Crossed Negatives/More from the Ferry

I think this was the roll I had in the Bessa.  I find it nice that the perspective lines happened to converge in pretty much the exact same spot.  Otherwise I'm hoping there isn't a big problem with the film advance.  I'm not looking forward to having to take it in.

Anyway, here are a few more from that roll, which came out fine.  These were all processed in the same Diafine batch as the Tristan and leftover rolls, so they have that same graininess and contrast from the developer.

Japan/Hawaii leftovers

Had some leftover rolls from the trip I never got around to scanning.

Tristan

What a trip.

9 months of morning sickness culminated in 21 hours of labor, and now I'm a dad for the rest of my life.  I could wax poetic for days about parenthood and childhood, but this is a photography blog, so let's keep it on the rails.

I had spent some time thinking (among a lot of other things) about what camera I would have on me on the day my son would be born.  Would it be film or digital?  Big or small?  Fast or slow?


My mental image of the whole event was of a frantic mess with alarms going off and surgical tools handed back and forth (it's only kind of like that).  At first I thought it would be between the Sony RX100 and the Fuji X100S.  They're both in-the-moment quick-shot digital cameras with wide lenses and reliable sensors.

But then I thought about it some more.

I went with my dad's Minolta SR-T 303b with its 50mm f/1.4 lens.  The lens is fast but not particularly wide, and film is relatively slow compared to what digital can do these days.  It's the camera that took the photo above.  That's me, not Tristan, some 32 years ago.

I decided I didn't want speed or maneuverability or ease of use.  I wanted continuity.

All of my other film cameras were purchased used, either on eBay or at camera shops.  They all came with scratches and dings -- histories with previous owners that lost their significance when they were put up for sale.

The Minolta, though, my dad bought brand new some time in the seventies.  At the time it was a top of the line model, and a 50mm f/1.4 lens is no joke even by today's standards.  He must have had that same feeling any person would have, walking out from the store with the latest technology having spent a paycheck and a half, barely waiting to get home to get the box open.

It was his up until he handed it to me, not thinking much about giving away an old toy that had been in a box in the basement for over a decade.



And then it was alive again, loaded with new film, photographing his grandson's first day.

I had wanted to bring a rangefinder like the Leica M3 or Voigtlander Bessa because I didn't want to miss a moment to the viewfinder blackout of an SLR.  It certainly did get a little frustrating when I just didn't want to take my eyes off my son.  Also, the noise it made cut through relative quiet of the hospital room.

But that didn't matter because I didn't want an optimal camera.  I wanted an important camera.

It wasn't that big a deal anyway because I barely shot a whole roll while we were at the hospital, from when we got there to when we were discharged.  Most of the time, I could barely be bothered to blink, let alone take a photo.





By the way, the film was Fuji Neopan 400, shot at 1600 and developed in Diafine, which is new to me.  I've decided to give up on Kodak XTOL because while it's great for pushing, I get a little scared while developing each roll because it's notorious for failing without much notice.  Also, I hadn't had time to do film photography for a while, so my batch was getting old, anyway.  Diafine is a pretty carefree developer, and the results were fine for my purposes.



As for the Neopan, I've always enjoyed the way it rendered white things, and I imagined there would be lots of white in the hospital, so I pulled a precious roll from my dwindling stockpile.

It's been two and a half weeks with many, many more to go.  I'm not sure how much of Tristan you will be seeing on this blog.  This was only a fraction of the roll I took; there are a lot of shots on that roll that are too personal to share, and I imagine the trend will continue into the future.  It won't be my intention to turn this into a baby blog, but we'll see, since it wasn't my intention to turn it into a travel blog, either, which is what started happening while I was traveling.

In any case, with my kitchen renovation finished and with Tristan born and healthy, I'm hoping to be able to get back behind the camera to start making some new material with what we have left of the year!

Back to the Street

For a little while I thought I was done with street photography, but then I found myself with time to kill, and an RX100 in my pocket.  Also, I'm pretty much done and done with the vacation photos.

