Author: James Vornov

63210017, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I made another short business trip to London last week and took just the Leica M6ttl, the 35mm f2.0 lens and 4 rolls of film, mostly Ilford XP2, the black and white negative film that is processed like a standard color negative film (C41 Process). Processing and scans by National Photo here in Baltimore.

While I was out shooting, I felt uninspired. I was looking for great images and didn’t see any. What I was forgetting, since I’ve been less consistent about shooting, is the tranformative power of the camera. Ordinary scenes, at just the right moment, can be transformed by the emulsion.

I totaled up the cost this time. It works out to $20 a roll. An M8 is about 250 rolls worth at this point. I’ve shot about 20 rolls this year, so I’m ahead of the game on a cost basis.

More importantly, the film/scanning workflow has a different look to it and requires much less post processing than my color digital work. I think I’ll continue working on this Urban Landscape project using the Leica and C41 black and white film for the time being, while the Nikon 80 brings color to the Suburban Landscape project.

I chose to post this image to remind myself that I’m trying to create a landscape aesthetic in the images, getting away from the flat abstracts as formal composition. I want to portray the space and structure, using people in the urban environment when I can.

_DSC5339, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Flash experiments continue. For this kind of outdoor fill flash, Nikon’s CLS works really well. I independently adjusted ambient with flash illumination until I got this balance. Indoors I don’t have it down yet, preferring to meter ambient at set a manual exposure, then dialing up the flash on the subjects for balance.

OS X 10.5 Leopard arrived this morning. Clean, fast. Time machine has gone to work on it’s first backup. A nice step forward, nothing earthshaking, but definitely recommended.

_DSC5285 (1), originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Since the D300 was announced as having a 100% viewfinder, I was reminded that I gave that up for the 95% view of the D80. The Olympus E-1 had 100%, which was one reason why I chose it over the Nikon D70 at the time.

I compose my images in the camera, generally not cropping during post processing. When I framed this image I was careful to put the top of the frame just below the car that can be seen in the top 2.5% of this image. I could have cropped it out, but it becomes an accidental element in the image.

_DSC5001, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

It seems I finally created a photograph so banal that no one wants to look at it. My shots on flickr generally garner a dozen or more views depending on what group pools I post to. Flash images to Strobist generate the most interest the fastest, but usually the big central groups like FlickrCrazy or Central will get a few views just when posted and the image is on the first or second page of images.

In my quest to capture the suburban landscape using layering and selective focus, I’ve honed the subject down to hedge, bushes and tree trunk. A culmination of my work validated by the fact that no one has viewed the image at all.

Or maybe it’s a bug in Flickr’s view counter.

_DSC5264, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This image was one of the first I captured with my new 105 VR Micro. Back when I shot with my N80 I had a 105mm Micro which I loved for it’s sharpness. It was stolen out of my luggage on an international flight. The lens was buried in my bundle of clothes, but it was the last time I put camera equipment in a checked bag.

I’ve wanted to replace it for years and finally bought one yesterday. With the VR I finally get to try some image stabilization technology for my image making. I’m working with the Nikon philosophy that the best VR is in-lens for telephoto. I can handhold my favored 24mm at 1/30th sec without too much trouble.

My thought is that the 105mm is going to be useful in these selective focus images, doubling as a portrait lens. It seems to me that the 105 and the 12-24mm DX will serve as my large special purpose lenses for now.

Suburban Landscape 56, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Olympus finally revealed their flagship DSLR last night, the E-3. A year ago I got tired of waiting for a replacement for my E-1 and bought the D80 when it was first released.
My photographic output increased tremendously. I developed a working style within a few months and I’m working on my second year follow-through. For the most part, I’ve used my Nikon film legacy lenses including the 50mm f1.8 (this image), the 24mm f2.8 (which lives on the camera) and the 70-300mm f4-5.6 G. In the spring I added the 12-24mm f4 DX because I had nothing wider than the 24mm, which provided a film FOV of 36mm.
Looking at the E-3, I see no reason to switch back from Nikon. The only real E-3 advantage over the Nikon equivalent (D300) is in-body image stabilization. Since I have little trouble hand holding a 1/30 exposure with the 24mm, I feel comfortable with Nikon’s VR approach at the telephoto end.

_DSC1037, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

It’s a little over a year with the D80. It’s been the key to my developing a visual and technical style over the last year. It’s responsive and provides great data for creating the images I see out there. Mostly with the 24mm prime, I’ve developed this high contrast, high saturation visual style which works well with the kind of unimpressive subject matter I photograph. I feel like I’ve broken out of my rut of 2-D formal compositions and into portraying the suburban landscape either as fragment (as here) or as more integrated landscape. I’ve begun to use flash as an expressive element, which I’ve always wanted to do.

When I was in college I remember reading a review of a photography book called “Evidence.” I vaguely recall seeing an image or two from the book that made an impression on me. At that time I didn’t photograph, didn’t own a camera that I can recall and certainly wasn’t particularly interested in the art of photography. It was a few years later that I started taking images, using my graduate lab’s darkroom for developing and printing and learning exposure techniques. But I never “Evidence” in a book store. To this day, when in a large used book store, looking through the photography selection, at some level I hope to see that elusive volume.I was suprised then when on the 2point8 weblog, I found a reference to it, complete with authors and a link to Amazon. The book apparently was almost impossible to find, having been a limited edition, but has now been reprinted.

2point8 » Sultan Does Landis, Matter of Factly:Two great things about Sultan’s work. First, his collaborative book “Evidence” of found gov’t photos was the first book that showed me how art might be developed through editing and selection, and that great pictures are everywhere, it just depends on who’s looking (both at the moment of capture, and later on, with a new frame of reference, perhaps).

Will it turn out that my artwork has also been chasing this conceptual work of art this past year? The internet may not be changing much of our lives, but it certainly is providing connections we would otherwise miss.