| And I was walking |
[May. 9th, 2008|06:16 pm] |
I saw a photographer at my lab with medium format film. So I asked him where I might find some. He said, "At Photo Market in Exarchia." That sounded straightforward enough. Uh, yeah. I found two camera stores in Exarchia (a neighborhood sorta near Omonia, the University, Monastiraki and Kolonaki). I've been wanting to extend my walking route, so I headed over there - it's about as far to Exarchia as my entire regular walk. Got to store number one...no MF film. But they helpfully said I could go to this other store (which was store number two).
I was kinda tired by the time I got there (I've walked about 3 miles at this point), and my Greek came out as gibberish. "Do you have the bleakenwhite film?"
"Black and white?"
"Yes. Black and white. The Ilford in the 120 size (because all I could think of was the Russian word for medium format)."
"Ilford?"
"Yes, from England?"
"No. Just Kodak."
"Okay. Do you have the juice? For the delivery of the film? No, not delivery...the de...develOPEment of the films."
"Juice? You mean chemistry?"
"Yes. Chemistry."
At this point, a friendly man said, in English, "I can show you. It's easy. Just a minute." So he finished buying his simple 35mm Agfa 5-pack and told me to go straight up the street a couple blocks and I'd see the sign for the black & white store on the left. Holy crap! There it was, exactly where he said. That's gotta be a first when traveling.
As I walked into the shop, I could see the golden chalice glowing above the castle of the 3-score nurses between 16 and 19...wait, no, that was from a movie...but I did see developing tanks and graduates (I broke my 500cc one the other day) and bottles of Ilford and Tetenal and Kodak. Paper of various sizes and types and brands were stacked along one wall. And film! Beautiful film made of silver gelatin with no silly color dyes!
Their selection turned out not to be spectacular, however, and their prices were A little steep, so I'll probably go back to ordering from the States, but they were there. They even knew of a place where I might (might) be able to rent some darkroom time. Yea! So I picked up some film, some chemistry and a graduate and headed out.
I trudged on over to Kolonaki, picked up my knives which I dropped off a couple days ago for sharpening, then up to the farmers' market. At the entrance to the market, a knot of French tourists was completely blocking the street. I mustered up my most disdainful expression and said, "Excuse moi," which garnered a small gap to squeeze through. I got some eggs, wine, lemons, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, the largest leek I've ever seen, some bananas, some big-ass green onions and strawberries and headed home. I was exhausted by the time I got home. I'd been walking continuously for about three hours at that point, and was carrying about 10 kilos of stuff. But it sure feels good to know where I can buy my B&W supplies finally.
(cross posted to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) fshusband) |
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| Market research |
[Apr. 10th, 2008|05:57 pm] |
Would you pay $20 for a 7x7", 35-40 page book of photographs? Would you want them to have a theme, or would a random collection work for you? What if I made it a portfolio book, so the theme would be, "These are the photographs by me that I love the best?" What question am I not asking that I should?
Even if you're a lurker and have never said anything, say something. I'll be happy with an anonymous response that you don't want unscreened. Just don't be a jackass (you know who you are).
If you have never seen my photography, now would be a good time. BH Neely's Photography (blog.bpsphoto.com).
Thanks for your time. |
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| well isn't that just damn frustrating |
[Apr. 9th, 2008|05:30 pm] |
So I've started getting my rejection notices. The best so far was from a company that licenses art and also happens to sell a course on how to license art, saying that the work I submitted is "not at all appropriate for fine art posters." They went on to recommend a couple sites (and buying their book, if not their whole course) to have a look at. One site had only black & white photography, and damn, if I had only sent them my b&w work. The other site had a pretty good range of identical sunsets, and some cool stuff that looks much like what I sent. So that's just damn frustrating. It did give me some sense of how better to select photographs to submit.
On the other hand, I developed my film from yesterday's excursion, and by golly if I don't still have it! By jingo it's the bees knees! Seriously, I love my photography and my skillz with the lens. Now if I'll only spend $30 for the book and $325 (that's RIGHT! only THREE hundred and twennnnnnttttteeeeee-FIVE DOLLARS!) for the course I could sell some of it. |
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| That felt very, very good |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|10:33 am] |
I had a new low yesterday afternoon. I decided to clean the dust off my D200's sensor. I learned that no matter how careful you are, when you blow into the camera with your mouth (rather than using a little blower bulb), you just might spit. The spit didn't clean off with the swab, so I thought I scratched my sensor (well, the plastic film that protects the sensor). FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. I felt very poorly. For several hours. About three hours after the incident, I rechecked and discovered that the spit was all gone and I can shoot again. But in that three hours, I researched film scanners for 120 film. I researched places to get film scanned. I swore at myself a lot. It wasn't fun.
