I was expecting the place to be empty on such an early time and I was planning to set up mariane in front of zappeio hall and let the speed graphic work its magic… but, surprise surprise, the leader of a political party had arranged a gathering there and the place was teeming with politicians, voters and police officers. so, plan b, we headed straight into the trees.

the time frame was quite tight, we had less than two hours before mariane had to go, and I settled with getting simple, natural portraits. straight on, I loaded up the bronica sq-a with a roll of kodak tri-x 400 and tried to catch the light that was filtering through the trees.

…then on to some against-the-light portraits…

…and as the tri-x roll came to an end (I was out of b/w film, too, just two rolls with me) I set up the speed graphic, paired it with the leitz hektor 150/f2.5 and looked around for some background that begged to get creamcheesed… I had some film holders loaded up with fomapan 400 and a couple loaded with expired kodak epn 6122 color duplicating film…

…it took me some days before I decided to develop the color films (always bored of heating up the chemicals), but the result was well worth it – expired cross-processed slide film, cheap as hell, kinda unpredictable but not without its merits…

…we’d already spent one and a half hour, what with the extra time needed for each large format shot, so I figured out it was time to pack up the speed graphic and go back to the bronica. the second b/w roll I had with me was kodak t-max 100 – two stops slower than tri-x but sporting a lot more of detail in the midtones….

…and that was it, we packed up and left just as that bloody politician was starting his speech. in total, 24 frames of medium format and 8 frames of large format were shot in the course of two hours. next time it’s gonna be longer, with more large format shots, which are a pain in the ass to set up but quite wonderful if they come out as planned.

my speed graphic was stranded on the sidelines, resting on a service table somewhere in the netherlands (the repair went fine and the camera is now on its way back to athens), so Ι fell back to 135 and 120 film. the minolta xd-7 was already loaded with some polypan f 50, and I hadn’t aired the bronica sq-a for a really long time, so I took it along.

we arrived at the seaside early, but the sunlight was too harsh and I really get baked in direct sunlight (my body has a blown fuse when it comes to high temperatures), so we relaxed in the shadow until the sun was two hours away from setting, and the light had become more mellow – the golden hour.

I am quite wide-angle and static when doing large format portraits, but the 35mm format allows for fast pace and extreme close-ups – I tend to default to tight portraiture in such occasions, getting the most out of the 50mm/f1.4 lens…

…of course I still have the wide-angle bug in me, and wide-angle lenses really like big open spaces…

…and back to cream-cheese-the-hell-out-of-the-background territory…

a couple of dogs were around, they weren’t exactly friendly…

…the sun was getting lower by the minute…

…and when I finished the half-full roll in the minolta, I took out the bronica, loaded it up with a roll of ilford fp4+, fitted the zenzanon 150mm/f3.5 on it and I was back to square portraits after months of working with non-square formats…

I need to get these negatives to the darkroom – they will print nicely, and also contact sheets would be nice. 20-something images in the 35mm roll and 12 images in the medium format roll, almost all of them based on different aspects of the same face, they will make up good contact sheets.

the equipment I carried along was the usual stuff: the speed graphic, six 4×5″ film holders loaded with fomapan 100 and the bronica sq-a which had half a roll of fuji pro 400h 220 that I wanted to finish up. the funny part was that I had to ride the motorbike along with loukas to get to the motocross field – you can imagine the sight of two people on a single-seater ktm bike, the one fully dressed for motocross and the other carrying two photographic bags and a tripod.

we arrived at the field and sought for a nice spot to try and capture a jump, which worked out quite well (although even the speed graphic’s 1/1000 top shutter speed is not enough to “freeze” a motorbike that’s flying through the air next to you), but I didn’t give a lot of thought to the trees in the background – the resulting image would be a lot better if I had stayed clear of the trees, thus allowing the bike and the rider to stand out against a clear sky…

…then I tried the same framing with the medium format bronica sq-a (top shutter speed: 1/500) and the wide angle 50mm lens, choosing a lower angle and getting as close to the bike as I dared to…

…I spent a number of frames there (they came out identical, and I was pleased to see that I didn’t miss the bike on any photo) and moved on to some portraits, first with the speed graphic…

…then with the bronica, still using the wide-angle 50mm lens…

…a change of view and a lower angle in order to emphasize the bike…

…and then we moved on to a different spot, trying to find a higher “jumping point”. the sun was getting low and I wasn’t really trying to get the best out of the whole situation (thinking this was a warm-up session), so we didn’t search for a long time – we found the next jump and I readied the speed graphic again…

at that point I decided to switch from the hektor 150mm/f2.5 projector lens I was using to a proper lens, complete with an aperture diaphragm (the hektor doesn’t have any) and full 4x5inch frame coverage: the industar n-51 210mm/f4.5. this lens is a russian copy of the classic carl zeiss tessar design, originally used in russian 5x7inch view cameras, and cost me about 30€ including postage. I mounted it on the speed graphic, focused, closed down, set the shutter speed but when the time came to release the shutter, my cable release got stuck and only fired on the second try…

I thought that I never got the bike in the frame, so I reckoned I could re-do the shot on the same film sheet, essentially creating a double exposure. turns out I got the bike both times, the first time on the edge of the frame, the second time bang in the center. the image frame is exactly the same (since the camera stayed in the exact same place during both exposures) but the two captures of the bike are ghost-like, since it was the only object that changed its position during the double exposure…

time was running out and we both wanted to pack up and leave, so I decided to spend the remaining frames on portraiture. I got loukas against the setting sun and loaded the speed graphic with my last large format film sheet…

the industar 210mm/f4.5 is a normal photographic lens and has a bigger image cirle than the hektor 150mm/f2.5, thus explaining the absence of vignetting in these two frames, as well as the more conventional rendering of the out-of-focus areas.

finally, I finished the film in the bronica, still using the wide-angle lens…

we left the motocross field with a lot of discussion on how and when to do a proper motocross photo-session, but it wasn’t meant to be. next session I’m making with loukas will be named “spending two months with your ankle in a plaster cast“. have a swift recovery, man..!

The location we chose was Tora K44 at Gazi, with respect to the movie’s association with that particular venue. It was March 2011, the day was growing bigger and luckily K44 is facing west, so I could make the most out of the setting sun’s light.

Despite the tight time frame (it was two days before the magazine was sent for printing), I wanted to use medium format, so I opted for the Bronica SQ-A along with a handful of Kodak Portra 400NC films. I also had my dSLR with me, to serve as a lightmeter and to take backup shots.

In the beginning I tried the dSLR for quick portraits, just to be on the safe side, but I wasn’t really thrilled by the results so I immediately switched to the Bronica. I have to admit that I never got the hand of using a dSLR for anything apart from concert/event/low-light photography – I really feel much more at ease using medium format for anything that doesn’t require fast paced action or really high ISO. When I had the Bronica in my hands, everything felt easier.

I did the standalone portraits first:

[argiris papadimitropoulos]

[jan vogel]

[the gang]

[argiris & jan]

…and then I set up the tripod for the group photo, which would be the most troublesome of all, since I had to overcome low shutter speed (1/15-1/30 because of the rapidly diminishing available light) and the unwanted movements of five people and… the dog of Argiris.

…which proved quite hard, considering the dog had specific views about the legs he found on his way:

[leg-lovin']

…after the dog did his thing with the desired legs, we settled down to get one frame with everybody staying still and composed at the same time:

[wasted youth]

…although the magazine chose to publish the first group photo because  (I guess) it was funnier. I would be seriously torn between the spontaneity of the first photo as opposed to the politically-correct stillness of the second photo, but happily this decision was not mine to take.