South Coast Botanic Garden in 6x17 (Infrared)

 As I noted before, I went to the South Coast Botanic Garden on Friday, April 16th. I had not been going anywhere for the past week, because I felt the weight of the world with my income tax forms that I had to complete by April 15th. It turns out, the tax forms were not as difficult as before. I was especially pleased with the changes to the CA 540 forms. Before, they had long parallel tables you had to fill out to reconcile the Federal and State taxes, since California wants to capture what the Federal government excludes. I used to curse because the federal 1040 was very easy to fill out, but the CA form was so much more complicated and took much longer. But this year, it was easier.

I have to admit, I have not really been wanting to go back to the South Coast Botanic Garden. It is beautiful, but I am suffering from garden burnout. I just have gone to the gardens around this area over and over during this year of the pandemic, and I just don't want to revisit the same spots again and again. I have gone to the UCR garden innumerable times, to the California Botanic Garden many times as well, and to the LA Arboretum, Descanso Gardens, the South Coast Botanic Garden, the Huntington Library and Gardens and the Sherman Library Garden three times each, for each one. I am burned out with these gardens, but I told myself, this is the place to go and continue testing out my Kraken 6x17 camera. So I roused myself and went, even though we had blinding sunlight all day with nary a cloud. I convinced myself by promising to buy my favorite enchilada/taco plate from Ramona's, costly though it is ($19.05 for takeout food), and then going to the Long Beach waterfront (Shoreline Village) to get some sunset shots.

I used JCH Streetpan 400 with my infrared filter for these shots at the garden. Sunlight was intense, it was the apex of the afternoon, about 3 p.m. I used f11 because I had to open up, otherwise the negatives are way too thin and unusable. I also used a shutter speed of 1/30 and handheld the camera. The problem, though, is that at that open an aperture, not only do I lose depth of field, I also darken the corners because my lens needs to be closed down at least to f22 to cover the image circle needed for such a big negative. What happens otherwise is that both corners are very dark. In the future, when I want to take infrared photos with this Kraken, I will need to use a tripod, but as the Rolling Stones sang so many years ago (back in the late 70s, as I recall), "I'll never be, your beast of burden! Never, ever, never ever". That is how I feel about carrying around so much equipment, I rebel. It takes the fun out of photography.

Here are the four images I developed from the roll today. Yes, yes, I know, the first images is rather cheeky, but she was pausing to smell every single rose, it seemed, and I was tired of waiting for her to leave. Plus, deep down inside I think she did it on purpose.