King Nate 88: self processed

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Ringflash Portraits

For Christmas I received a lomoRingflash from my loving parents. The following photos are from my first roll using it - a sort of test roll. While all lomos are exciting in their own way (especially to take - these proving multitudes of fun when I turned off the light and told my friends to make a face) - a lomophoto can still be improved upon in technique. Experimenting is also about learning.
To shoot I used my Holga and Astia 100 film. I mounted a fisheye lens and held the ringflash in hand. The best example of the ringflash is above - Ben, who was not afraid to get up close and personal with the fisheye. If you look close you can even see the rings in his eyes. Toward his forhead is blue, the pink yellow and orange melt together around his face.
As the subject moved farther away, the light spread, and all we can really see is red. Unfortunately I never used the blue ring. But I'm interested to see how it looks.

Then, as we add more people - and more distance is put between the lens, the flash, and subject - Rachel is bright, Rebecca less, and Molly even less. This all makes sense - but to achieve the full effect of this beautiful flash, we've gotta be close up. Why? Because we want multicolored splendor - not just a flash.

You may notice on some of the photos splotches of red. Look carefully - they read 2010 (sideways) and there's a few hearts. Prior to shooting on the film I took it into the closet, unrolled it, and wrote on it in permanent marker. This is the first time I had done this and shot in a dark spot, and I assumed that the marker would still show up, even over the darkness. My assumption however was incorrect. The writing is only visible on the lit up portion of the photo - this of course makes sense now that I think about it.
Also, as I unloaded the film from the camera I slipped, and half of the roll was exposed. The image below glows orange at the bottom because everything else below was exposed. The last is a faint image of David and Zach, lost somewhere in the midst of the overexposure.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

My First Experiment with Super8 - The First Time

This semester I took Image Laboratories - taught by Professor Reed - the first class she's taught here at VCU. It has inspired me in so many ways. Here is my first Super8 experimental film. "The First Time". (This is also my first hand processed slide film!)