So I decided it was time to shoot some film. This morning I got up and out the door by 6:30. Just me and 6 rolls of b&w film and the Hasselblad (and the red filter and the filter holder and the light meter and the cable release and the tripod). I went to the meadow near the Acropolis and shot some pictures of the Acropolis at sunrise, Lycavettos with streaks of hazy sunlight, somebody's porch from 2000 years ago, somebody's living room from 2000 years ago, somebody's cistern from 2000 years ago (suddenly, I feel like Bubba - you gotcher jumbo shrimp, yer coconut shrimp, yer lemon shrimp...). I haven't used my Hasselblad since I got the D200, and I've missed it a lot. I've missed the huge focusing screen (6x6 cm, same size as the film). I've missed the super sharp lenses (oh, man, the sharpness of the lenses). I've missed the solid weight of the camera. I definitely need to use that camera more often. Gonna develop later today and see what I got. |
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| Do I have to spend $650? |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|01:45 pm] |
So I'm a big supporter of using software other than Photoshop to do my digital darkroom stuff. But it seems sometimes that those who could be competitors want me to spend the $650 and follow all the other lemmings over the cliff. To make my commercial portfolio and my (new) fine art portfolio work on my blog, I have to make all the images 640x640, or the horizontal ones look really small. Now, things were much easier with film, because all my shots were square. But, no, I had to "go digital" as the kids say. Anyway, so to make a rectangular image square, you have to give it a background that's the same color as your blog page.
As I was working on this in Corel Paintshop Pro, I discovered that upon saving the newly formatted image, all the metadata (my copyright, searchable keywords, contact information) disappeared. Just fucking gone. It takes time to do input all that crap. Even with moderately automated systems, time is spent on the project that could be spent elsewhere. Oh well. In addition to a couple lenses that are very, very sharp, it looks like I'm going to need to take the plunge and actually buy PS3. Damn. My primary investor says the well is drying up rapidly, though, so I have to earn the money. Huh?
So if while you're looking at the portfolios you think you might like to see more like them and purchase something, brian (at) bpsphoto dot com is the email address you want. Or if you happen to be a magazine editor, I'd love to do a story for you on Greek beaches or Prague's architecture or the history of Panathinaikos Stadium... |
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| awwwwww, crap! |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|09:34 am] |
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I was doing a little printing last night, and I discovered that for the past year or so, I've been viewing my monitor at the wrong angle for effective photo processing, making everything I've done muddy and dark. crap, crap, crap, crap. |
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| Need some critiquery |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|05:08 pm] |
So I've got what I think is a pretty strong portfolio of 19 photos. Please visit http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/photos/portfolio/ and let me know what you think. If you also read my fshusband blog, there's no need to comment twice. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, and why. If there's an image style you'd like to see more of, tell me what you'd like to see less of.
Primarily what I want to know is if you needed an article illustrated with scenic, travel or location photos, would you hire that guy?
And if you just want to say, "Holy crap! Those are great pictures!" You can do that. Negative comments must be supported, and bullshit like, "You suck," will not be tolerated. Not even as a joke by family. |
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| Looking for visitors |
[Oct. 26th, 2007|04:57 pm] |
I use this account mostly to look at a few of lj's photography-related communities and follow some friends. Most of my actual blogging activity happens at blog.bpsphoto.com for my photography and at fshusband. If you haven't yet, have a look at those two sites.
In photography news, I'm looking at getting a backpack that will carry my dSLR system, my Hasselblad system and a tripod, and will fit in carry-on compartments. ( Read more... )
If you have any of the bags I've mentioned, and you love or hate or feel utterly ambivalent about it, let me know.
And, of course, don't forget to go to blog.bpsphoto.com. |
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| 125 Ansel Adams prints |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|07:15 pm] |
If you're in DC, nearby, or will be in the next few months, the Corcoran Gallery is running an exhibit of Ansel Adams' work that spans his entire career, from the pictorialism period (until he was about 28) through the 70's. It includes a couple of pairings that show the first renditions of prints and later versions. If you're a landscape photographer, LF photographer, fan of the F64 group, or just like Great American Photography, go.
I found myself thinking a lot about a friend in Kazakhstan that had a page from a calendar with an Adams photo and how he'd stare at the picture, trace it with his fingers, and talk about how frustrated he was that he'd never be able to reach the level of work Adams did. As I left the exhibit, I was charged up to try some new things. Maybe even look for a cheap 4x5 again (I kept the lenses I had for the last one, as well as several boxes of b&w film that would be 6 or 7 years out of date now). At the same time, I empathized a great deal with my friend. I have a few moderately original ideas, but nothing supermassively overwhelming that would revolutionize an industry, an artform, the world's view of half a continent and spawn a conservation movement.
