Roll 5

This roll is from Amuse Bouche's February 2010 trip to the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival in Carrboro, NC.
He has a commercial drivers license.
Dance, dance, everyone look at your hands.
I'm pretty sure this was a dog recreation area, but it seemed like a good joke all the same.
I forget what shenanigans were afoot.
We are comedians, so we make jokes like this.
Lonely looking furniture on a sidewalk (parking lot?) sale.
I remember it being very sunny for winter.
Team meeting.
Wild Card! I have a couple of comparison shots to show what this scene looks like to a digital camera. I've taken some steps to try and make them look similar, but I left the film images flatter in general, and the digital ones contrastier and more saturated. This is less fair as a comparison because I'm not good at working with Ektar, and the scans aren't from the Flextight. That said, I was impressed; the digital ones stand up well against film, though the color is odd, it's easier to work with than Ektar. Less room to correct, though.
Digital (with blown highlights)
Digital (underexposed and sky painted in)

I thought this cliché would really piss off my teacher. It's pretty trite, but not that bad... pretty stockable, actually. She kind of liked it. Probably the same way I kind of like it. This was the only shot on which the color made any sense. I don't even have to check to know this was Ektar. The earlier comparison was pretty close, but this one manages to show film kicking digital's ass pretty succintly.
We were here:

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Wild Card! Another digital comparison; make your own judgment, but for me the difference is clear, even on this miserable film stock.

A return to a popular theme: the backs of Amuse Bouche.
Colors are wonkier because of an accidental double exposure; note the bricks superimposed. I begin to wonder if maybe Ektar needs overexposure.
This is some high-volume bike parking. My photo teacher hates photos of bike racks, too. I understand why.
Magic hour; colors still off even though I tried to match the scene from memory.

Roll 4

I think these were taken around January.

ARTS2112 - Roll 4
View from outside my dorm; a second round of snow begins.

This upside-down branch didn't make sense. More like a root.

This wouldn't be nearly as disgusting on dirt.

I think I must've been bored
Graveyard
This person whom I met by chance ended up taking my darkroom short course. It was too dark for this photo, but I took it anyway.
My brother often wears a grey shirt when he models for me. It should make color correcting easier, but I haven't done a good job with these.
Neither of us noticed the huge phallus graffiti over his head. This almost belonged in "Curious Erections" but was probably too literal an interpretation, plus it's really a portrait. One now heavily endowed with subtext.

Portfolio: Shack

This photo was from a hand-processed roll of color slide film. It's not easy to do by hand; you generally need a machine and it's picker about temperature. It's not as hard as it's made to sound either, but if you need consistent results, you'll need a lab or a machine, as well as a consistent sink. Positives are a lot easier to deal with, dust-wise. They have less dynamic range though, so this particular one is a bit contrasty and feels more like digital (it didn't help that I underexposed it because I was worried about losing highlights, which I lost anyway). I was pleased that in spite of all this, I got quite respectable shadow detail in what looked almost blocked up... though that may be thanks in part to the Flextight scanner. It costs that much for a reason. The shack itself is between New Dorms and Gooch/Dillard, in the back.

Portfolio: Med Corridors

My titles got lamer as the semester wore on. But that's the same old story; half were witty and half were curt, literal descriptions of the subject. Taken of a loading dock and a strange narrow alleyway which people use for smoke breaks, in spite of signage to the contrary.

Pordfolio: Genie

This photo is named for the brand of personnel lifter prominent in this parking lot in the medical school. I liked it, but I think I spent more time removing dust from it than any other photo.

Portfolio: Spring Break

This was not taken during spring break, but the eponymous graffiti speaks for itself. (Someone else's detail shot here.) I've seen this tag elsewhere as well (Richmond, though apparently it crops up a lot in Seattle). The nature of the graphic speaks to the title of the set.

Profile: Concrete

The color on this one was a nightmare (Ektar?). Part of some industrial compound in a more industrial district of Charlottesville, a few blocks away from Stubblefield Photo. Similar fixture exist around Belmont, which is a few miles east.

Portfolio: Crane

There's a curious split in my portfolio; most of the images were taken either very early or late in the semester. The simple explanation was that most of the portfolio (and most of "Curious Erections") consisted of the final critique assignment, and the remaining photos were mostly things I had worked on already, not that I didn't put work into it, but it was much easier than first semester. I felt like I wasn't trying as hard, but I got a better grade and was satisfied with the results. Life lesson, there.
For long-time readers, and fellow UVa affiliates witnessing the same construction, yes it is this crane, making this an example of my color semester revisiting the semester before.
From Roll 1 (shot concurrently with Roll 2)

Portfolio: CRT

This photo of a cathode ray tube was taken in the area of Preston and Grady streets in Charlottesville, on a morning on which class was canceled, but we were ordered to get up at the same time we would for class and shoot a roll of film instead. The color (note that much of it has been desaturated in a rather heavyhanded manner) and dust on this negative meant that I put off displaying it at critique for months after shooting it, after I had gotten it to a satisfactory state. The tube disappeared shortly thereafter, but so help me, one of the students in another photo class had a photo (from a different angle) of the exact same tube hanging in the wall.

Portfolio: Ruin Porn

This photo, the view opposite "Welcome to God," is peculiarly named for a term that was, to my knowledge, coined by James D. Griffioen, who gave a darn good lecture in my class about how to get noticed, even if you're not a 'trained professional' photographer (he's admittedly not; his work and fame evolved out of a hobby). It's also a nod to the title of the subset itself, "Curious Erections," a sort of a perverse obsession with modern human ruins which got Griffioen his start with High Dynamic Range photography and, specifically, the moody tone-mapped look that was all over Flicker a couple of years ago. It's calmed down a bit (there were certainly a dozen tasteless examples made by Flickr-heads for every good one), but still around. I've certainly done several, which I may post at some point.

He urged us to consider updating a blog as "an assignment from Professor Internet." Even if only a few people are reading, I suppose.

Portfolio: Welcome To God

Taken the same day as Bridge, with the same camera, on the same roll of expired 400VC (220), in an abandoned warehouse on Belle Isle in Richmond, VA. Named for a piece of graffiti which upon closer inspection probably read " Welcome to God's House."

I'm going to stop posting all the technical details on photos from now on; I doubt people are reading them anyway. If you're the sort of person who'd care, you're probably able to guess by this point. If you really want to know, post a comment and ask. I love comments! If I ever post a digital photograph, I'll make note of that, though it should be patently obvious.

Portfolio: Bridge

This is part in a series called "Curious Erections," modern ruins and architectural curiosities that show what humanity erects upon the face of nature.

This one is of a ruined bridge spanning part of the James River on Belle's Isle in Richmond, VA.

GSW690III