Landscapes and nature, hiking and coastlines. Here's a variety of new photographs from both the Leica and Nikon with 35mm lenses. I bought the Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART in lieu of my brief New Zealand road trip in October, but after hiking Mount Maroon with my Nikon D810 on me, I came to the conclusion that I simply don't want to carry that size of a camera on me.
Read MoreContinuing my "urban exploration" phase, I've picked up the Kodak film again. I can't get enough. Also, my brother bought a house and has begun to renovate it. Not much else to report, except that I've booked flights and a car in late October for a long weekend driving from Christchurch to Queenstown via Mount Cook and hopefully Ray's Peak. For this short solo trip, I'm going to take the Nikon D810 and the Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART lens I've ordered. New Zealand is worth the gear.
Read MoreI've been craving colour photography for a little while now, having shot over fifty rolls of black and white film. When you shoot film, you are binding yourself to a creative choice. With digital, you start with all colours and go from there. So I've put down the film cameras with intention to shoot with more colour.
Read MoreThat didn't take long to accrue again. Street photography, urban landscapes, catch ups with friends, and plenty of printing later. Winter is drawing on and so I'm enthusiastic to get back into the mountains and hike before it gets warm and the days get long. I have done barely any this year.
Read MoreBit of hiking, street photography, urban landscapes, portraits, coffee and art. It's been a good few weeks.
On a technical note, I've finally attained an accurate simulation of the Kodak black and white film I shoot, so I've been using the digital Leica M a little bit more lately, even if I don't get the same sense of enjoyment and "effort" that I do with film.
Read MoreThis last month or two has been a photographic life changer. I've really started to get my stride and momentum with some new black and white techniques around composition I've been trying ever since visiting Japan and starting to print.
Read MoreWe return you to our normal scheduling now. Apologies for the tall verticals. I've been shooting a lot more of them since I began printing my work. Printing has given me a much greater appreciation for the notion of creating art in photography, to the point where I'm composing differently and "for the print".
Read MoreI've finally developed all of my latest rolls of film from before and during my Japan trip. Here's everything worth sharing. I did shoot a decent amount of colour, but it's off for developing so I think I'll just use that in my essay in the near future.
Read MoreSo I spent the last two weeks in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan, shot a few hundred images and five rolls of film, have returned and now have a bunch of photographs to put somewhere. This is just the digital photos of my trip. Once I've developed and scanned my film, I'll do a film post, while working on more of an essay on my experience.
Read MoreWhy would I want to carry an extra notepad and a pen? Why would I want to shoot to an antiquated, grainy negative that required me to wait to see my photographs, sometimes for weeks?
Read MoreI haven't touched my digital cameras in a while. TRI-X is bizarre and great and full of sand-like grain and I love it. My binder of negatives is growing, but I'm finding that some genres of photography I practice are better suited to high resolution colour raw files, so I've decided to pick up my Leica M again and use that for colour work where appropriate.
Read MoreWhat is one of the few artistic endeavours that allows the artist to create something wherever and whenever they are at the time?
Read MoreI bought a Mamiya 6 medium format rangefinder for shooting 6x6 negs. 2017 has become a year of gear and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I have to prove my purchases with some work worthy of the investments, though at the moment, I can't scan 120 film so I'm only shooting a bit. Black and white film is amazing, digital not so much.
Read MoreFilm has taken over my brain. I'm shooting a lot of Kodak TRI-X black and white on my Nikon FA now. I've also retired my favourite Summarit 35mm lens to be replaced by a faster Voigtländer 35mm F1.7 Ultron Aspherical. It's twice as long but hey.
Read MoreI love digital for everything that it does to produce predictable, high quality results, but in all that it does do, it does not allow you to appreciate photography in the same way that film does. There's a tactile and physical craft involved in film and it took me a long time to appreciate, and to let go of everything digital had taught me photography was supposed to be.
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