While you're there, check out the European landscape painting exhibit for a completely different view of the world. |
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| damn lot of work |
[Sep. 17th, 2007|05:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | working | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Try Not To Breathe" REM | ] |
We got back from 2 weeks in Greece a month and a half ago, and I'm still working through the photos. I shot 1500 (almost exactly), some with purpose, some just shooting, some hoping to get a good picture. The ones with purpose are turning out to be the most difficult to work with, because I know what I saw, and I'm trying to match the post-vizualization to the previsualization. That is turning out to be more work than it is in the wet darkroom, but I can, in the end, get a lot more done in one session than using the old methods.
The biggest project I'm working on is a collection of geography shots that show how the land was warped when Greece tore away from Africa and crashed into Europe. I'm not as knowledgeable yet as I'd like to be on the subject, but I think it was a pretty recent event, happening in the past 50-100 million years. We spent a week in the mountains near Albania, which aren't very populated and have escaped a lot of development, so there are a lot of hills that look as they must have for several hundred millenia.
As part of the effort to get everything done (finally) between working 20 hours a week at the day job and learning Greek 25 hours a week, I've set a deadline for myself to have everything together by 9/30. And it looks like a deadline that I might actually reach. Then I have to rebuild my primary website (which hasn't been updated in at least a year). So hopefully, I'll have some more news within a couple weeks.
If you haven't been in a while, pop on over to http://blog.bpsphoto.com. I have an album there called "Photography in the Land of Achilles" that covers 30 of the 1500. |
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| Greece |
[Aug. 22nd, 2007|09:55 am] |
annesblog and I went to Greece for a couple weeks of language immersion training. The weather was fantastic (except for the cloudy afternoon one day), if somewhat hot - the temps ranged from 95 to 115F, with most of them over 100. But it was a nice, dry heat, like the American West, so if we got to some shade with a nice, cool glass of iced coffee or orange juice or water, it was nearly pleasant.
We circumnavigated the mainland, driving from Athens to Mt. Olympus, to a spot within 10km of Albania, to Lefkada, to Nafplio and back to Athens. Have a visit to my photo blog at http://blog.bpsphoto.com.
( Rion-Antirion Bridge behind the cut ) |
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| damn digital camera |
[Jul. 6th, 2007|06:22 pm] |
I'm starting to get tired of the nearly-impossible-to-focus-accurately-through tiny window on my D200. That, combined with its light weight, make for a lot of blurry pictures. Some are blurry because they're out of focus (because that tiny window just can't compare to a big, beautiful, 6x6 cm (2.25 x 2.25 in.) focusing screen on an MF camera). Others are blurry because the camera's so light (only about 2.5 pounds with a lens) that the action of pressing the shutter causes the camera to move, even on a tripod (a nice, solid Manfrotto), even at 1/250 sec. with a normal lens.
I'll just have to relearn to shoot slowly and deliberately (which will continue to frustrate my wife). |
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| Now stuff at the photo blog |
[Jun. 11th, 2007|09:26 am] |
I've added a couple collections to my photo blog. One is a gallery of Silk Road photos, the other is more generalized travel work. Have a look.
In other news, when annesblog and I go to Greece for our language immersion, I'm hoping to do some work for a Greek travel magazine. When there's more specific information, I'll post it here.
What else haven't I talked about recently?...I got a new lens. It's actually one of the reasons I went with Nikon rather than Canon when buying my digital. I've had these insane fantasies about Nikon's 50mm f/1.4 lens for years. When looking at the Hasselblad back in the mid-90's, I nearly bought a Nikon F5 instead of the Hassy, just for that lens. I'm glad I went with the MF. It taught me a lot about photography and about patience. And it's just so beautiful to use. I kinda miss using it, but I'm still in love with the sports car feel of my D200.
Anyhoo, the 1.4 - it's beautiful. The depth of field wide open is amazingly small - one side of a golf ball will be in sharp focus, the other side will be out of focus. And I can shoot hand-held in a thick fog using EI 100 - "thaaaaaavmaaaaa" as my Greek instructors like to say. Maybe I'll put together the cash to acquire 1.4's even sexier sister - the 1.2. |
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| glad I had earplugs |
[May. 20th, 2007|03:26 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
Man, was it loud. It's been a while since I've been to a metal concert. And I (re)discovered I'm not much of a fan of the death metal. The music is fine, but the singing just doesn't grab me. For the uninformed, singing in death metal generally takes the form of a barking growl and long, low howls, sometimes punctuated with screaming. For aficionados, this is enjoyable, as evidenced by the moshing, headbanging and other forms of approval the bands received. One band, though, had a singer who sang (well, yelled & screamed, which I like) rather than growling. I could actually understand what he was yelling.
