The idea is to think of an image, shoot it, develop the roll and make a print in a single day.  This weekend I did just that with a roll of 120, my Mamiya C220 and a Calla Lily that was growing in my front yard.  

I had seen the flower earlier in the week, for those who do not know, this type of Lily gives a flower that lasts about a week.  The plant then continues to offer Lilys for several weeks after that.  So I noticed the first bloom and waited to have a couple very nice ones opened.  Saturday was the day of reckoning. 

I had envisioned a close up of the Lily flower so I needed a camera or lens that could give me a close up.  The Mamiya C220 is one of my favorite cameras for this kind of a shot.  I can focus very close to the object, the 120 film gives me a great deal of detail and the camera is not too unwieldy.  

From past experience, I knew that the metering of this flower was going to be a challenge. You need to spot meter well inside the flower in order to get detail in the highlights.  This was a special challenge because this particular Lily sits in a dark corner of the yard.  The contrast was going to be high and I needed to keep detail in both the dark and the white.  I had a cloudy day and took advantage of the perfect time to capture the shot.

I selected Ilford Delta 100 Pro, one of my favorite low grain film.  This film developed in D76 or ID-11 gives a wonderful tonal range with some potential contrast without becoming overpowering.  If I compare it to HP-5, the Delta 100 has a great deal less contrast but still gives you the option to bring out more using filters.  For this image I wanted something soft yet keeping the details in the whites and blacks.

I chose an Exposure Index of 80 as compared to the box speed of 100.  I developed it normally as if I had exposed it at 100.  I believe this gives me a more even exposure, and if lighting permits, I shoot at 80.

The set up was simple, I put the C220 on my tripod and got up close.  I took a spot meter reading on the inside of the flower.  I wanted a good depth of field to ensure that everything was in focus, and I wanted to be able to tell that the background was actually leaves.  I did not want it to appear as if I took the picture with a backdrop in a studio.  I wanted that garden look to be there, even if just hinted at.  So I selected f/8 and took my reading. I took three shots, to bracket the image. 

• EI 80 f/8 & 1/15sec
• EI 80 f/8 & ⅛ sec
• EI 80 f/8 & 1/30 sec

I ended up going with the ⅛ of a second as the negative appeared to give me more detail in the white flower area. 

I framed the image to ensure that I had some leaves in the background.  The image above was shot through the viewfinder using my iPhone.  The trick with up close images on the C220 is to watch the framing.  Since it is a TLR as you get closer you begin to suffer parallax.  

Here is the final print.  The detail in the flower is clear, the background is still visible and I managed to keep the detail in the shadows as well as the flower petal.  The framing is what I wanted and the light is exactly how I imagined.  The grain of the Ilford Delta 100 allowed me to zoom in for the right crop given the 8x10 paper size.  

The overall project came out better that I had hoped.  

I enjoy doing photo deep dives, for those of you who have not seen it check out the top of this page, but there are dangers of doing this.  A photo taken in isolation of the rest of the photographer's work is often not representative of the photographer.  It can be a great image, a work of art and might move an entire generation of photographers BUT it might still not represent the type of photographer that took it.

When you look at more of a photographer's work, you begin to understand more about their style, methodology and approach.  Most of the time this is purely academic and but sometimes it can teach you something that you can apply to your own photography.  Fan Ho is a prime example of that.  Going through his work, turning page after page I began looking for themes and similarities in the photographs.  This is what I found...

Pulling these images together, showing them one after another, the theme is clear.  They are all taken in the same place, same time of day to take advantage of the light rays coming through.  I would guess it is morning light as people seem to be going to work and school.  

His method here becomes clear.  He knows a place with great light, knows the place well and the time he needs to be there to get the light he is after.  He picked his spot and kept going back.  I can picture him going there every few weeks or months, finding a place to stand and then wait for the story to come together.  

Just as a lion would scout out a watering hole, Fan Ho picked his background and then waited to let the people walk into it.  This is not the meandering walkings of a street photographer trying to capture the life in a neighborhood.  Here we have a very methodical approach to capturing life.  Go to the place where life unfolds in front of the background you like.  

