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.

Selected portraits from the 2022 pre-season meeting

About as current as it gets here at The Resurrected Camera, these date to the middle of May 2022, barely a month ago.  My job hired me to capture portraits of the new drivers at the annual pre-season meeting, to be used on the website; these photos amount to the first professional work I’ve seen out in the wild in quite some time, perhaps ever.  The meeting was held at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort and I used Cheyenne Mountain as a backdrop, shooting out on the patio in the shade of a building as the sun was setting.  I got a few of the not-so-new drivers as well: all in all I made portraits of 15 drivers and include my favorites below:

Besides the cowboys (and cowgirl) themselves, the star of the show was the AI’d Nikkor-PC 105mm f/2.5 portrait lens which was used for all but one of the exposures above.  There’s been so much written over the last 70+ years about the 105mm Nikkor so I don’t know what I can add except to say that I picked it up because it was cheap, I wanted to have at least one portrait lens, and it had a good reputation.  I’ve used it for a few portrait sessions so far and have been extremely happy with the results, as well as that from my AI Nikkor 85mm f/2 lens (which also makes an appearance here).  I would call either of these lenses a must-have for a Nikon manual-focus system, whichever you happen to run across first.  If you can, get both.

I suppose this means that I can call myself a professional photographer, right?  I’m hoping that this can be springboard me to bigger and better things but we’ll see.

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.

Another good nephew portrait

My main photographic subject the last 1.5 years.

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Widowmaker

Back in December we had a big weather front and high winds whipping through Colorado and this tree in my mom’s backyard fell over.

Because of the way it splintered and still harboring quite a lot of potential energy this is known as a widowmaker, though thankfully my friends and I were able to cut it down without too much trouble (and no fatalities).  No pictures of that, as I was too busy working.

Scout

I just found out one of our drivers died recently.  He was a new guy, started back in 2019.

I don’t know that I have many pictures of him, though there is a 4×5 shot that I took right before we were closing down for COVID-19.  I got it developed but never had a chance to get it scanned.  The pic above was taken in May or June 2020 right after we opened back up after shutdown, the pic below is from Territory Days in 2019, I don’t even know that he had hired on with us yet but he certainly looked the part.

Tri-X in the Spotmatic, but you’ve seen it before so I wasn’t going to tag it again.

RIP, Scout.

At the shooting range

…because this is America, that’s why.

I did more shooting with cameras, but that’s not surprising, is it?

Mule deer procession

This is the road my mom’s house is on; I was just getting off work for the day and had been testing out (in order): my black F Apollo, a chrome F, and a chrome F2 Photomic (I’ve been building up the system).  I had moved on to my black F2A for the last few shots, and found an aspen tree on my mom’s road that had turned a dark red (rather rare, though I saw more this year than ever before); the sun was setting and I just happened to be there at the perfect time for the sun to light up the leaves.  I also happened to be there at the perfect time to see a family of mule deer cross the road:

Perhaps you remember from an earlier post just how friendly the deer can be around here?  Well they didn’t come right up to me and say hello but they certainly didn’t give me a second thought even though I was probably 6-8 feet away from them when I shot this series.

One for the peepers

I think I saw more red-colored aspen trees this year than previously and I believe it’s something to do with the amount of rain if I’m not mistaken.  Before this I shot two rolls of slide film in my new F2A, which I will get around to developing eventually.  So this color is a little bit past its top level but still pretty good.  I shot maybe 40 rolls of black & white in 2020 (plus 4×5 sheets as well) and maybe 5 rolls of color, all around September/October.

(that last one is currently my desktop background)

This is my first roll of Ektar 100 in nearly 4 years; for some reason I’ve just never really clicked with this film but I’m still willing to give it a chance every once in a while.  I hope that I’ll get it eventually but as far as Kodak color film goes I think I’m going to like Ektachrome 100 more and even Gold 200 has done better for me in the past.  I suppose that Ektar will really shine in medium format and as I am in the process of moving that direction I will be giving Ektar 100 even more chances…

All this equipment…Tri-X edition

Shooting a couple rolls of Super 8 film back in April 2020 during lockdown.  So here is the time delay between the immediacy of the digital camera on my phone and getting film developed, getting around to scanning it, and finally getting to the order in the queue.  But hopefully it was worth the wait!

It was more to test out my cameras than anything, but if I put my mind to it I might be able to turn it all into an “experimental” short.