From our trip overseas back in March. Took the Hairy Coo tour to the Scottish Highlands and got to see the Doune Castle. Yeah, that’s right, the same one seen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Snagged this pic of the fellas enjoying themselves in front of the castle… just as the gate was closing.
I aligned this photoshop, and since I used a wide angle lens, you can see the difference in distortion causing the whole castle to wiggle between frames.
Just steps from my campsite at Ohanapecosh Campground in Mt. Rainier National Park, you can find the Ohanapecosh river.
Taken at dusk, back in October of 2015, using a polarizing filer. Really makes a difference to cut some reflections in the water to get that clarity for long exposure shots. Just thinking about it, and looking at this photo makes me want to get back out into the wilderness, and hear the soothing sounds of running water.
As a bonus, here’s a short timelapse of me setting up camp:
Where was one of your favorite places you’ve camped?
Back in March, some friends and I took a quick trip across the pond to spend some time in the UK, and visit our friend Samer (top left).
Hm. What to bring?
I wanted to travel light, as I was only spending a week traveling, but I always have such a hard time doing that.
I managed to fit everything into a backpack, and an american sized carry-on (Europeans use much smaller carry-ons, I’d come to find out), but as a midwesterner, I think minimalism is something we all struggle with. I brought both my DSLR gear and my film gear, which is probably overkill.
I was a little worried about placing all of my faith on my film gear on a trip like this, so I really wanted to have the versatility of my DSLR just in case (and if I wanted to shoot any video).
The film gear:
(I probably didn’t need both the 40mm and 50mm, but I wanted the wide angle of the 40mm, but the aperture of the 50mm, and I couldn’t decide, so I ended up bringing both.)
I used one of the film backs for indoor/night time photos (with either the 800 or 3200 speed films), and the other for outdoor/daytime photos (with one of the other films). Having 2 backs made it much more versatile, but there were some challenging situations where neither of them would have worked well, so I didn’t shoot anything, or where I wanted to ditch the backpack, and only carried my DSLR.
We had a number of flights throughout, and bringing film with you is always a challenge, since they want to send everything through the x-ray. I managed to have my film hand-checked at a few checkpoints, but a couple were unavoidable, so we will see how some of those turn out when I finally get my high-ISO film developed.
My goal was to get out there, and shoot at least 2 rolls a day (one low ISO, and one high ISO). I have been shooting film so sparsely, that the other goal was to use a variety of film, and then develop some opinions and preferences on which film stocks I liked.
I only ended up averaging about 1.5 rolls a day, and shooting mostly outdoors, but I really liked how the majority of them turned out.
I was excited to get these rolls home, as that would be enough for me to actually mix my own C-41 chemicals, and develop at home.
I developed these in my kitchen sink using Patterson reels and developing tank, and the Unicolor 1L C-41 powder kit. You gotta pretty precise with the temperature and timing, so I kept the tank and the bottles in a bath or warm water to help regulate the temperature.
Overall, I’m pretty please with how these turned out. After drying, I scanned them in on an Epson V600. I still have a ways to go with nailing the colors and white balance; but I think that has a lot to do with how I exposed, and the variation in film stocks, and also how I scanned. I’ll get there some day, but until then…
Thank You for reading.
Seldomly Updated 