More Liv at the Studio
December 28th, 2017
For today here are a few more photos of Liv Sage done using morning window light at my old studio.
More Liv
December 26th, 2017
Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. The holidays have been busy this year.
I do post almost daily on MeWe. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. There’s quite a good community there and it is growing every day. You can find me here: mewe.com/i/dave.levingston
But, today, here are a few more of Liv. These were shot with my Nikon, so they are actually sharp.
These are more with the morning light at my old studio.
Liv was doing her usual great job of posing and making the most of the environment.
I’ll try to do more frequent posts now that the holidays are ending.
More Instant Liv
November 20th, 2017
Some more instant photos of Liv Sage in my studio.
These were shot on Fuji Instax Mini film using a Lomo camera that I hate with a passion.
This camera is very hard to control. All the controls on it are marked with single-letter abbreviations for the name of the control…but the names aren’t the standard ones that have been used on cameras since photography was invented. No these Lomo idiots had to invent new hipster names for all the controls. So I can never figure out what the controls are supposed to be.
So I fool around with this awful camera and sometimes, especially when I have a great model in front of it, I manage to take a photo that isn’t too bad. Just wish I could better control the exposure. But my new “Frankencamera” that shoots Instax Mini film allows me to properly control all the settings…and to understand what those settings are, so I doubt this Lomo piece of junk will get used again.
Instant Liv
November 16th, 2017
Here are a few quick edits of some photos I did with Liv Sage using some of my stash of Fuji 3000 speed instant peel-apart film. They were shot with my old Speed Graphic camera.
These days people seem to think the flaws in this material are interesting, so I decided to leave them in for now. I’ll probably do a better edit on some of these later and clean them up. But for now you can enjoy the dust and scratches that are inherent in this film.
Exposure is often kind of hit or miss with this film, but sometimes the misses are kind of nice, like this last one.
Shooting a Friend
November 6th, 2017
Just some photos from my second shoot with a photographer friend who agreed to spend a little time in front of my camera.
After doing some portraits with studio lighting we played around a little by doing some exteriors of the studio building with her in the window.
The top two were taken after dark when the building was illuminated by by a street light.
This last one was taken earlier when there was still daylight.
And this is back in the studio lit by the street light outside.
And, finally, a shot with the street light through the studio window using a fisheye lens and then doing a correction in Photoshop so it acts more as an ultra-wide angle lens.
Happy Halloween
October 30th, 2017
A few old Halloween-themed photos to mark the season.
Charlie above, Athena below.
Theda below:
Below: “Theda Trading Her Soul for a Mix Tape”
Made Up Ayn
October 24th, 2017
Sometimes you have a beautiful model who is also talented with makeup.
So Ayn came to the studio one day and wanted to do something weird with makeup. I, of course, said, “Sure!”
I love having a great model like Ayn who is local and who is usually up for just doing fun shoots.
You just never know what’s going to happen next.
Back to the Studio
October 20th, 2017
Getting back to trying to catch up on my editing. Well, it was more than a year ago when I moved out of my studio in the Front Street Buildings in Dayton. I had a studio in that complex for something like 15 years…maybe more, I forget. During that time I had accumulated a lot of stuff. So there were some surprises when I started packing up and tossing lots of stuff. Who what have thought that I’d have lost a model in all that clutter?
Well, Angie didn’t seem to be much the worse for wear…or for being stored. So we went ahead and did a few photos.
For starters I decided to play around with my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens for a while. This lens is pretty soft wide open, but stop it down a stop or two and it gets very sharp and still has pretty shallow depth of focus.
Then we played around with the sunlight that was streaming into the studio that morning.
Still using the 50mm lens almost wide open.
And finally I pulled out my Panasonic G5 and stuck a pinhole on it to see what I could come up with. Here’s the result of that.
Ayn In An Instant
October 16th, 2017
I did a shoot last week to work more seriously with my new “Frankencamera” that shoots Fuji Mini film, but has a proper, sharp lens that can be focused manually and that give me total manual control of the exposure.
Another thing I wanted to explore more is the new black and white film that Fuji has for the Instax Mini. That’s what these photos were taken with. It’s no where near the amazing quality of the discontinued Fuji 3000 peel-apart film that I love so much, but at least it gives me an option for shooting black and white instant photos.
The Instax format is inherently a soft focus process, so I know I’ll never be able to get the kind of sharp, crisp photos that I could get with Fuji 3000, but I’m going to try to learn to work within the limitations of this new film. I really don’t have a choice if I want to keep making instant black and white photos.
I also shot a pack of Fuji 3000 from the few that remain in my stash. I’m shooting peel-apart film with my Mamiya Universal camera that gives me complete control over focus and exposure. The photo below was shot with that camera.
And I shot some color Instax Mini film in the Frankencamera. That film does pretty well too.
And, finally, I shot some color Fuji 100 film in the Mamiya. I’m really going to miss the peel-apart film when my stash is all gone.
Thanks, Ayn, for doing a great job of working in the slow process of instant photography.
2018 Calendar
October 13th, 2017
You may have noticed the new 2018 calendar featured in the column to the right. I’ve just published it and it is available for purchase from my store on Lulu.com. You can go there and preview the entire calendar. It’s reasonably priced and that makes it a very inexpensive way to own a bunch of my photos. I know that no one actually uses paper calendars these days, but if you are one of the few exceptions who might like one, please go check it out.
That’s the amazing BlueRiverDream on the cover, by the way.
