New Nashville (still on hiatus . . .)

Photography and music are sort of related.

It’s true. Just look at Zack Arias. That guy can shoot as well as anyone on the planet, and the music industry is his thing (and really, his site is fantastic. Great photographers who share their knowledge are the greatest of all). I have been a musician for a lot longer than I’ve been a photographer, and I would love to unite the two.

This shoot would have worked a lot better with better equipment, but there are always resourceful ways to cheat. Things with lots of shiny surfaces (like very chromey guitars) don’t usually do well with hard light, but I still don’t have any umbrellas (because. . . I haven’t ordered them yet). So what do you do? Bounce one big flash cranked to mega power off of the (fortunately white) ceiling! Part of me feels like this would look better with a pure white background, but part of me likes the tones and the textures of the gray. I could have made it white (well, if i could have dug up a few more batteries), but I didn’t, partially because this shoot ended abruptly when my megaflashzilla decided that was as far as it wanted to go on my sort-of-mostly-charged AAs.

While the title and the instrument suggest country music, I can assure you mine is not of that persuasion. I just love Telecasters- something about that lipstick pickup in the bridge makes the sweetest tones. If you’ve played one, you know what I mean (though you may disagree. That’s why there are Les Paul players). Just like having a camera that’s more than you really need can make the experience sweeter, my guitar playing is not nearly up to the task of needing an American Standard Telecaster. But it plays like magic, and that’s fun. In a way, the Teelcaster is the K1000 of the guitar world (yeah, I have one of these too). It hasn’t changed much since a long time ago, it has an almost comical lack of features by modern standards, and it’s still awesome. Except you can still buy a new Telecaster.

For the record, I am still on hiatus . . .

Nikon D200, 50mm f/1.8 (but not at f/1.8 of course), one Minolta strobe on full power bounced off of my white ceiling, one perfect guitar.

Gray-Blues

As I continue to wallow through the mess of bad and incomplete scans, a few pop up that catch my eye. By “a few” I mean that this is the second. (Not) coincidentally, they are all from the non-pushed roll (go figure), and they also have all required heavy spot fixes. At least they stopped trying to tell me it’s dust on my negatives. The conversation went something like this:

“What kind of camera are these from?”

“A 35mm camera. What do you mean?”

“Well who developed them?”

“I did. In my sink.”

“Do they say. . . Are they C-41?”

“No. They’re black and white.”

“But was the process C-41?”

“No. It’s black and white. I did it in my sink.”

“Oh. I don’t think our scanner will recognize those.”

“Why not? They’re exposed correctly.”

“Well, it only ‘sees’ C-41 negatives. But I’ll try it.”

The really absurd part is that he was right. For whatever reason, commercial get-it-good-enough-for-Average-Joe’s-vacation-pictures scanners get freaked out true black and white negatives, and respond by dropping all varieties of dust- and hair-like spots onto the image files. Which get painstakingly fixed by me.

Agfa APX 400 rated at 400 (noticing a pattern for the ones that work?), drug store “barrel o’monkeys” scan technology. Much spot fixing.