A Woman in Red

I photographed Leah last summer.  She is beautiful and gorgeous. As you see, she was wearing eye catching red dress. Since the color of her dress is intense pure red, I requested her to stand in front of old back wall. That brings good contrast between pail wall and her, and she is more standing out in the image.

Now, a photographer have to work a little bit harder on the computer.  I wanted to enhance my inner imagination of kind of Gothic, like Gotham city in Tim Burton version of Batman. So added rusty “yogoshi” weathering effect on entire image.

I would be glad if you see the mood I saw in my imagination.

Please click the idea to view larger image.

Snap with film – Grainy portraits

When going shooting, I still bring a film camera, even to serious sessions. These  images on film are for myself,…just for satisfying my artistic ego. When I have chances to “snap”, I tend to pull my film camera from a camera bag. So these photos may not be published forever; just sit in my photo album. A camera I take with me varies depends on my feeling. It can be Nikon F3 and expecting “thin line” sharp image, or old Minolta and expecting beautiful bokhe. Sometimes I expect very sharp images from medium format camera, Mamiya  645pro; some other days, I try pinhole with rangefinder camera to get ethereal feels. This time, I wanted to try very grainy images from  Ilford HP5 B&W film (Iso 400) pushed to 3200.

Although last time I tried the grainy photo from the same method was about 10 years ago. I am pretty satisfied the result this time. I used the telephoto lens made in early 1960’s. I like this lens for portraits because its contrast is not harshly high compared to modern lenses. I can get mild and gentle portraits but well balanced images. This character of the lens looks more distinguishable with film than digital. I often feel film is honest…..! So I have to be a little more serious while I snap.

My shadow by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Black and white portraits frm Arts hotel – 1 by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Black and white portraits frm Arts hotel – 2 by Hiroaki Kobayashi