Father's Day Relaxation

OK, it's Father's Day. My daughter made me a wonderful card. I'm relaxing by sitting out on the deck and snapping photos of things in the garden, and then uploading them to flicker while sitting in the backyard. It doesn't get much more fun than that. In fact, I decided to shoot with an old favorite camera, the Nikon Coolpix 995 with a close-up lens on the front. I had forgotten just how easy and good that could be... The photos below are proof that 3.5 megapixels can still be fun.


Pink


Wool-gathering carder bee.


Syrphid fly on oenothera flower.


Treehopper in the backyard.

Fun Stuff.

Fun in the Sun - A celebration in Hockeytown

Marjorie and I drove to Detroit this morning to go and be part of the Stanley Cup celebration downtown. It was a very hot day, and we braved the Hart Plaza area with many, many thousands of fans. I shot a few hundred images with my D70s , and a roll with my Canon QL-17 (a fine street camera), and a few shots with my Holga. Everything except the D70 fit in a fanny pack along with film, 2 water bottles, and snacks. I had my Nikon 24-120 AF-D lens on the D-70 -- a very nice lens for this type of event.

I forgot to put sunscreen on my face -- I look like Richard Dreyfuss after the the aliens disturbed his evening shift in Close Encounters.

Anyhow, we had a great time, and it was nice seeing so damn many people in downtown Detroit enjoying themselves.

Cornell Capa Passes on

The noted photojournalist Cornell Capa died at his home in Manhattan yesterday at the age of 90. He had a long and influential career as a photojournalist. His older brother, Robert Capa, perhaps a bigger "name" in the history of photography, died in 1954 on assignment in Indochina. In 1974, Cornell founded the International Center of Photography (ICP) in Manhattan as a center devoted to promoting and advancing the field of photojournalism. His achievements as a photographer for Life magazine and his 30 years as a photojournalist can be summarized by a quote of his:

“I am not an artist, and I never intended to be one,” he wrote in the 1992 book Cornell Capa: Photographs. “I hope I have made some good photographs, but what I really hope is that I have done some good photo stories with memorable images that make a point, and, perhaps, even make a difference.”

For more information,read the NY Times article. The ICP has a short bio of Cornell Capa on their site.

As a photographer, I would be happy that one photograph of mine makes a difference to someone.

The CMYK Camera!

my new toy
Originally uploaded by mfophotos.

Last week, my friend Cynthia passed along this cheap "Time-Style" 35mm camera. I realized as I photographed it that is has a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black or CMYK color scheme! Hard to see, but the lens cap reassuringly says "camera.'
I loaded the camera up with some really ancient Tri-X Pan -- from the early 1970s, when it came in 20-exposure rolls. Talk about giving it handicap to start. However, I wanted some real crappiness. And I got it. I developed the film in Diafine, and here are few results from a lunch-hour at work and a few minutes around the house.

Seeing Something Else

How many times have you photographed something with one thing in mind, only to discover, much later, that what you shot -- with the thought you had at that moment -- is not the thought you have after seeing the print?



Such is this image. I shot these three soda glasses (OK, Coke glasses) at a local restaurant when a bunch of us Ann Arbor Area Crappy Camera Club members met for dinner after viewing the William Christenberry exhibit at the UMMA Offsite gallery. I was shooting Plus-X with my Pentax ME -- not the best film for indoors, by any means. But, I took this shot because I thought the 3 glasses looked interesting. It wasn't until I saw the negative scan that I thought those three glasses also represented different outlooks on life -- you know the glass half-empty, etc. So that's my title -- Three Views of Life.