Fredau Hoekstra – Photo session at Studio 35 (3)

I have been Beatle mania since I was 14, and read widely anything about the Fab Four. They left so many episodes about their album covers. For example, their 2nd album, “With The Beatles”. You will find episodes like “B&W photo for an album cover was revolutionary in early 1960”, “the photographer was Robert Freeman”, “he used only window light” and so on. Anyway, for some reason the half lit faces of the Fab Four left an impression on my mind.

Now I know that the lighting technique of the half lit and half shadow is called split lighting. I like the dramatic lighting maybe because of the Beatles album. I tried to use the lighting technique for Fredau Hoekstra at the model photo session at Studio35. However, she was so classy and split lighting looked too dramatic for her. So the key light was moved to higher than split lighting and it became close to Rembrandt lighting. I think I could achieve bewitching but still classy Fredau.

• Model – Fredau Hoekstra (www.fredauhoekstra.co.uk)
• Hair & Makeup – Mallory McGowan (www.mallorymcgowan.com)
• Wardrobe – Maria Serpico
• Location –Studio 35 Photography

Related Articles:

• Fredau Hoekstra – Photo session at Studio 35 (1)
• Fredau Hoekstra – Photo session at Studio 35 (2)
• Fredau, Poetry and Dancing. by jmeyersforeman photography

Film vs. Digital – Pinhole

As I notified in my last blog I would like to show the Film vs. Digital part 2 in this blog. This time is a comparison of pin-hole images.

I still listen to vinyl records because I can feel more sense of fulfillment and euphoria than when I am listening to CD (MP3? no way!). Vinyl or any analog audio devices have noise and distortion (over clipping). They should be minimized as low as possible but not avoidable. However, the noise is not a totally unacceptable or unforgiving enemy…because I guess the noise is not that unpleasant. Same thing about the distortion. Actually, it give a certain warmth and punchy to the sound. They can be a part of musical sound. On the other hand, noise and distortion of digital sources are so unpleasant and annoying. They do not have musical quality anyway.

Left is film and right is digital. Both images are taken with the same pin-hole. Please look at sky. Highlights are washed out in the both images. However, the washed -out part of the film is not as harsh as digital one. If I would say “this is my photographic expression”, the comment can be accepted. In general, I prefer film in this case.

Taken at Calgary Stampede 2011. Obviously film is more dramatic, but I guess there was about 10 min time gap between the digital image which I took first and the film. The 10 min difference in this time of the day may bring huge difference in lighting condition. So this is not a fair comparison. Just an idea.

In my limited experience of pin-hole photography, the pin-hole seems to work better with film. Grain of the film gives a certain character and the uncontrolled exposure often gives ethereal feel to images.

Film vs. Digital

Just recently Kodak announced that their film segment will be divided into other 2 other segments. When I watch movies, geek myself like to stay to the end of the end-rolls, and I check the movie used Kodak or Fuji film. But I have found movies which do not show either Kodak or Fuji’s company logo in the end-rolls. I guess “Avator” speeds up the invention of the  digital processing and distribution in movie entertainment business.  Although James Cameron may say digital is more environment friendly, film is like Na’vi now to me, under attack by  digital.

In the spring of the last year, I found unused Fuji Provia 100F in my fridge. I bought this film in the end of 2008 when I started digital, in order to check how the newly purchased Zeiss lenses behaved with film. So I tried comparison the film and digital from same lenses. I used a tripod for all images and the same exposures between film and digital. Only the difference is camera body. The film was scanned by Nikon Coolscan 5000 and  the digital images (row files) are adjusted by only “Auto Tone” function of Adobe Lightroom 3.6. Fuji Provia is designed to achieve neutral color balance compared to Velvia.

Left is film, and right is the digital. Obviously white balance is different between the 2 images. To me film has more tonality, on the other hand, digital has more contrast and a punch in the image. I would not be surprised if someone picks the digital image over film in this case.

Looking at sky, exposure of the 2 images are pretty close. But film has more contrast this time. Hmmm? Anyway film shows desireble mood, dont; you think?

It is obviously impossible that film will expel digital, like Na’vi ousted humans from Pandora, but I am hoping film won’t be eradicated entirely. Next time I can show you the same attempt I tried for pin-hole photography.