Walking, Leaking, Falling and Breaking all in the name of photography

It rained here yesterday, which we needed. Once it stopped, everything was covered in water, shiny happy water, including puddles everywhere. Puddles are fun for shooting reflection photos and post rain shots always have such a deep and dynamic feel to them. And the temperature was really nice too at a lovely 65f/18c. But I was just really in a bad place at that point and put off going out to shoot. By the time I found the energy to get dressed and go out, it was getting dark. So I decided I’d get up early this morning (today, Sunday) and go shoot and walk too. I need the exercise. I worked so hard to get in shape and then let it slide. I’ve not shot nearly as much film as I used to in the past year or two either. So getting out in the morning sun and getting exercise was my goal, but taking photos was what would make it fun and give me an escape.

That was the plan. And yet, this morning I woke up I somehow managed to miss sunrise and woke up way later then I hoped. I finally got showered, dressed, my gear ready and headed out after 9am. My original goal was to drive across town and shoot somewhere new. Instead I ended up going to the pedestrian bridge in town and walking from there. Which is fine, at least I was out.

First thing that went wrong, I dropped my camera bag. That gave me a scare, even though it’s well padded and the cameras were all well protected inside. I picked it up, wiped off the dirt and dug out the first camera to shoot. I actually took three cameras, a Lomo LC-A, a Zenit 12XP with Cosina 55/2.8 and a Pentax Spotmatic SPII with Helios 44-2 lens. I also had a ton of films to choose from at assorted speeds. Most slower so I could open the aperture up more in the bright sun.

Zenit 12XP – Roll 1:
http://www.lomography.com/homes/alienmeatsack/albums/2037084-walk-r1-09-07-2014

First camera I grabbed was the Zenit. This is my new replacement 12XP which worked perfectly fine when it arrived and last night when I was playing with it while cleaning it up. Of course, since the last one’s shutter slipped off the curtain gears, I knew something would go wrong with this one as well. And when I got it out of the bag, yep, the meter was not working. I guess the fall knocked the foil loose or something. I had nothing to open the battery door to fix it, so I just metered with my phone and then shot and guessed as I walked. I had a roll of PolyPanF in the camera, which is a B/W cinema copy film rated at 50 ISO. It has no backing or rem-jet so if you get intense light into the shot, it tends to glow. I was worried all my shots would be a glowy mess so I tried to play it safe and slightly underexpose when I could.

This part of the walk went fine after the bag drop and meter malfunction. I got some decent shots overall I think.

When that roll was finished, I decided to get out another camera instead. I grabbed the Pentax Spotmatic SPII which was loaded with a roll of my favorite expired Kodak Portra 160NC and had my newly acquired “swirly bokeh” lens, the Helios 44-2, on it.

Pentax Spotmatic SPII – Roll 2 (Kodak Portra 160NC expired):
http://www.lomography.com/homes/alienmeatsack/albums/2037085-walk-r2-09-07-2014

I headed on my way past the small park on the walking path and towards the drainage ditch to shoot more, snapping shots as I walked. I tripped twice, nearly falling each time and finally stopped to tie my shoe at some point to end the tripping problem. Little did I know I was going to be tripping, crawling and stumbling over muddy, rocky, wet, weed filled chaos later and would nearly fall again. Twice. One of those times I grabbed a small tree along a dirt walk to stop myself from falling. I would have gone right into the river if I had. Oops.

Once I finished up the roll of Portra, I sat down on a concrete slope in the drainage ditch to put more film into the SPII. I sat where I could place items on the ground safely and nothing would fall or roll or break. I figured better safe then sorry. Ironically, the Lomography Cine200 film I loaded into the camera decided to remind me that my safety measures were silly and it was going to mess up something anyway. And it did.

First problem, the Cine200’s cassette end got stuck in the little groove in the camera when I loaded it. So it would not allow the film to advance easily and it shredded 2 sets of sprocket holes before i had to open the camera and re-load it. I lost probably 4-5 shots at the start of the roll due to that. When pulling it out, it bent the cassette a little and let some light leak into the cassette itself as well which created some crazy fiery leaks on a few of the first shots. But I finally got it working and shot away.

Leaky Leaky

Since Lomography Cine200 is cinema film with the backing removed before shooting, like the PolyPanF, it creates some very cool and interesting halos and glows anywhere that there’s a very intense light source. It makes some images look creamy and dreamy as a result.

Creamy Dreamy

This part of my shooting took me into more wet and dangerous areas near the river where the drainage system fed into the Arkansas River. I had to carefully walk across very slippery rocks and running water, debris and other funky stuff to get where I wanted to be. And then I waded through weeds, odd plants that may or may not have been poison ivy and nearly fell not once but twice as I crawled and walked around finding spots to shoot from. Because everything was wet, the ground was slippery and wet and there was a decent amount of water in the drainage area, I had to be careful. If I fell it would mean me AND 3 cameras, lenses and film all in the water. I do not like getting wet in my clothing either so there was that concern.

Pentax Spotmatic SPII – Roll 3 (Lomography Cine200):
http://www.lomography.com/homes/alienmeatsack/albums/2037087-walk-r3-09-07-2014

I’ve shot here many times before and never had so many things go wrong. But, like I said, it was worth it because I escaped from my worries, shot some film and got some badly needed exercise.

I think I learned two things from this.
1) I should have worn grippier shoes.
2) The 3 different shopping carts I saw were all reminding me that I need to buy more cameras.
5) 3 Sir.

Photography is an adventure. Roll with it, you never know what you may get out of it!

Analog love from me to you from the United States,
ams

written by alienmeatsack on 2014-09-07