Photoshoot: YogaChick

Saturday I had a photoshoot with a new model on OMP. She goes by YogaChick. So we talked about potential locations and thought for sure it was gonna be a trip into Detroit. So she gets to my house and we look out at a day without the predicted rain, the leaves all changed in color and choose instead to go to Cranbrook.

I've been pining to shoot with the Canon AE-1 manual film camera from my grandfather. I've been looking through the viewfinder for a couple weeks now and love the depth. Funny thing is Tony asked me to help him with some website work and gave me a 135mm lens that fits the AE-1 perfect. I guess it isn't a high quality lens, but anything different is something for me.

I looked and thought about taking the AE-1 and chose at the last minute not to. We get to the location out on the path taking photos and the Sony keeps throwing shitty error messages on the screen about memory errors and format errors. I swapped memory sticks - same errors, swapped batteries - same errors. I think it is the camera I've used it so much this past year and got so many great photos from it. They seem to keep getting better too as I explore new conditions. But these error messages have been showing up more and more frequently the past month.

Frustrated and annoyed in front of a new model. I kept appologizing for the conditions of things. I finally said - we need to go back to the house and get the film camera, this one isn't working.

Sad - we spent maybe 30 minutes in that spot and got about 8 photos from it after all that effort. Got back in the car drove to a camera shop on Woodward and got a battery and several types of film. That was a $47 expense I hadn't planned.

We drove out to another area at Cranbrook featuring the architecture rather than nature. Here I am, new model and trying out film on a full manual camera for first time too. She really handled everything VERY well. The temperatures were only about 45 degrees too and the cloud cover was mixed. I popped a 24 exposure roll of 400 speed Fuji film in.

You know how it goes when you have something new and it seems kinda complex? Also I didn't read the instructions and trying to look like you know what you're doing. I swear it was strange. Funniest thing is I kept fogetting to advance the film. I was taking longer to setup the scene and check the composition. Click to take, and be amazed that the shutter worked, then try to figure what I missed to get the next photo to work. YEP - FULL MANUAL. Crank the film into the next frame. I tried some photos without a flash and then thought I'd better make sure I get the photos so I attached the flash and got the tripod from the car.

You have to understand that digital cameras when you adjust the settings and viewfind -- you see a simulated image revealing the settings. With a manual camera you get no feedback in the viewfinder to say you have good settings. I probably should have shot 2 or 3 rolls of film, but this was definately a test shoot for me and a new camera. Thanks to my model for understanding so well, she was outstanding through the whole shoot.

After the shoot we drove to Walmart and submitted the photos for one hour turn-around as double prints with a CD.

I worked with the photos a bit and created some pretty cool images. Walmart's CD kinda sucks... the images from the film are averaging only about 750kb. My digital camera is averageing 1.8mb for files. Fortunately I understand my editing tools well enough to compensate.

I used the Virtual Painter plug-in for PaintShop Pro to get the artistic effects on several of the images. However I don't simply rely on the tool to give me the completed work.