The eight bands ranged from high school age on up to middle-aged. I didn't realize how many kids my age never stopped listening to Celtic Frost, Necronomicon and the other great bands of the early death metal days (once Metallica went all soft with the release of Master of Puppets in 86, people had to go elsewhere for "real" heavy metal). I just never quite got death metal.
It turned out to be harder than I had thought it would be to shoot - when you're standing in the dark, the stage lights always look so bright. They aren't. At EI 1600 I had to manually set my camera to 1/30th at f/4.2 on my 18-70mm and 1/60th at f/2.8 on my 135mm. I shot like crazy - about 1500 pictures spread across the 8 bands - and edited like crazy - 286 pictures in the gallery.
I got home at 11:30, spent an hour downloading from the cards to the computer and got up around 7 am (because that's what I do). I'm tired, my eyes are grainy, but I have a couple pictures that are beautiful concert shots.
It was as much fun as I had hoped it would be, and hopefully I'll get to do it again sometime. |
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| Goodness it's been a long time |
[May. 18th, 2007|03:05 pm] |
I've been so busy with Greek and with my blog of actual photos at http://blog.bpsphoto.com that I haven't had much time to think about an update here.
I discovered existentialism recently and learned that I'm a born existentialist. In case you've forgotten Philosophy 2, never took it, or skipped that week, in a nutshell, existentialism says that the universe exists without meaning. Nothing is moral or immoral, and each person is responsible for figuring out how he or she is going to deal with that. Most of us develop or adopt some sort of ethical code to make it all sensible.
( So what the hell does that have to do with photography? ) |
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| I love & I hate |
[Feb. 2nd, 2007|02:14 pm] |
The clone brush & dirt/bits of cat hair/crapulence in the scanner. Short of disassembling my scanner, which is not wise, nor does it appear possible, I have crapulence that I can't get rid of. Crapulence is that collection of hairs, dust motes and other bits that collect on negatives, photographic prints and the interiors of scanners. They are the bits that aren't large enough to be fatal (like, say, a giant scratch across the bride's nose on the negative would be), but can't be removed because they will cause fatal flaws in their removal. I have these beautiful prints that I'm scanning, and I have crapulence on the underside of the glass in my scanner, on the light source in the scanner and most likely on the scanner lens. Crap, crap, crap, crap. (That's how crapulence gets its name).
On the plus side, dust spotting with the clone brush tool in digital imaging software is much easier than doing it with dyes and tiny brushes and magnifying glasses. |
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| Don't take this the wrong way... |
[Jan. 30th, 2007|07:28 pm] |
I took some negatives to get printed at a lab that specializes in (read: it's the only thing they do) wet darkroom black & white. My goal is to put together an exhibit while we're in VA called Silk Road Moments. Originally, I wanted 16x20's printed on doubleweight fiber-based paper. Yeah. It was going to run me a few thousand dollars to do that. So I scaled back to 8x10's on resin-coated paper, still of a high-quality, but much smaller and only about $500-800 to get the pieces printed.
When I showed annesblog the photos, she said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but they make your work look so much better than you do." Now, since I already knew that, I didn't feel insulted, but it was a funny moment. And by "much better," she means, "They make you look like a real artist." These photos are amazing, whereas the ones I printed in Kazakhstan are merely quite good.
Maybe tomorrow I'll hook up the scanner and start posting them at blog.bpsphoto.com. |
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| Big New Blog! |
[Jan. 9th, 2007|03:14 pm] |
Big changes are afoot. I've just launched a new blog at http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/! My plan, my goal, my vision is to update it daily with a large photograph and few words, though those who know me well know that not talking is nearly impossible for me.
My promise to those of you who don't enjoy looking at humans in their natural state, or who may be looking at it from a work or otherwise nudity-opposed location, that I will post nudes behind a veil.
Eventually (hopefully soon) the url will be changed to blog.bpsphoto.com, but I haven't put that together yet. Why not just keep using this one as I have? Wanted to try something new.
One last note (yeah, I'll be able to post photos without words, sure) - you'll see that my name has changed to BH Neely. That's to avoid confusion with another photographer (as has already happened). I won't ask my family and friends to start calling me BH. At least not yet.
Now go to http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/, tell your friends and acquaintances to go to http://bpsphoto.typepad.com/, and be a little patient as I work out small kinks. |
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