This worked amazingly well for Fan Ho.  He was able to control the composition, ensure good lighting and capture a variety of different people walking through.  If you look at any image, the background represents a massive amount of real estate on an image.  If you can control this you have a great deal of elements within your control.  

Fan Ho took amazing images all over Hong Kong and I do not pretend to argue that he only took this kind of pictures.  But what I do see is a methodical artist who went back to the same places to see what changed.  As I look through some of his other images, I see the same methodology.  

So how does this help me?  It taught me the need to know a city, to understand your surroundings know how the light interacts in that place throughout the day and go back.  Keep going back and see what you can capture in that spot.  

So much has been written about the color rendition of the old Leica M9 (in my case ME) that I thought it was worth showing some of my favorite images using this camera.  I now have a Leica M10 but must admit that the M9 is still a wonderful workhorse.  Yes it has its oddities, such as a limitation on card size, slow buffer and horrible LCD screen but it still performs flawlessly where it really counts.

I see plenty of people discussing the color rendition of a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) sensor versus a CMOS (Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) that I thought it worth spending a little time on.  There are a few good places on the internet to dig into the engineering behind each, but suffice to say that the CCD transports the signal from each light reading cell to the edge and then converts it to a digital signal.  A CMOS does a series of amplifications at each cell.  Which is better?  I have no idea...just two different ways of solving the problem, however amplification of signal is difficult without an amplification of the "noise" as well....

Regardless, this is not a comparison between the two sensors because that would be awfully boring.  I can tell you that in many side by side images it can be difficult to see a difference.  But there are shots, that for some amazing reason come out absolutely spellbinding on the CCD sensor.  

The image above, of my two sons at an airport waiting on a delayed flight to Cambodia, is almost straight from the camera as all I adjusted was the contrast (RAW files are always a bit flat), cropped it a bit and gave the blacks a bit of a push.  Someone can look at this image and argue the white balance is off, and it is but look beyond that into the brightness of the blues, the subtle transition into the greenish tint in the background yet still holding onto the real skin tones.  

Here is a very basic snapshot.  I wanted to capture all the junk that a small stall was selling in some backroad store.  The colors really hit me when I looked at this image back home.  Nothing bright, just the basic yellow, green and blue rendered so wonderfully.  

Here a simple image with some amazing red walls in the background.  I shot this image because of the color and the contrast with the white, marble statue.  When I got back I was floored with how well it was captured.  

Here was a sunset off some of the islands in Indonesia.  Again the color and light capture is frankly astonishing.  

This shot is the one that really got me into the color discussion of the Leica M9.  I shot this one and just loved how perfect the color rendition is.  I began wanting to understand why and started seeing the discussion of the CCD sensor versus the CMOS.  

My Leica M10 shoots amazing pictures and the color rendition is very close to what I actually see.  But thus far there is no image that has struck me because of the color.  The detail it captures impresses me as does the feel of the images but the color is fairly...normal.  

So I keep my M9 and occasionally pull it out and use it hoping to get one of those amazing color images.  Maybe there is something to be said for the CCD sensors.....

I travel for work and fun and get to see amazing art all over the world.  I love oil paintings, sculptures and tapestries but struggled to find something worthwhile to do with them photographically.  Taking a picture of a sculpture for the sake of art is really a form of reproduction which complicates my outlook.  Let me explain.

As a photographer I strive to make art with my camera.  I want that art to be built on a unique perspective.  I don't want to recreate the snapshot seen around the world. I want to look at a scene in my own unique, if limited, way and capture it.

So when I look to a work of art, the challenge is how do you make a unique piece of work out of another artists work?  If I just shoot the work and reproduce it, would my work not just be a copy of their efforts?  Would my shot be beautiful because of their work?  How could anyone look critically at the photograph and get something unique from it?

My perspective change with this sculpture that I found in Tuileries Park in Paris.  As I stood looking at this sculpture it brought back my studies of Ancient Greek culture, my visit to Greece and my shear wonder for the art they created.  I wanted to capture this in some way but again did not know how to.  I took a few shots of it and left, disappointed as always when I take a picture that I am unhappy with.  I took it because I could not because it was worth taking.

