.April ‘26.
~ Going Against Your Mind ~
I’m a creature of volume when I have the capacity. Tried some new techniques, started playing with long exposures… the sakura bloomed early this spring and I am always inclined to make an attempt to present them differently. Last year I shot with Harman RED to see how the flora and people would sit on red-scale film. This year I tried their new AZURE film, and it delivered interesting results. A bit… peculiar at first, but it has its moments. The way the orange pops is beautiful to me, but the blue skin tones take some time for comfort. Nonetheless—eye candy. I also visited the park in the middle of the night and got my Todd Hido on. A few night walkers and dodgy skunks, but I had some luminescent lunar light to bounce off the cloudy white sakura and played with some timed flash repeating over long exposures—with a lovely assistant for extra hands—as the first night’s attempt was certainly tough solo. Results scattered below…
Harman Azure 200
Kentmere 400 +2
VISION3 200T
VISION3 250D
VISION3 500T
Kodacolor 100 +1
First run with the Harman Azure experimenting at High Park and Sunnyside…
More outdoors equals more chance encounters. My everyday default is Kentmere pushed to 800/1600 for maximizing zone focus and hip shooting with my beater SRT 202. By everyday the Monday—Friday workday grinder. I’m fortunate to have more than one reason to get outside everyday and into the city interact with public spaces and the people behind the counters.
hitting the streets with some VISION3 500T/250D. Mixed bag on an Adopted Lens photo walk along Bloorcourt Village. I was on team Yellow—challenging for street when I focussed on people and doing my best to avoid street signs and traffic lights. But went to a dynamic angle on a yellow pay phone. Found a mirror on my way home.
Sakura presented in Harman AZURE.
VISION3 500T/200T Long Exposures / / I headed out two nights back to back to take a shot at Long Exposures with no real plan other than off-camera flash under some sakura. To my surprise, it wasn’t pitch black and the second night was a full moon. I was pleased with the lights from the one building at the top of the hill. It gently lit the nearby trees, providing some great ambient light. So, I was out there with two cameras and three lenses. I was constantly switching between my 28mm, 50mm, and 135mm while simultaneously dodging the local skunks. I was really guesstimating the exposure times—8-15 seconds between f8 and f16. The first batch below is 500T followed by 200T after the vertical image. I also love taking artsitc liberties in post and blowing out some contrast and saturation on images that can be broken into new styles. This is definitely something I’ll be incorporating into my summer nights. Enjoy and Stay Tuned!
