Ominosity

The Mining Building at the University of Toronto against a late-afternoon sky. This is what happens when you put Neopan 1600 in a camera that can only meter up to ISO 800, then develop it in Diafine (a speed-boosting developer). The negatives were extremely dense, more so than others I’ve made recently — but this…

Radio City

Manhattan, September 2003. Taken on the Yashica GSN rangefinder (handheld, at night) and converted to grayscale from a colour slide (Sensia 100). My posting will be a bit erratic for the next few weeks as the Jewish holidays set in. Happy New Year!

Photographer as zebra

My shadow on University Avenue. (No, I’m not pregnant, that’s my briefcase by my side.) Taken on 35mm HP5 Plus and developed in diluted Mytol, a home-brew XTOL clone. These negs scan very smoothly and I can see why XTOL is popular. 

High Street, Southampton, Ontario

From our recent vacation — the main drag in Southampton, Ontario, seen at night. This was shot hand-held (Nikon FG, 24mm f/2.8 lens) on Fuji Neopan 1600 (link is to a PDF), which I’ve never used before. Developed in Diafine it seems to give a true EI 1600 or close to it. It scans remarkably…

Tetris

This picture somehow reminds me of Tetris, that super-popular computer puzzle from the late 1980s… I’ve never been much of a games person, but I once played it so much that I literally had dreams about it. They kind of looked like this picture. All joking aside — This was taken on a photo shoot…

Curacao Floating Market

Another scene from Willemstad, the capital city of Curacao. This was taken on Delta 100 (which scans very nicely). I recently bought a second-hand Epson C86 printer and have been having a lot of fun with it. Colour printing is pretty good, but black-and-white (in “Black Only” mode) is outstanding — much nicer than I…

Venice and Rwanda

A second-run movie theater in our neighbourhood. This was taken on HP5 Plus and developed in Patrick Gainer’s PC-glycol developer. I did some heavy “digital darkroom” here to do the equivalent of a high-contrast split-grade burn on the sign and a light burgundy tone — definitely do-able, but time-consuming, in the conventional darkroom.