That night I was thinking about this statue and my struggle to capture it when I had an idea.  Over breakfast I began playing with the idea and when I looked out I saw it very overcast and my idea took form.  I would capture this statue digitally, with a very tight frame. The overcast clouds will give me a backdrop and will almost look as if this Greek Hoplite is making his final stand against the gathering storm.  

I got very close to it and positioned myself so that the statue filled the frame.  I did not want to crop the image after taking it so I shot three different shots to ensure that the statue went from corner to corner of my frame. The clouds were perfect, I got a little low and snapped the shot. 

To be clear, the art was made by the person who carved this wonderful statue.  This no longer bothers me because everything I shoot was made by someone else and all I am offering is a different perspective.  So without taking the credit for the art, I can take credit for my perspective of it.  

This fueled my imagination, and I began looking at sculptures in a very different light.  I began to challenge myself to shoot them in a unique way.  

One of my favorite works is the Winged Victory of Samothrace but I could not find anything to do with it photographically.  I walked around it, along with 30 other people, and took a snapshot just to have it.  I then saw the stairs and decided to include it in my shot.  I waited for the number of people to drop a bit and chose my shot.  

Here I got very low to be able to shoot this statue with a backdrop of the ceiling and window arch.  I wanted enough of it to give some contrast to the image.  Both the statue and the building are works of stone and I like the contrast between them.  The same statue in a different location would not be nearly as interesting to capture.  

Here is a sculpture from Easter Island, a gift from the Chilean government to the Louvre. I liked the mood lighting that they had on it.  This was an easy capture but they had it displayed perfectly.   

It is a moment I was not prepared for.  This is not a new occurrence for me, my first child, an amazing daughter, has been pushing my boundaries since the day she was born. This day would be no different.  She came to me and explained that there was going to be an environmental march downtown in Buenos Aires and she would like to attend.

For those unfamiliar with the latin culture and our famous hotblooded politics let me explain...you see for us, politics is something emotional and anything emotional can become physical.  I am naturally weary of protest marches in Argentina however this one seemed on the tamer side of things. I offered to take her and she brightened up immediately.  I would have been happy to drop her off but she seemed pleased I would be there.  Again, another surprise.

I grabbed the Nikon F2 I had just finished servicing, and two rolls of film.  I selected a 35mm lens as I am still not liking the 28mm lens I have for the Nikon (a matter of getting used to the perspective) but can quickly picture a 35mm focal length.  I wanted something wider than a 50mm do to the tight area I knew I would be in but I also did not want a great deal of distortion.

Off we went to walk to the protest starting off point.  The protest was to start at the Pink House (here the President lives in a pink house) and march to congress.  At congress we were to hear a few speeches then it would end in a cloud of pot.

The march was wonderful, people were friendly and supportive and it was made up by mostly young people filled with illusion and determination.  It was wonderful to walk around them and gain from their energy level.  

For photographers, marches are wonderful events.  People go to these events specifically to get attention to their cause and hence was photographs to be taken.  They welcome it. So taking candid photos of people all over the street is simple and welcome. There is no perceived invasion of privacy and they want to be noticed.  

Photographers of every ilk ran around snapping up photographs as if there was no tomorrow (and for digital there really isn't).  People posed, sang, danced and obviously marched.  

Whenever I photograph these odd events, where family and friends are not the subject matter, I usually do not come back to them.  In other words, I shoot the images, develop them, may print a few but then I do not go back.  Obviously I keep the negatives, but it is not something I typically return to.  In order to make the entire process of some value, I need to tie it into a project, a short one but something that has a clear deliverable at the end.

Weekend Project:
I have developed the two rolls of film and now I will find four or five shots and make a type of collage out of them.  All will be in black and white however I did take a few shots on my phone so I may have one printed in color for the middle of the collage. I will see how it all comes together and go from there.  My goal here is to finish this weekend with a framed collage of this protest to give to my daughter as a gift to commemorate her first march.

Lessons Learned:

• Trust my daughter to push me out of my comfort zone...always.
• Take a wide angle lens.
• Be ready to take a great deal of pictures as people WANT their picture taken.
• It is chaotic so watch your personal belongings.
• The perspective of the images becomes monotonous so change your vantage point, go high, low close up and farther away