The Polaroid Diaries: Part IV - Tricking Your Camera

Sometimes using the exposure compensation dial on your camera just isn't enough to get a properly exposed Polaroid. In these cases, you have to resort to tricking your camera into thinking it's darker than it actually is. How do you do this? If you can come up with a piece of a neutral density gel, it's really easy! Just cut out a piece that will fit inside of the light sensor on your camera (or tape it over the top) and you're done! I used a 1-stop gel, so now my camera exposes one stop more than it needs to. It doesn't always give me perfect exposures and I find I still need to turn the exposure compensation dial to the "lighten" side, but it sure helps!

Here you can see the gel next to the sensor and then inside of the sensor.

I decided to play around a little over the weekend and take a few photos. I took these photos with the gel in place and the dial all the way to it's lightest setting. I haven't done much to these scans, so the actual photos look better in person. I tried to adjust the last photo to represent what the actual prints look like.

This was taken on expired Polaroid Sepia film.

Film Fun - Part 2

If you saw my blog post last week, you know that I've been shooting a lot of film lately. Well, here are a few more favorites from some recent rolls. Most were shot (and some are of) my partner in film, Tess. Some are from here in Denver and some are from my recent trip to Phoenix. Most are 35mm but a few (the square ones) are medium format from my Yashica and Holga.

One of the dangers of a Holga is light leaks. You can see that this image was ruined by light leaking through the plastic camera body and exposing the film.

Sometimes you don't get much light leaking onto the film and you get some great images! Thanks to Tess for taking this photo.

S&C - Phoenix Wedding Photography

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of helping Demetrius with Photography By Demetrius photograph Chuck and Sandra's wedding at the beautiful Sanctuary Spa and Resort in Phoenix. The weather and the location were beautiful and were a nice little change from the amazing beauty we have here in Colorado. Here are a few of my favorite images from their wedding day...

Film Fun!

Lately, during the wedding off-season, I've been having a lot of fun shooting film. One of my studio-mates, Tess with Love n Joy Photography, has been shooting with me. We've actually started a project: one roll per week, send it in to the lab on Monday, start shooting a new roll and wait for our scans to come back. Repeat for 5-6 weeks. The wait is definitely the hardest part, but it's so much fun when you get to finally see what you shot a few weeks ago!

Film isn't a brand new endeavor for me, but it's definitely something I'm taking a little more seriously these days.  I started playing around with it last year, but now I'm really trying to figure out the different qualities of all of the different films that are available and find a few that are just right for me. You'll get to see all my experiments as scans come back from the lab, so check back often to see how I'm doing!

Here are a few from my first few test rolls...

Since we kept looking at the backs of our cameras, we decided to at least give ourselves something to look at. :)

Here's one of me taken  by my wonderful wife, Belinda.

A (blurry) self-portrait of me and Tess, newly-obsessed film buddies.