Expired Polaroid ID Ultraviolet Film - Sydney Perez

This weekend I had the chance to shoot with a fantastic team of people - model Sydney Perez of Taxi Model Management in Cleveland, make up artist Shayna Wilson, and hair stylist Ty Kendrick. The shoot went over great and we ended up with some awesome photos from the day.

While I shot mainly digital, I did shoot my roll of film for the week, and, struggled through some different instant films which for some reason were giving me grief all day. One of my last packs of Fuji 3000B45 failed when I pulled the first tab of the pack. I was able to get it working again, but only to have it fail on me again later in the afternoon. My Polaroid 250 with expired Polaroid ID UV film worked, but most of my shots were coming out pretty dark, overly red and unusable. At the end of the day though, I was able to salvage this one shot seen above. I guess it's hard to complain too much about the blown shots when this one turned out so well. Enjoy.

Fuji FP-3000B45 Negative & Positive - Graflex Crown Graphic 4x5 - Emily Wallace

This past weekend while shooting with Emily I attempted to take a couple of large format Polaroids using my Crown Graphic and some of the Fuji FP-3000B 45 I had loaded into my Polaroid back. Well... I pretty much failed on all accounts when it came to getting a decent exposure. I used up the remaining three sheets of film that were in the pack to no avail. 

There was one photo, though, that I didn't hate. It was overexposed for sure, but I think it was also the culprit of a pesky light leak from not securing my Polaroid back properly. Still, the photo was interesting and so I decided to scan it. Here's what it looked like:

Then, while it was scanning, I noticed that the paper negative (the GOOP) actually had more information in the blown out lower right hand side of the photo. There was a little more detail. Some dynamic range held on. Again, I thought this was interesting and figured maybe I could just scan the negative and invert it. I've done it before with good result, so I thought I'd give it a go. Here's what the negative looked like when I scanned it, flipped it and inverted it:

Well, the negative didn't really work out for me either. When I started to adjust the levels of the image it became apparent that while I had more information for my blown out areas, the details in the face were much better in the positive that I had already scanned. I continued to play around with both, but wasn't really happy with the results of either. 

And that's when I decided to experiment a little to see if there's anything I could do to save this image (don't judge me, this film and all other large format instant films are out of production - you do what you can). What I came up with is something of a pseudo HDR using the positive and negative together. A couple different layers of each, some different levels adjustment layers and some creative masking later I ended up with the image you see at the top of the page (or again below):

Is it everyone's cup of tea? I'd expect not. Is it perfect? I wouldn't want it to be. Either way, from nearly nothing I was able to salvage an image that is very close to a standard paper negative scan that's been inverted with a few tweaks to the levels and contrast. I thought it was interesting, and I like the feel of the final image.

Maybe this will be helpful to someone else as well. Enjoy, and feel free to leave your own thoughts on this process in the comments below.

Impossible Project PX600 BlackFrame PP - Ghostly Images with Emily Wallace

This past weekend I once again worked with the very talented Emily Wallace. You might recall from this post, that it was only a week ago that we worked together the first time. Since the weather was unseasonal and difficult that day (which I guess is actually pretty seasonally accurate for Cleveland any day) we decided to set up another shoot shortly after in order to head outside and shoot in a few different areas of downtown. Of course, while the weather wasn't quite as cold this time around, it was extremely windy and carried a forecast of possible thunderstorms at any and every moment. We lucked out though, and ended up shooting for a couple hour and getting some amazing photos.

While I shot mainly digital throughout this shoot, I did also end up shooting my weekly roll of film for the Coalesce52 project which will be posted down the road when I catch up with my developing and blog posts. This blog however, is where I tend to post most of my instant film work and that's what I have here today (obviously). These images were all shot using my SX70 Sonar and some of my last remaining stock of the Impossible Project's PX600 Blackframe Poor Pod film.  

This film has long been one of my favorite instant films from the Impossible Project despite of, and perhaps because of, it's obvious little defects. A quick browse through my archives will reveal a quite a few different photos that I've taken with this film and I'm sure that somewhere in there you will also find a lengthy explanation of what a Poor Pod is and my thoughts and reviews on this film. But, of course, in the highly likely scenario where you don't care about all that and you just like to see cool photos... well here are a few of my favorites from this film - Swings, Little World, St Theodosius, and '57 Chevy. Enjoy.