens for about $250 from a seller on Facebook who was just looking to dump his gear in favor of the latest and greatest Fuji digital point and shoot. Ok cool, at that price it is worth a try right?

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 120 film.

At 150mm this is a focal length with medium format that is considered a portrait lens. It’s a short tele-photo that makes it easy to fill a frame with someone’s head and shoulders while also getting a good amount of background blur. Normally I like to get a bit more of the environment into my photographs so this lens doesn’t get a huge amount of use, but sometimes its healthy to put a lens on my camera that is a bit outside of my wheelhouse just to see the world from a new perspective. Besides, it can also be nice to photograph a portrait of a person while also standing more than a few feet away from them. A bit of distance between yourself and your subject isn’t a bad thing. I’ve noticed people tend to relax a bit more and have an easier time looking straight at the camera when the lens isn’t right in their face.

Like every other Hasselblad lens that I’ve worked with the performance is well…. nothing short of excellent. It’s incredibly sharp even when wide open at f/4. Heck, it might even be too sharp. Sometimes I like when portraits are a bit soft to hide blemishes and give the overall look of the image more of a lo-fi character. So yeah, take that complaint with a grain of salt. I’m aware of how silly it seems to complain about a lens being too sharp. I could always soften this up with a filter if I really wanted to.

Santa Cruz Is Still My Happy Place

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It’s no secret that I got my start with photography in and around the Santa Cruz area in California. I think it is fair to say that sometimes a place can have just as much influence on a person’s artistic expression as anything else. Had I been born in New York or Paris or the wilderness of Australia my photography would be an entirely different thing today. The salty sea air and long stretches of highway hugging the Pacific Ocean were back in my youth an early source of inspiration and they very much still are today. Not much has changed there. It is still a place filled with the sound of sea birds and populated by people looking to ride a wave, write poetry in the sand, or just experience some silence while looking at the great expanding sea.

Photographed with a Sony A7iii.

At the beginning of this past summer I took a trip back to my roots, exploring the coastline up and down California Highway One (California State Highway 1 technically). It felt really good going back there and making images with the eyes I have today, as opposed to the eyes of my much younger self. I definitely see the world much differently now. A little less whimsical, and yet also little more optimistic if that makes any sense at all. I was also very fortunate that one of my favorite collaborators, Vivian Cove, loves the California coast as much as I do. Spending a day hiking among the rocks and cliffs, marching on dry sand, and dodging potential onlookers is a lot more exhausting than one might think.

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

I won’t deny I was feeling slightly overwhelmed when these images were made. There is just so much to see and visit there and only so much film I can carry with me. I brought my digital camera with me as well as a backup for when my film stock ran dry but I wanted to capture the bulk of the work I did that day on film. After all, digital cameras didn’t really exist in any sort of quality form back when I was learning the ropes of photography in the California Bay Area studying at UC Santa Cruz and Foothill College. I don’t even think the first DSLR had been produced yet in any sort of form that was affordable to the average person.

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

Every so often I contemplate moving back to the Santa Cruz area. It’s a place that has never really left me and continues to influence who I am as a person today. More than likely that will never happen and perhaps that is for the best. After all, it is far healthier to look to the future rather than linger forever in the past. Still, it is fun to visit sometimes and even more fun when I have the opportunity to make photographs while doing so.

Kodak Portra and the Nude

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I feel like it has been a little while since I’ve posted any work with color film. Even though the majority of my work is in black and white, I actually love working with color film. Color negative film in particular tends to be my jam because I feel like the results are a bit more muted and slightly more painterly than color slide film. Granted, I’m not picky and will happily work with any color stock I can get my hands on for a halfway decent price.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kodak Portra 400 120 film.

Both of the images in this post were made using Kodak Portra film stock. The top image was with Kodak Portra 400 and the bottom image with Kodak Portra 160. In practice I don’t find a huge amount of difference between the two. Yes, of course the ISO 400 film has more grain, but the warm color rendition with both film stocks just looks absolutely gorgeous. A little bit gets lost when I digitize the negatives, but I still think there is a different vibe here than one would get from a color image coming from a digital camera. It’s just a bit more organic in my opinion.

Photographed with a Pentax 645n and Kodak Portra 160 medium format film.

This post also marks the debut of the first image I’ve posted with the Pentax 645n medium format camera. I’ll speak more about this camera at a later date, but I recently purchased it on whim after seeing one in a store for a very VERY attractive price. It’s been a fun new tool to play with and I’ve been pleased with the results.

One Light In Time

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I’ve never been a photographer that gets incredibly fancy with my lighting setups. Sure, when I was in college taking advanced level photography classes I learned a few complicated lighting setups. I’m familiar with strobes, and light boxes, and beauty dishes, and barn doors, etc. etc. But for some reason the more complicated my lighting setup becomes, the more inauthentic the final photograph begins to feel.

I suppose my philosophy would be different if I were a commercial photographer, but I’m not. Photography has always been a practice that I do for myself and only myself.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kodak Tmax 400 speed medium format film.

All of that being said, I’m really proud of myself for the fact that I managed to keep a lot of details in the shadows of this image, despite the fact that there was only one single light source directly at the model’s back coming in from the window. I honestly didn’t expect this image to turn out great at all but through a combination of careful metering and some handy stand development with Rodinal the exact opposite happened.

It was tempting to pull out some artificial lighting and give some illumination either facing the back wall or facing directly toward the model. I’m really glad I followed my instincts and just relied on the natural light available to me.