I’m currently having a roll of film developed that will be the basis of my next series of posts. Bear with me! The problem with shooting actual film is the long long development process. Especially with panoramic, which takes an extra day or two due to the atypical size. If only they had a digital panoramic. Perhaps some day.
In the meantime, here are some photos from my Ecuador trip, more of which can be seen on my other website This Is Richard.
My tool, my companion, my photo Sherpa.
It’s not perfect, but it does the job. And I love it. It’s simple with only two exposure settings (day and night) and it’s flaws tend to create some pretty beautiful mistakes. For me, photography doesn’t always have to be a perfect combination of exposure, composition, and sharpness. They’re certainly important but sometimes good photography is “bad” photography. Double-exposure, soft focus, and untraditional composition can all create a very unique and unusual feeling that you just don’t get with the “perfect” image. Sometimes a 1979 two-door Volvo is more fun to drive than the brand new Mercedes. There’s no other feeling than getting a camera roll with something totally unexpected and gorgeous.
No matter how hard you try, you just can get this on purpose:
A Shopping Cart - San Francisco, CA
The most complicated part of the Kompakt is loading and unloading film. There’s a lot of spooling and weaving that needs to be done and someone with smaller fingers would probably have an easier time than I do. Even now, a year into using the camera, I lost a roll of film by over-cranking which broke the negative out of the container. I tried performing camera surgery by using my sweatshirt as an makeshift film tent but it didn’t work and I lost the roll. C’est la vie. That’s life with a metal Russian camera.
Filed under: Musings, Photography | Tags: chinatown, ecuador, galapagos, google reader, horizon kompakt, los angeles, panoramic, Photography
As if I needed another project. It was going to happen sooner or later so here it is: A Life Panoramic. It’s blog dedicated to life in panoramic photos. That 4×12 frame is just too gorgeous.
Here’s the birth of the idea: I was scanning my panoramic photos of Ecuador and the Galapagos while checking Google Reader (my newest bad–or good?–habit). Having only recently discovered Google Reader, I’d been gathering RSS feeds as if they were free Milk Duds and decided to begin a folder for photography. As the current scan finished, I put two-and-two together and searched for “panoramic photo blog.” Nothing of any real fascination came up. That’s when I realized that the world (or at least the blogosphere) was missing out on halfway-decent, kind-of-okay panoramic photography. More importantly, I decided it was up to me and my cheap-o Horizon Kompakt to fill that void.
Ready? Let’s go!
Driving down I-5 - Los Angeles, CA
Off Chinatown - Los Angeles, CA
