..and full of hope. mind you. I'll explain
evenin gents and ladies,
I've been vacuuming knowledge from this board for a while, and a heartfelt thanks to all of you,
as my quest for MFDB nears hysterical pitch.
My head is swimming in microns, fora, pdfs, etc...it actually really hurts.
What has been wonderful is the fidgeting @3am, the half-dreaming in imagery, and the working out both the realworld practicalities (mostly money) and the fantastical..so I end up back a -googling and a-sketching till the sun comes up, and I gotta go to work.
I am not a landscape photographer, as I gather most of you are - but somehow right now I don't feel weird, I think - for I have always believed that, no matter your "level" or genre, photography is a fickle state of grace that one achieves intermittently, after having worked like a moth to flame to realize the image. and then u die. Kinda democratic, in that sense. What comes thru here, in this community, is the love...of light...and gear too. hurray gear!
I was a working photog in NYC and LA ten years ago, working mostly in Nikon & Pentax 6x7, slaving away at film production and stills, a book cover here, a record cover there, fashion tests...then joined the UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and am now a TV producer here in the Congo.
I brought a Deardorff with 4x5 reducing back and Type 55.
well since then:
1. Polaroid RIP
2. my archive of master negs of all my photo life got stolen in NYC - hence I never wanna look at a piece of film again. and that's final.
3. no more B&W Humanity of Man (see below) - from now on, its garish color-gelled panoramas of jungle, whores, mercenaries, tribal fighters, amd Armani-wearing upperclass Africans - all of them hustlin and survivin - in a backdrop of leaves and vines at night. hopefully vulgar..and honest..pictures
So - I need help and advice - and it really sucks cuz I'm out here and won't be back stateside till mid-May. And i will only have one week to get my gear together.
1. P45? or P25? if I'm thinking multi-layered composites of landscape and people, blown up to 6ftx4ft, stacked alongside to look like one long panoramic -- Can a P25, or Aptus 75 (with some uprezzing) pull it off? Huge difference in price range, as NYC dealer= $8,700 for a P25, or private P45 at $13000..and there's a Leaf 75 on ebay for 10grand?
Anyone looking to sell a P45?
2. a really-worn looking RZII and good glass - I need the leaf-shutter action for the african sun, its cheaper than the Hassy, and my sense memories are Mamiya-branded with that explosive shutter curtain. There is already something gross about working with expensive gear, and photographing people getting by on .65cents a day. But I'm still a techie enough to know you gotta have gear that works, and I'm not gonna try to bring chemicals and work with dirty water just I can be down with the people.
3. A Hensel Porty kit - here at work, I also have ARRI lights kits for video that I can use for foliage at night, with a genny.
I'm not much for precision. I use handheld metering only and only care about directing the people in front of the lens. I only want 50 ASA, tripod and a wide and portrait lens. I would only shoot in controlled (protected) situations here. I wanna chill out with Avedon and Penn in heaven.
Apologies for my rambling and many thanks in advance for any help, esp with uprezzing from 22mp/33mp...and wc ever way this ends, I cannot wait for that WOW Holy **** factor when I see my first instantaneous image on my laptop, as in that first print out of Dektol from eons past. like SEX.
so goodnight, good peeps, from the heart of Africa.
a few samples of recent work that I wanna move on from...
evenin gents and ladies,
I've been vacuuming knowledge from this board for a while, and a heartfelt thanks to all of you,
as my quest for MFDB nears hysterical pitch.
My head is swimming in microns, fora, pdfs, etc...it actually really hurts.
What has been wonderful is the fidgeting @3am, the half-dreaming in imagery, and the working out both the realworld practicalities (mostly money) and the fantastical..so I end up back a -googling and a-sketching till the sun comes up, and I gotta go to work.
I am not a landscape photographer, as I gather most of you are - but somehow right now I don't feel weird, I think - for I have always believed that, no matter your "level" or genre, photography is a fickle state of grace that one achieves intermittently, after having worked like a moth to flame to realize the image. and then u die. Kinda democratic, in that sense. What comes thru here, in this community, is the love...of light...and gear too. hurray gear!
I was a working photog in NYC and LA ten years ago, working mostly in Nikon & Pentax 6x7, slaving away at film production and stills, a book cover here, a record cover there, fashion tests...then joined the UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and am now a TV producer here in the Congo.
I brought a Deardorff with 4x5 reducing back and Type 55.
well since then:
1. Polaroid RIP
2. my archive of master negs of all my photo life got stolen in NYC - hence I never wanna look at a piece of film again. and that's final.
3. no more B&W Humanity of Man (see below) - from now on, its garish color-gelled panoramas of jungle, whores, mercenaries, tribal fighters, amd Armani-wearing upperclass Africans - all of them hustlin and survivin - in a backdrop of leaves and vines at night. hopefully vulgar..and honest..pictures
So - I need help and advice - and it really sucks cuz I'm out here and won't be back stateside till mid-May. And i will only have one week to get my gear together.
1. P45? or P25? if I'm thinking multi-layered composites of landscape and people, blown up to 6ftx4ft, stacked alongside to look like one long panoramic -- Can a P25, or Aptus 75 (with some uprezzing) pull it off? Huge difference in price range, as NYC dealer= $8,700 for a P25, or private P45 at $13000..and there's a Leaf 75 on ebay for 10grand?
Anyone looking to sell a P45?
2. a really-worn looking RZII and good glass - I need the leaf-shutter action for the african sun, its cheaper than the Hassy, and my sense memories are Mamiya-branded with that explosive shutter curtain. There is already something gross about working with expensive gear, and photographing people getting by on .65cents a day. But I'm still a techie enough to know you gotta have gear that works, and I'm not gonna try to bring chemicals and work with dirty water just I can be down with the people.
3. A Hensel Porty kit - here at work, I also have ARRI lights kits for video that I can use for foliage at night, with a genny.
I'm not much for precision. I use handheld metering only and only care about directing the people in front of the lens. I only want 50 ASA, tripod and a wide and portrait lens. I would only shoot in controlled (protected) situations here. I wanna chill out with Avedon and Penn in heaven.
Apologies for my rambling and many thanks in advance for any help, esp with uprezzing from 22mp/33mp...and wc ever way this ends, I cannot wait for that WOW Holy **** factor when I see my first instantaneous image on my laptop, as in that first print out of Dektol from eons past. like SEX.
so goodnight, good peeps, from the heart of Africa.
a few samples of recent work that I wanna move on from...