I went out to Utah and Arizona to visit Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park and of course, the Grand Canyon. The square photos are all done with my Holga and 120 Portra 400 film while the rectangular photos are done with my Olympus Stylus Epic on 35 mm Portra 400 too. The Holgas run about $29 and the Olympus stylus supposedly can be found in yard sales for a few bucks, but I’ve never seen one for that. It ran about $70 I think. The stylus is easily shirt pocketable and great to have with you all the time. They were extremely popular back in the 80s and 90s for just that reason.
I think you can make a case for skipping digital and just shooting film especially for outdoors and sunny conditions.
Love the kind of distortion hereClouds make for better landscapes to me.Love the dynamic range from the shadows to the white cloudsPetroglyphs near Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado RiverLoved how this rock was on a stand.Road cut near Page Arizona. I liked the contrast between the yellow sign, blue sky and red rocksAlways shoot lone cows or trees! New Rule!Portrait OrientationHard to tell this from a full on digital cameraThis road cut is about 25 miles or so out of Page Arizona. This photo is about the colors and shapesThis is one of my favorite photos from the trip. Taken about 8000 above sea level in Bryce Canyon near one of the over looksI had to do a photo of this colorful shed near Bryce Canyon UtahSharpness is over rated anyways.
I got a chance to get some photos that I’ve “seen” but not been able to shoot yesterday and today. I had some problems with my Fuji x100t camera that came about from mysteriously pressing some buttons wrong. The thing about the Fuji is it expects you to know what you’re doing. The design is deceptively simple looking. You really have to pay attention or it’ll do exactly what you tell it to do, even if you don’t know some tech stuff you really need to know. I ended up resetting the camera and left it shooting finished photos instead of RAW photos. Anyways, for my non photo geek friends, I had to go back out today to reshoot these photos, except for the last one which came out fine as the finished photo.
The following two photos are of the same location (duh) just different crops. What made me take the photos was the 3 plants on the railing. I’ve seen them there for a month and never made the time to do the photo. Had a nice conversation with the folks living there talking about me doing the photos, and why I wanted to do them. Photographers don’t need to have permission to take photos of things plainly visible from the street. They can’t violate private property and if the photos are of copyrighted things it’s a little trickier, but, the plainly visible rule applies to public and private properties. Dave’s rule (actually Wil Wheaton’s) is Don’t be a Dick about it.
Compare this to the next one
The second photo is a landscape crop. I like the plants still and I like the bush on the side echoing the shapes of the home itself too.
I liked the symmetry of this. And I really liked the three flower dishes on the railing. The whole point of the photo was the flower dishes in the golden hour sunlight.Beautiful light on the flowersLoved the cascading purple and white flowersHorizontal version of the Flag and Flower photo nearby.
In general, I prefer landscape photos over the portrait layout, but this just works for me.
Cool little vignette on State StreetBeautiful Osage Orange Trees in the sunset golden hours.This is perfect example of a weed being a plant out of place. This sunflower was one of 3 I saw in about a half mile of fields of soy beans.
Care to guess what the theme of the day(s) was? Leave it in the comments!
A while back I reviewed Ashley’s project . She is one of my favorite photographers as you may have deduced. She has always been fragile I think, but, now she is in the health battle of her life.
She may not win.
I can’t tell you how much that makes my spirit ache. Just thinking it is hard. She apparently has some autoimmune disorders and a host of other issues that aren’t simple to diagnose or treat. I hate to see her suffering, and the thought of losing her so early is like a knife in the gut to me.
Ashley Lebedev has a Gofundme page. I hope you’ll make a donation there. If you’re localish (Philly, DC, Baltimore, etc) to me, I’d love to do a photo shoot for you and have you donate to her gofundme instead of paying me. I can’t stand the idea of sitting by and watching without doing something to try to stop this.
