Repository of memories

Title taken from a previous post.  This time around it’s my mother’s house, not my grandparents’.

In order: Kodak BW400CN, Ilford HP5+, Kodak T-Max P3200.

COVID diaries 2

This was how I found my mom’s house when I arrived the day after she died; she’d been in the hospital for about a week and a half at that point.

It still gets me how differently people can be affected by the virus.  I currently have it myself and am almost back to normal already after just a week.  But because of that there will definitely be a Part 3…

COVID Diaries 1

Mother/Tri-X

Yesterday was the first Mother’s Day that my brother and I didn’t have our mother.  Looking back on it, even though we butted heads a lot, I was able to spend a lot of time with her in the last few years and I’m grateful for that now.  This would be the companion piece to my other tribute which was posted back in December.  Honestly I completely forgot about Mother’s Day but I’ve never been a big fan of holidays that promote obligatory consumerism and people punish you for forgetting; I suppose I’ll never have to feel bad for not remembering from now on.

While developing all the rolls I shot in 2020 I came across a few that I’d taken of my mom, usually holding her first grandson.  Thanks to my old photo instructor Stacy for letting me get all that done in the school darkroom, or I don’t know when I would have gotten around to seeing these.  The entire Summer I was shooting nothing but Kodak Tri-X.

Family is important

Back in October/November 2021 I was going through my old posts looking at all the different photos I’d taken and deciding which ones I should keep and which I should prune to make sure I don’t run out of storage space.  There were entire posts that I deleted to make room for new photos; I think now that I will bring some of those pictures back.  A lot of those were family pictures and I have many more since the funeral so it might keep the blog going for a bit longer.  As a mini project, it hearkens back to an assignment I did in my Intermediate Photo class, and it will be good to revisit this subject.

So here are more family hangout pictures this time post-memorial with my cousin Chris and his family.

I went back to my Nikon F2A (and good thing, too).  This is the first time I used Ilford HP5 (except for large format) and my first impression is that it’s sharp but also that it has some of the same characteristics of XP2 in its look, namely to contrast.  I’d say that they look pretty similar to each other, and a noticeably different look from my old Kodak standbys.

My mother’s camera: the Minolta XG-A

This is the camera that I grew up using, for as far back as I can remember…considering that it’s older than I am and my dad got it for my mom before they were even married, I suppose that makes sense.  Now, she didn’t use it much, really after 2004 when she got her digital camera; I got her to use it once about 5 years ago and that was it as far as I know.  Just like most people of the earlier generation, they were mystified by the high technology as well as the convenience of DSLRs and never went back to film.  Most of the cameras I use are much older and less complicated/electronic than this one.  Minolta had an entire series of X cameras of which this was the simplified model with aperture priority only; with a full range of manual speeds as well (as the X-700 has) I would find this camera more useful but did bring it out occasionally back when I was shooting the MD mount system back in my early college days.

If you follow my blog regularly you might know that my mother died recently.  For her memorial service and as a tribute to her, I wanted to take pictures and of course take them with her camera.  Also included are some valuable time spent with friends/family before/after the service.

Three rolls of film, in order: Cinestill 800T, Kodak T-Max P3200 (both expired), and Kodak Tri-X pushed to 1600.  There are a lot of photos here that have some technical problems and I don’t know exactly what the problem is because there are too many variables.  I used a 3v lithium battery when I think before it was always alkaline.  Two of the three rolls I shot were expired high speed film that had been in my mom’s freezer for years.  I dropped off the film and expected it to be ready in a week but I guess they ran into staffing problems or something, and had to rush process the film for me, a mistake could have been made there.  And of course it could be that the shutter speeds are off, though usually they tend to get slower with age; of course it could be that the electronics are failing.

What it comes to is that the film all looks underexposed and shadow detail is often lacking, even with overexposing the expired film by one stop.  The better-exposed shots were ones that I took outside or near an open door, which brings up another possibility: that it just doesn’t read dim light correctly.  And of course I’m not sure how much having light sources in the frame might have affected exposure as well. When there is too much light the shutter won’t fire, so there were times I missed shots because of this, going from one part of the church to the other where the light changed too drastically.  After having used shutter priority with the Canon AE-1 I find it much more freeing setting at 1/60 and having the lens stop down as much as needed, it made it easy to set and forget whereas with the aperture priority I was forever worrying about whether the aperture I had it on would make the shutter speed too slow.  It was more an unfounded fear as nearly everything doesn’t show motion blur but I also wanted to give myself as much depth of field as possible because the lens would be focusing in the opposite direction from what I’m used to.  What it boils down to is that I was using a camera that is now unfamiliar to me after having shot Pentax and Nikon for most of the last decade and more.  I don’t know that I will use it much or ever again for that matter but being a family heirloom like my grandfather’s cameras I of course can’t let it go.

Another good nephew portrait

My main photographic subject the last 1.5 years.

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You never know how much time you have

…until pictures are all you have.

And the memories.  RIP Mom.

TV Birthday 1

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The nephew arrives…

My brother and sister-in-law had their first baby at the end of May.  I’d taken the pregnancy announcement pics back in the Fall but of course now with COVID we couldn’t actually be at the hospital for the birth; these were the day after when they came home.  Of course everyone was taking pictures all the time and I’m sure those are the ones that people actually saw, but I (again of course) took the slow (and ultimately archival) route with good old Tri-X.  I had these rolls of film developed very soon after and had pics for the family a week after that which is pretty quick for me.

I had the F2A already halfway through a roll (officially its first) and switched to the F Apollo afterward (only test rolls previously).  Knowing that they were both functioning properly I’ve been shooting a lot whenever I’m down at my brother’s house, all Tri-X, all with the F.

In the family way 4×5

This is a bit of a change for me, family portraits: my brother, our mom, his wife, and her mom.  My brother doesn’t like getting his picture taken and hates sitting still for it even more so I suppose this tried his patience the most considering the slow workflow of large format, but I think I got what I wanted and hopefully the rest of the family did too.  I printed two of these and gave them as presents so I see them in person rather often.

The big news was that my sister-in-law and brother were expecting their first baby; the poses were all her idea (I suppose she saw them online somewhere and because it was cold outside we used the big bay window in my mom’s upstairs living room.  Looking at them now I think that the background might be a bit busy but it was the best room in the house for it.

This was me still learning development techniques and you can see it around the edges of the frame, I think this would have been Thanksgiving of ’19 but I’m no longer sure.