Portra 400

The last of this set of rolls mostly covers the Jakub Zytecki, Sungazer, and Plini show that I talked about in the previous Sungazer post. At the beginning of the roll are a few pictures I took at the Blanton quite a long time ago. This roll covers a long period but a good chunk of it was unsalvageable so it has fewer pictures than it should. Instead of the 36-40 I normally would get for a roll rated with 36 pictures, there are only 31.

The organization of this collage is pretty easy to follow, it starts at the top left with those Blanton pictures, has a couple pictures of Jakub Zytecki’s drummer and bassist with just his torso and legs showing. It then progresses into the track suit clad Sungazer and Plini covers the bottom corners.

I probably could’ve done more content packing by putting all the Plini pictures to the left and all the Sungazer to the right, but I like the lighting and color separation of this organization. So that’s why it’s structured this way.

Overall, I liked this roll quite a bit. Some of the pictures, especially of Sungazer, are quite similar which is a bit disappointing but overall it feels like it was a good exploration of a couple of different things I was trying to do. Notably, I brought a 28mm and a 50mm lens to the show and there are a few pictures with each lens. Part of the reason why I was able to do so is because I pushed one stop and the other part is that this show started a bit earlier than some shows I go to and also it was outside so there was more light than usual.

One thing I’m pretty happy about in particular are the Plini related pictures. Pretty much all of them are either silhouetted and very dark and mysterious or almost overly bright in a kind of almost shiny way. It’s an interesting effect and one I don’t play with enough. Especially the darker pictures are really interesting to me. Because the lights were pretty directional, I had the capability to make very shadowy pictures which isn’t always possible with more diffuse lighting or shows with more smoke.

One thing I will say is that I really need to start pulling away from the one two split structure, at least for a while. I’ve gotten to the point where I can identify and structure it well enough and it’s time to explore more things. It’s also during this show that I started feeling like I want to explore more of the stage space. From up close you can only take certain pictures, especially when you only have one lens. In the next few rolls, I definitely do explore this a bit more so I’m curious to see how that plays out.

Before I close out, I did say there were a couple pictures of Sungazer that I might like more than the one I talked about. The ones I’m thinking of specifically are the two on the right side of Shubh and Shawn. As a pair I really like that both compositions are similar and the only change is in focus, one each focused on Shubh or Shawn. I actually especially like the face of concentration of Shawn on the bottom picture. As a a/b split picture, it’s one that really works as a back focused picture unlike many of the ones I do which don’t necessarily quite work. This is likely because the distance between the near and far subjects isn’t enough or that I’m not quite close enough to the near subject to create a strong focus contrast when focusing far.

I also briefly do want to mention the picture above those because it’s the difference between a 50mm lens (the two below) and it being taken with a 28mm lens. It’s quite obviously a wider field of view, all of these pictures were taken from the same spot and in this case roughly the same angle. The more important thing to note is just how much further away Shawn looks from Shubh in this picture than the two below it. I do still like this picture, but it’s maybe a bit hectic with the crowd and everything. It could also maybe do a bit brighter, a stop or so, just to clean up some of the noise and loss of detail in the darker areas.

Anyways, that’s it for this roll and I’ve still got a bunch to catch up on so there’ll be more coming.