the positive prints first…

…and the corresponding negative scans, after the necessary bleach treatment…

the schedule was still tight, what with gunner having to do another photoshoot and an interview for a magazine, the weather being mixed and unpredictable and all kinds of strikes and demonstrations paralyzing downtown athens.

in the end we settled for a casual weekend evening shoot, and we ended up at the park next to gazi along with loukas mexis, while later on we were joined by anna rezan kritseli.

I only had two loaded large format film holders with me, so I decided to do instant film, polaroids. I loaded up the polaroid holder with fuji fp-100c 3.25×4.25″ color film and we had a blast going through the 10-frame pack.

along with the instant film I was also shooting medium format with the bronica, but that will take a while to develop and scan. moreover, I need to bleach-clean the instant film negatives, which will give me a much better scan than the original positives. as opposed to all this process, it was easy enough to scan the instant film positives – let’s see what a 10-frame pack of instant film shot through a large format camera can get you.

first frame was over-exposed by one stop…

…then I corrected my exposure and the good stuff was here…

…both gunner and loukas wanted me to pose for a shot, so I explained to loukas how to focus, how to remove the ground glass and replace it with the film back, how to cock the shutter and operate it… at the same time gunner was acting as a hair stylist, trying to get my hair out of my face while I was sitting immobile (the slightest movement would have resulted in me getting out of focus), which in the end didn’t really happen…

…we changed location and moved along to a bridge above the railway. then anna came along and, of course, I asked her to do her bit. sadly, I misjudged focus for this shot, which is something a 150mm/f2.5 lens does not forgive…

…then loukas wanted me to pose with anna, and I obliged him. he said he remembered everything, but he forgot that he had to cock the shutter before removing the darkslide from the polaroid back, so he ended up destroying one frame, although it seems that with instant film you can’t really go wrong whatever you do…

…after pulling out the destroyed frame (and before we were able to see the astounding result of a 10 second exposure on a photograph that actually needed 1/500 of a second to be exposed properly), loukas got the next one right, though he got us framed a bit to the right… (this wasn’t his fault, the 3.25×4.25″ polaroid back is not center-aligned, for some obscure reason).,.

…then we went for some really tight portraits…

…and we called it a day.

this was not the end, though, because next day we had a couple of hours before gunner had to get to his flight back to los angeles, so we went for a walk at zappeio megaro…

…and then one of the guards shooed us away, saying “you can’t do that here, you need a permit“, to which we replied “we’re just doing photos for fun, this is not a professional thing“, to which he said “who’s he, then?“, and we said “he’s a friend and we’re just taking some photos of him“, and he gave the ultimate response: “he can’t be your friend. I could be your friend if you wanted to photograph me, but he, he’s too handsome and stylish to be your friend“. at that point we decided to pack up and hunt for food, there’s no arguing with that kind of common sense.

that was it… two days, one large format camera, one pack of instant film, ten instant photographs, lots of fun. stay tuned for the next post, which will include the negative scans of these photographs as well as the other shots we did on normal film.

moreover, I am painfully trying to master large format portraiture, which is a quite different beast than medium format, a lot less flexible, totally tripod-bound and requiring extreme patience and composure from the model and the photographer alike.

so, it’s summertime, the concerts are over, I have extra free time and a need to get my speed graphic out on the field for a proper, calm and composed portraiture session.

enter miss eliza. she’s a dream, a muse, a girl who understands my driving need and can keep still when I ask her to, while she’s a most enjoyable personality when not posing. it’s a hot sunday evening and we go up to a favourite location of mine: hotel xenia on top of parnitha. it’s an old building that started as a sanatorium 90 years ago, became a hotel in the mid-60s and now lies abandoned and defaced.

I had four cameras with me – the speed graphic fitted with the hektor 150mm/f2.5 for large format, the medium format bronica sq-a fitted with the zenzanon 80mm/f2.8, the polaroid land camera 250 and a 35mm minolta xd-7 that I intended to use as a lightmeter.

before setting up the tripod for the speed graphic, I took a couple of frames with the polaroid – the positives are  good but they cannot be compared with the negatives, which acquire a lot of random “textures” during the bleaching process.

…then I put the speed graphic on the tripod and spent 5 minutes trying to arrange the framing. tripod photography is even more time-consuming if you have to frame and focus through an upside-down ground glass image. took two identical frames (better safe than sorry) and then decided to take out the bronica.

…on medium format everything is so much easier, framing, changing the angle of view, moving closer or further, catching momentary expressions or even the wind. and the ilford fp4+ does a very good job against the light, keeping a lot of detail in the shadows.

…with the 12-frame roll finished, it’s time to go back to the speed graphic… and the first picture is an example of how you can lose your framing if you spend a long enough time on correctly focusing the razor thin depth of field of a f2.5 lens on large format.

…while the second picture really shows you the 3D effect of this particular lens/format combination. on both the images the fomapan 100 film holds up very well against the sun. very good large format film, especially considering its low price.

….and that’s it. all in all we shot 22 frames in two hours: a medium format film, 8 large format sheets and 2 polaroid peel-apart frames. the only post-processing that was applied to the above images was burning/dodging and of course manual scratch and dust removal – I’ve yet to find a scanner that cleans itself as well as the negatives before scanning.

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