Wallace Koopmans Artlog

The sophomore of images.  Week two in my Polaroid a week self imposed challenge.  This one is from Bradner BC.

I went to the Bradner flower show today and took some pictures.  I thought I would share them sooner that I usually would as it’s still on for one more day.  I took a few other pictures in a field on my way back, the home owner next to the field was kind enough to let me park there.  The hardest part was stopping, I think I could have taken many more images but I would have run the risk of repeating myself.  This is also the same field that I used as a source for an oil painting previously.

Another day another walk.  Photography can be a great reason to get out and get some excercise, even just a lunch time walk.

The 35mm focal length was  very popular on fixed lens compact cameras so you might be forgiven for thinking they all perform the same.  If I’m to be totally honest that’s what I was thinking when I tried this camera.  So the 35mm f3.5 Elmar did do a great job with sharp clear images, but what really set this camera apart for me  was the accuracy of the center weighted metering,  it got all 36 frames right.  There are few controls, primarily flash auto,on,off and infinity focus as well as a self timer and that’s it.  Simple yet effective.  Now for the downside.  It’s not that durably built, it has a fair amount of barrel distortion and some vignetting when it uses large apertures.

Most of the images I took on this roll were reference shots for future paintings so I don’t actually have that many images to include. 

By the way this is my 200th post, just saying, I don’t need a cake or anything but it’s 200 posts after all.

I wonder if I hadn’t included the shadow of my hand and the phone if it would be clear what was used to make this image.  Although this image is really all about the shadow anyway.  Cell phone manufacturers seem willing to make improvements to the cameras in phones but I don’t think that there is a real desire to make them equal to actual point and shoot cameras.  So just as I don’t make phone calls with my watch I’m destined to carry a separate camera, and that’s just fine by me.

Winter officially ended about two weeks ago but as far as the plants are concerned spring is only now sprung.

Week one April 1-8 no kidding.  This stuff isn’t going to keep forever despite all my desires to posses it in it’s undeveloped state.  It’s as if I’m waiting for some artistic epiphany that is worthy of it’s use.  As that hasn’t happened and I’m not sure if I would recognize it if it did, here is my solution.  If some people can do a photo a day why can’t I do a Polaroid image once a week.  In case your wondering this isn’t an App this is actually Polaroid Spectra which I have been hoarding, see above.

Ok not the greatest composition (who planted that tree?) but I actually took two and gave the better one to the couple.  Ahhh must be spring weddings are in the air.

After using digital cameras for years and shooting negatives when I want film I think I may have forgotten how unforgiving slide film can be.  I shot a roll of Elitechrome through my Fujica 35 SE and was very disappointed with the results.  I under exposed nearly everything, either through misjudging the light or because the shutter speeds where off.  Ordinarily with negatives I would still have usable images but most of these transparencies, well they aren’t very transparent.  My only recourse seems to be to process them as high contrast B&W images.  There just isn’t any room with slides to get the exposure wrong, I have one more roll in my stock but if I buy more I will be more cautious about which camera I use so that I can rely on the exposure being correct.

Eight months is not very long but it is enough time for us to modify the land and start building.  I’m not against building places for people to live but I still feel a sense of loss for this little oasis of grass land that was home to owls and coyottes and many things in between.  I don’t know of any other place nearby where wild flowers bloomed like this.