More from Balboa Park (pt. 2)

 More cellphone photos that will never be seen again:

Visit to Balboa and Quinceañera Train

 Yesterday, June 12, 2021, I went on a little holiday trip to San Diego, CA. My objective was to photograph the Star of India saiboat on the harbor, but also, if my energy held up, to go to Balboa Park with my 6x17 camera and take a few photos there. Well, miraculously, even after my visit to the HMS Midway Museum, my energy did hold up, and I went to Balboa Park. Everywhere I went, there were photographers holding photo sessions with graduates and with quinceañera groups. Plus, since everyone is a photographer in the age of cellphones, there was just constant photographic activity everywhere. I tried to stay out of the way, but I am sure that I will show up in other people's photos. The thing is, if it is cellphone photography, 99.9% of it will never be seen again by anyone, including the people who took those photos. Photography in the digital age is a throw-away activity, it is a form of pretending to document your life by filling up your digital memory card but, in reality, no one cares about that material, not even the photographers themselves. I was heading in that direction myself except for the fact that I started publishing on social media, but even then, of the hundreds of thousands of photos I have uploaded, I don't view them ever again, so they get lost to me too. 

Here are a few photos gleaned from the end of the trip. It was close to 3 p.m. on a quite comfortable day, not too hot, but I was exhausted. I could barely take the next step, and I had to walk all the way to the parking lot at Inspiration Park. 

On the USS Midway (June 12th)

 A few 6x17 images taken on Saturday, June 12th, 2021, from my trip to San Diego. I went first to the harbor to photograph the Star of India sailboat, but didn't want to pay to go inside. (I've been there once before, about twenty years ago). Then, I went to the USS Midway Museum and went inside, where I took these photos, using Ilford HP5+ and the Kraken 6x17 camera. I exposed at f22, 1/125 of a second, with a red 25A filter, and it was about 11 a.m. Then, once I arrived home, I calculated that I needed to push by one stop, so I developed for 12 minutes. These are screen grabs since Blogger will not let me upload the scans in their original size.

A few UCLA shots with 6x17 (pt. 2)

 And here are my four exposures with HP5+. These were much better exposed. The compositions, well, they could always use improvement. These are screen grabs, this site will not let me upload the full resolution images, saying they are too big.

A few UCLA shots with 6x17 (pt. 1)

 And here are a few images taken with the 6x17 Kraken. As I said before, it was a long, long day. I arrived at about 10:45 a.m., and parked by 11 a.m., but didn't leave until after 3 p.m. I did the whole circuit, or, almost the whole circuit. I photographed the Murphy Sculpture Garden, mostly with my Canon T90 and slide film, and also went and photographed Royce Hall and the central quad area, also mostly with a 35mm camera, then went to the UCLA botanic garden, then walked down to Westwood. I took several rolls with color film, but also exposed two black and white rolls. 

The HP5+ roll was much more successful. I was using a red filter, and an aperture of f22, and a shutter speed of 1/125. It was a bright day with some clouds, so my negatives were fine with HP5+, but the only thing is that my viewfinder does not match up to what the film plane sees. My viewfinder is wider.

My Foma 200 roll was somewhat of a disaster. I was using an old roll that I had loaded onto a pinhole camera, so the first frame was already halfway wasted. I didn't take a photo of anything, it was just that I had forwarded it to the first frame, and when I decided to unload the camera to rewind the film and reuse, I opened the camera in my room and it exposed that part of the frame. The other three 6x17 compositions were complete, but severely underexposed. They did not scan well at all. I guess it confirms the obvious, 200 ISO is too slow if I am using f22. Think about it: if I am using sunny-16, then I would need a shutter speed of 1/200 at f16, but we have already established that Foma 200 is not really a 200ISO film, it should be shot lower. Also, using a red 25A filter requires two more stops of light, so that would be a shutter speed of 1/50 at f16. Then, if you take into account that I was not using an f-stop of f16, but f22, then that would take me down to 1/25. I think 1/15 might have worked, but then, say goodbye to handheld photography. Actually, I would have had to say goodbye at 1/100 or slower, so, the roll was doomed. I was exhausted, though. What I should have done is just remove the red filter and shoot that way. 

Here are three images from the Foma roll. Remember, these are very underexposed negatives, and I had to bring up light levels. 

 

The Perris Rail Museum (again) -- pt. 2

And here is the other 8x10 sheet that I developed today. It was dammed hard to load these onto the reel, but then, I figured out that I was loading them the wrong way, with the emulsion facing outward instead of inward. It loaded much more easily when I turn the sheet inward, in the correct way. 

I am much more satisfied with this composition. I think this repaired 8x10 Willtravel has promise.

 

The Perris Rail Museum (again) -- pt. 1

 I wasn't feeling up to going anywhere after the long, long day at UCLA yesterday. I stayed home, and it was gloomy for most of the time, until about 1:30 p.m. when we had tentative sunlight filtering through. Before that, though, it was gloomy and cold. I walked, at least I did that, around Grand Boulevard, but most of the time, I just squandered my free time on social media. I really have to put a limit to my online activity. 

In the afternoon, to get over my worry that the post office might have lost my film package that I turned in this morning at 11 a.m. (it is not appearing at USPS tracking), I decided to develop some film. These were shots taken at the Perris Rail museum at the end of May, after I had turned in grades. As I recall, I exposed seven shots total, six black and white with Foma 200 film and one slide sheet. I was hopeful that my problems with light leaks had been solved, and for the most part, after I tracked down the leak that had to do with my faulty taping over of the crack in my camera (the light filters through black electrical tape), I think I have.

Here is one image. It is a terrible composition, I don't know what motivated me to take this shot, other than the feeling of urgency that I had to expose some sheets. Once again, these are screen shots.