I like to juggle it back and forth between my hands like I'm idly messing with it while I'm staring up at buildings.  It's been a pretty reliable misdirection, and I've learned to aim and shoot it from the hip reasonably reliably from in close.  Though, I guess I should try to at least get a vertical composition or two.

I usually leave it at 1600 ISO, f/8, and convert to black and white.  I don't even bother with noise reduction.

Shinkansen

Breakfast at the Ryokan

On the Road to Hana

Q&A

I spend a lot more time thinking about photography than actually doing photography.  The other day I had a bit of a shower-thoughts moment and started wondering:

When you take a photo, are you asking a question, or answering a question?

People always say that when you take a photo, you should be telling a story. Is the story already there when you take the photo, or does it only become a story after you hit the shutter button?

I didn't get around to really thinking it through until now.

#nyc

A photo posted by Jason Cheung (@fickle_frame) on Jun 6, 2015 at 4:22pm PDT

The story is there! It's just waiting for the right storyteller to come along and assign it importance in our lives (or our Facebook feeds, for that matter).  Think of all the stories you walk past on the way to work -- all they needed was someone to point them out to you. Of course, you have more important things to get to than other people's business. That's where the storyteller comes in. He/she captures the story and puts it into his preferred language, be it words or pictures or song or sculpture. His/her hope is that the audience is able to understand the language. 

A good story makes us ask questions we didn't even know we wanted answered, and then leaves us to seek the answers ourselves.

So, to answer the question at hand (at least for me), when a photo is taken, there will be questions, but they are not for the photographer to ask or answer.  The photographer is only there to make the questions happen.

Fushimi Inari

Man, I've been back for almost two months now and still haven't gotten through all the posts.  It's not because of the film because everything's already developed and scanned.  Frankly, it's just sorting through everything and trying to make up some sort of coherent narrative out of everything.  Also, I didn't feel like a lot of the photos were particularly good.

Anyway, here's Fushimi Inari, which you may recognize from this photo.  It was POURING when we got off the train, which actually turned out to to be a good thing.  There was nobody there -- we passed a single couple on our way up, and spent the rest of the time with the rustle of wind in the trees and the patter of rain on our umbrellas.

Metering became a chore after a while, so I just gave up on it entirely and underexposed half of the photos I took.  I didn't get that torii tunnel picture because it was heavily overcast, and the lighting was really flat inside.

Daio Wasabi Farm

One of the highlights of the trip was the Daio Wasabi Farm.  We stayed the night in Matsumoto at a ryokan run by an old man, his wife, and their daughter.  The daughter picked us up from the train station and on the way, she told us about a wasabi farm in the nearby town of Azumino.  We had planned to go to Nara the next day, but then decided to call an audible and venture over.

The way to Azumino is a gorgeous 30 minute train ride through the Japanese Alps, with the mountains stretching from one side of the windows to the other.  The town itself has its own quirks.  It has a healthy density of shrines for a small sleepy town.  There's also the Spoon Art Cafe.  I don't even know how to tell you about it.  I'd have to explain in person.

The Daio Wasbi Farm is a reminder of how enthusiastic the Japanese can be of whatever it is they do.  Even if it's farming roots.  Everything is relentlessly wasabi-themed.  There's wasabi beer, wasabi ice cream, wasabi burgers, and barely any food that doesn't have wasabi in it.  In the gift shop are plush wasabi toys, wasabi keychains, and wasabi snacks.  If you don't like wasabi, what are you doing on a wasabi farm, anyway?

The rest of the farm was a very nice walk with cherry blossoms in full bloom.  You get to see wasabi in various stages of growth, from seedling to full plant, with workers tending row by row.  The plants apparently thrive in the crystal clear water flowing from the nearby mountains, and before planting, the workers walk around with flamethrowers to sterilize the gravel.

At the end of the day, we got on a train to Kyoto, glad we had discovered this little town hiding in the mountains.  It was probably more fun than getting attacked by deer.