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| Hannah Parkhouse Version 01 - 16 December 2023 |
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| Version 02 |
Perfection in a photographic image is now the norm. In my day, in the 80s, magazine art directors would tell me, “Alex shoot edgy.”
All these years later, I enjoy going against the tide of perfection. Thanks to the urging of my Rosemary about 8 years ago, to buy a digital camera, and modernize my style, I began to experiment, particularly since once we moved to Kitsilano I lost my darkroom.
At the then excellent Leo’s Camera on Granville, Jeff Gin (with Leo's gone, he is the manager of Kerrisdale Cameras on Lonsdale)
recommended the Fuji X-E1. This was a camera with no DSLR hump as it was mirrorless.
Now mirrorless cameras have that hump so that people seeing you with one will
think you are a professional. And more so if the lens is professional white.
When I travelled with Rosemary I realized that I had to play it safe even if I was no longer being paid for my photographs. This mandated that I have a second camera. That is my present Fuji X-E3.
My contemporaries think I am an idiot because I shoot
jpgs and not RAW. In film comparison, a jpg is like a slide. As a magazine
photographer I had to shoot slides.Art directors wanted to see the original. And my exposures had to be perfect. RAW is
like shooting colour negative and you don’t have to be so accurate. You can
fix your image later. My comment here is that photographers who shoot RAW spend a lot of time "editing" with and expensive program called Lightroom. I use a 19 year-old Photoshop 8.
It is because of the fact that I shoot jpgs that I discovered a technique that came from a failure. That first failure is in this link below.
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| Marina Hasselberg |
The method is one where I use my camera set on 200 ISO, 1/30 of a second and I use the magical (unknown to me before) f-stop 7.1. My light is just the modelling light of my flash installed in a small softbox.
When I download I get this black rectangle. But there is lots of information there.
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| Hannah in black |
Last month’s technique involved me shooting only one
(as in one) exposure in which my subject has his/her hands on their chest. Few are aware I have taken a shot, as my camera's digital shutter makes no noise.
Today I was visited by
Hannah Parkhouse. She is young and beautiful and I am an old man. But we
do have one thing in common. We are cat people. I first met her a few weeks back at a Fujifilm Camera function. See below.
Hannah Parkhouse and Fujifilm Canada function
Below is a scan I did of my Fuji X-E3. The dented filter makes me look less professional so people take me less seriously. Hannah's image is not an inkjet print. It is an inkjet transparency mounted on a silver card. Why not?
