Buckshot’s Blog

the jeep, resting in the shade after a few trail rides

enjoying the jeep some more!

My new “get me to new photography locations” vehicle  (and get me back and forth from work too!)  I took it off the pavement for the first time today, (a nice easy dirt path!) I had so much fun I almost completely forgot to take photos

finally got to shoot one of these!

Went to the June 26th-28th Historic Sports Car Festival this weekend, alot of fun!  Brought my speedgraphic (now with a working flash!) to shoot some cars in the pits!  With all the classic race cars out there, I think my old camera got the same amount of compliments as most of the cars out there, hah!

And here’s a photo of me at the track, taken by Aaron Kupferman www.motorsportlens.com

a photo of the whipple supercharger on my mustang

I’ve shot this old truck quite a few times, last time I was out there I shot a color 4×5 “just for the heck of it” since I had some old expired color film (Fujichrome 64T), just now got around to having it developed, didn’t do to bad   The color balance was off (tungston) and I probably need to practice scanning color film!  but I’m happy with shooting the color film, the chromes are nice to look at, so I think I’ll shoot the rest of the color film I have, and buy some more!   4×5 speedgraphic with a B&L projection “petzval” lens.

continuing my experimenting with flashes, the silver paint on the Subaru responds very well to the flash hits!

So my latest direction in photography is off-camera flash photography!  This is starting out just with digital, but I will probably use some of the techniques on my film work as well.

Here’s a few of my test subjects, small subjects done for the ease of learning the settings, I’ll move up to larger test subjects soon

here is a typical before & after comparison for alot of my digital shots.  The original I process from the RAW file flat, and then give it the snap in contrast that it needs in Photoshop, mostly global changes, with a few local areas.  Some of the changes are subtle, some are more obvious.

A friend’s Dodge Challenger, out on El Mirage!  first three are digital, last two are 8×10 Arista EDU 100 film

What an interesting day!  The first 1/2 of the day El Mirage was just like it usually is, hot, windy, and dusty!  After we grabbed a bit to eat and noticed that the sky was getting filled with big dark clouds. When we came back to wait for sunset, a strong wind must have come by and blown all the dust away.  At first we thought the lake bed was wet once we got out into the middle, because we were seeing a reflection on the ground!  (A reflection up close, not a mirage off in the distance), but the lake was bone dry, and completely void of the dust that is usually on top of the hard surface!  The ground must have been so sand-blasted that it was smooth enough to shine a little, it was quite surreal.  You can see the shine in a few of the images here. Also uploaded one real good shot showing the mirage, where the lake bed got it’s name from

stopped for a rest during a nice ‘happy birthday’ drive in the mountains!

I went to the VARA races yesterday (Vintage Auto Racing Association) with a photographer friend, I brought my 4×5 speedgraphic and 8×10 to shoot some of the vintage cars! Here are a few of the 4×5 shots, I’ll post more of them later, as well as the 8×10 shots.

And here’s me doing my thing, thank you Aaron K. for the photo!

A very cool looking old school motorcycle! I like it! First shot with Canon 1Ds2 and 85/f1.2 lens, 2nd shot with an Anniversary Speedgraphic 4×5

Poppies from the california poppy reserve, also an abandoned Cadillac! First time trying velvia 50, the film looks beautiful! But as I I’ve read and been told, it’s not as easy to scan as less saturated color film.

An abandoned Cadillac in our parking structure, have been meaning to shoot it for a while now, finally did this weekend! One 8×10, and two 4×10 shots projected onto the other 8×10 sheet. Used a cut dark slide to cover up the other 1/2 of the film, and vice versa for the second panorama shot. An interesting way to do panoramas, I can fit two of them on a single 8×10 sheet! The other panorama didn’t turn out as well.

I had trouble restoring my old blog, so everything was lost. I’ll be posting up some images for the next few days to catch the blog back up. Sorry about this!