Since making a conscious effort to pick up photography again, I’ve realized that my skills may be rusty and my gear may need servicing. I used to see potential images everywhere I went, the inspiration seeping into my daily life even without a camera in hand. I’d frame a scene in my head, consider what settings I’d want to use to achieve the desired effect, maybe take a step to the left or dip down a bit to change my angle, assess the lighting and decide if a better time of day should be considered. My husband loved to make fun of me when I would do this and was only sometimes embarrassed when I inevitably found myself sizing up a scene in public. I’m certain he misses it…
Now that I’m considering taking on clients again, I went back through my work over the past several years and analyzed what I felt worked and didn’t work as well. While I love using my medium format camera on planned portraits, engagements, or newborn shoots, it doesn’t perform as well with active, young families (which would be my niche moreso…although I would happily photograph babies all day, everyday). It’s simply too difficult to achieve acceptable focus on a consistent basis.
So I decided to break out my “old” Nikon F100 and give her another go. The only problem was, I had sold both of my (extremely nice and pricey) lenses that had fit it. I do, however, have a lens adapter that enables me to use Mamiya lenses on a Nikon lens mount. The only not-too-sticky Mamiya lens I have is my 85mm 1.9 which I really love, but I absolutely needed my Nikon 24mm 1.4 lens back if I had any real hope of working with families indoors again. I hopped on ebay, found said lens, cried a little bit at the price, and hit “buy now.”
While waiting on the new lens to arrive, I used the adapter ring and dragged my family around the house. It had been so long that any of us had done this, that we were all a little lost I think. It’s definitely going to take a bit of practice to find my groove of directing/encouraging interactions and emotions to get the shots I want, but I know that I can get there by just doing it more regularly. I also took this opportunity to brush up on metering, challenge myself with tricky lighting situations, and shoot with a very wide aperture. When the auto scans came back, I breathed a sigh of relief…the camera body evidently still works, the lens adapter obviously functions properly, and my “eye” clearly isn’t blind, just blurry at times :-p
This is my favorite image from the roll. My eldest is such an old soul, and I feel this photo captures that perfectly which is what I was going for.
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this image, but it kind of both creeps me out and amazes me. To my eye, it looks like her young adult self is looking back at her child-like image. It’s as if it’s some kind of strange two-way mirror between the present and the future.
This is my youngest’s current favorite stuffed animal, dubbed Eliza. She takes very good care of her sweet little bear.
She also loves any and all birds, which is fitting since her nicknames are “Birdy” and “Little Bird.”
I also shoved my poor husband into this patch of light so that I could try out that very tricky lighting situation. I didn’t quite succeed, so I’ll have to interrupt his afternoon “wine down” time again at some point.
I kind of have an obsession with the winter light here. It’s so crisp and has the most delicate gold haze to it. I love to see it juxtaposed against the blue snow and how it laces through the spruce trees. This was shot from one of our corner windows that I will often sit and marvel at during sunset.
And I’ve always had an obsession with any and all clouds. The way that they enable you to visualize the invisible is simply stunning. Their colors, patterns, and textures all stir my soul and inspire me to create.
And some frames of my girls just being themselves. Oh, how I love them!
Unfortunately, my test roll with the new 24mm lens was a complete failure. I had decided to test out the F100’s in-camera meter because I couldn’t remember if it worked or not. I set it to spot meter (which was probably a mistake) and took some test readings of my girls’ faces before hitting a short ski trail with them. The readings came back very off to my mind, but I had no other meter on hand and I never bothered to memorize the Sunny 16 rule (I guess I should do that?). It had been so long since I had used the camera, I thought there was definitely a chance that my internal calibration could be wrong. Alas, I should’ve trusted my gut because all of the images came back so horribly underexposed to the point that I couldn’t even determine the sharpness of my new lens and the F100’s autofocus capability.
I’m going to have to put another roll through this weekend and try again. I really want to finish these tests before we leave for our trip to the UK, and possibly buy one more lens. Anyway, here’s the last shot I want to share for today…forced proof that they do get along at times ;-)
