I’ve felt a bit uninspired by my actual photography practice of late. I was ill for a week or so, but it went back farther than that, really, back to early January even. I think it had something to do with diet, maybe, or rest, or exercise, but none of that has changed much. Allahu Alim.
In any case, I wasn’t particularly feeling anything I shot, so I was really happy to have a stack of books to unbox and scribble about. But the time has come to just throw all this stuff out there, whether it’s any good or not… So today, I bring you:
The C.L.A.M. and the Rose.
Hana had been hunting for another couple of mini roses to add to the collection out front, and then on Valentine’s morning, I needed some milk for coffee, and Kroger needed to divest its stock of Valentine goodies, so we all got something we wanted.
Sadly, I dropped one of the roses on the way to the car and a couple of buds snapped off. Not to worry, though, one of them got to meet the C.L.A.M. Fun times!
I started out with the mamiya/sekor 50mm f/2, reversed (of course) and it did fine, as usual.
Nice and sharp where it needs to be and soft and dreamy where it doesn’t.
One problem, though, when you flip a lens around backwards, the depth of field shrinks dramatically… actually, at the distances I was working, the depth of field was tiny regardless, but still, I decided to switch to something else.
The 75-150 E Series also handled beautifully, as one might expect from that legendary lens, but again, depth of field was a bit wanting. I could get the rose in focus, or the water droplets in focus, but I couldn’t get the droplets in focus without completely losing the rose to the bokeh, so I more or less gave up and just played around with light a bit.
And with a little bit of play while shooting, and a tiny bit more in Capture One Pro, and despite my apathy and disinterest in these pictures when I initially started the editing, I think this one came out especially nice…
MashaAllah.
So the mini rose met the C.L.A.M., and they got along well.
I have some new toys on the way, but I won’t be ready to share anything from them for a bit, so next week look forward to some more film fun: Porta week…
