‘Provoke: Between Protest and Performance’

It’s been almost three years since I unboxed Provoke, and I just finished reading all the text. It sat on the side table next to where I stare blankly at the television night after night, sometimes covered by some other book undergoing one of my casual reviews, sometimes by whatever recent-ish issue of Aperture that I probably didn’t read, sometimes taunting me, most often completely mute. A strip of color negative leader slowly, imperceptibly, glacially, moved from top to bottom, front to back, and every time it caught my attention, I felt a small twinge of shame that sometimes led to a flurry of study, but most often got shunted off to wherever such feelings go.

Is it that dense, that full of mind boggling information and history? Am I just lazy?

Continue reading “‘Provoke: Between Protest and Performance’”

FilmLab, part 4: random

So… FilmLab. Honestly, it’s still early days for me with this software. Already, I’ve gone from “this is world-changing!” to “eh… I like my old process better” to… well, I don’t really know. FilmLab (version 2.0.1, anyway) is good for many things and not so good at some other things.

What do I mean? Well, let’s throw some random images at it and see how it fares.

Continue reading “FilmLab, part 4: random”

FilmLab, part 3: exposure, shmexposure

In my first experiences with FilmLab for MacOS, I noted that it tends to absolutely crush shadow areas in some situations. It also likes to blow out highlights, but with much less regularity than it crushes the shadows.

I assumed this was due to my raw exposures and/or the negatives themselves. My historical set up has returned best results at about 1-2 stops overexposed, which compensates somewhat for overexposure (dark negatives) and helps overcome some base fog, without making things hard on my conversion process. I figured these two stops were causing the issue, and that FilmLab was just giving back what I gave it.

Continue reading “FilmLab, part 3: exposure, shmexposure”

FilmLab, part 2: enter the Wardflex

A month or so ago, my dad reached out to sell me some cameras: an Olympus Infinity 210, a plastic-fantastic panoramic-crop thing, a Minolta Freedom Vista panoramic-crop camera, and a Wardflex twin lens camera.

I didn’t need any more cameras, but at the same time, I can’t resist a decent deal on some cameras I haven’t shot before, so…

Read more

FilmLab, part 1: an hour at Beaver Lake

I last messed around with FilmLab back in 2017 when it was in beta and only on iPhones (and maybe Android, though I seem to recall there were problems with getting it ported to Android). I wasn’t particularly impressed, but I also wasn’t really doing it right and wasn’t convinced that a lowly phone could beat the D7000-based Scan-O-Matic X.

But eventually—I’m not quite sure when—FilmLab came to MacOS and Windows. I initially balked, as it was only available by subscription and I’m not a fan of renting anything smaller than an apartment, especially something completely intangible like software. But Abe Fettig, the developer, listened to complaints, and in August (2020), a single “lifetime purchase” option came available alongside FilmLab 2.0. As one of the kickstarterers of the original iPhone software, I had a discount code, so I bought it with plans to integrate it into the long-delayed update to my scanning rig…

Well… the scanning rig update was a failure (for now), but FilmLab has some possibilities.

Continue reading “FilmLab, part 1: an hour at Beaver Lake”

Ellen von Unwerth’s ‘Von’ No. 2: the Cinema Issue

Von is Ellen von Unwerth’s personal fashion “zine,” part Cosmopolitan, without all the ads and self-help stuff, part Egoïst, without, again, the writing or the editor or the other photographers, and it’s all von Unwerth.

Continue reading “Ellen von Unwerth’s ‘Von’ No. 2: the Cinema Issue”

Andrew Molitor – ‘Sonata No. I “Clematis”‘

If you’re unaware of Andrew Molitor or his excellent Photothunk blog, do yourself a favor and go there now (or, slightly preferably, after reading this brief review). Molitor thinks and writes about photography in a sort of refreshing way that reminds me some of A.D. Coleman. And with Sonata No. I “Clematis” he turns that thinking into something in the world.

Continue reading “Andrew Molitor – ‘Sonata No. I “Clematis”‘”