Hattie the Ballerina

Recently got my first job photographing a ballerina. I had a blast. I love working with creative and artistic people and I was sure we'd get some great photos. The only thing I wasn't sure of was that morning I realized I hadn't thought about music. Not that I need music while shooting, but I wasn't sure if she would assume I would play some appropriate dance and ballet music. And I have no dance music.... except for Philip Glass stuff that the famous dancer Twyla Tharp worked on. I was pretty sure she most likely wouldn't be into Philip Glass's music. Of course half way through the shoot we're talking about music and she tells me one of her favorite works is by Philip Glass. Teaches me I shouldn't assume!

Polaroid Type 55 Negative was shot for 1 second at f4 with a Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm on a Graflex Speed Graphic, and using a hand-tripped strobe.

Single Tree on handmade Paper #1

Single Tree on handmade Paper #1
Originally uploaded by Engelfoto

Last year I took a workshop on making paper with Barbara Fletcher at Western Avenue Studios. I took the course because I knew I wanted to explore handmade paper as a medium for some of my photography. This is the first of that experimentation: Polaroid emulsion lift on handmade paper.

One of the things that is first noticeable is that the image is very glossy compared to when placing it on a flatter surface. Also, the gel regent seems to contract due to not being able to find a harder surface (like commercial watercolor paper) to stretch across. The result is that with the very "topographical" nature of hand-made paper, the image basically hangs between the valleys and pits of the surface and eventually splits and breaks off, so I may have to coat this in a gel medium or something in order to prevent further deterioration.

Fujifilm Unveils FinePix Real 3D W3 Camera to Capture Stills & Movies in True HD 3D

Looks like Fuji has really carved a nice niche out of "weird" cameras. Now they offer HD 3D! This is tempting...

Fujifilm Unveils FinePix Real 3D W3 Camera to Capture Stills & Movies in True HD 3D

Impossible Announces PZ 600 Image/Spectra Film for Polaroids

This is just so cool... Impossible just announced that they're selling Polaroid integral film which will work in the Spectra line of cameras. Those are the bigger Polaroid cameras which would shoot wider-format images (as opposed to the typical square) under the names "Spectra", "Image", "1200" and "990". I've always been a bit of a purist when I got into Polaroid and I focused on the older "peel-apart" films. The SX-70 and 600/Onestep cameras were cool with their automatically-developing process, but the images were so small! Spectra kind of fixed that, giving you an image which was about 1/3 bigger. Doesn't seem like a lot, but when you have a small image, it's a big difference. Of all the film that's hard to find, the Spectra/Image/1200 film is probably the hardest. It seems to go bad really fast, faster than the 600 stuff. Don't know why. So this news is good news for me... I'll have to pick up some film from Impossible soon.

IMPOSSIBLE - film: Impossible PZ 600 Image/Spectra Film

Lowell Sun just ran a story about my show

Maxine, the Loading Dock Gallery curator, just told me about this story in today's Lowell Sun, in the "Steppin' Out" section. This definitely ups the anxiety a bit. I actually haven't been anxious that much, but something like this means a lot of people I don't know will pick up the paper, read this story and show up with their critical eye, so there's that voice in me that says "friends will say your work is nice, but strangers can be honest if it's not", so I'm really hoping people enjoy the show. I've been very busy getting ready. And of course the whole crew at the Loading Dock Gallery have been busy as well. I'm pretty excited about tomorrow night. Everyone is invited to the show at 122 Western Avenue in Lowell. The reception is Friday night, from 6-9pm. And I still need to figure out food!

If you're on Facebook, you could put it on your calendar here