fmadmin – Fotomonkey Photography

Jul 23

by fmadmin in film-recipe 0 comments

A Tale of Two Night Recipes

I’ve been itching to try my hand at some night photography and I finally got off my rear and headed out. The downside is that I don’t live in a major metropolis. Sure, we have a lot of people, but they’re spread out over an insanely large landscape. And to be fair, we’re just a really big town. There isn’t a lot of after-hours downtown or night life. Things start closing up around 10 or 11 even on a Saturday night. Due to the early closing of most places, you’ll only see a couple of examples here. I really struggled to find anything of interest that shoot. So here goes nothing. I used the following recipes for this night challenge:– Zero Hour– Serr’s 500T This is the part where art and reality part ways for me. Both recipes are based on the Classic Chrome film simulation. I think that Serr’s 500T is providing a much more accurate rending of the colors my eyes say. However, Zero Hour provides a more pleasing look. I find that Serr’s is too cool at 3200K. Zero Hour is set to 4000K and I think that the warmer look is more eye-friendly, but it also […]

Jul 16

by fmadmin in journal 0 comments tags: crisp chrome, sooc, x-h1

A Splash of Color

I’ve really been on a black & white kick lately, but I’m not opposed to color. In fact, I’ve been simultaneously trying out a number of new color recipes to see what I want to make permanent residents on my camera. This is going to be a quick post to share some of my color images from downtown. One thing I’ve noticed around Jacksonville (and not around the downtown area) is that there are a number of very good murals. The detail in some of them is amazing. Once I have a nice catalog of them I’ll try to share. Here are some for your review to whet your appetite.

Jul 15

by fmadmin in journal 0 comments tags: bw, heavy

Alone Among Many

Today was interesting. I had plans to do some nature photography but a tire that was insanely unsafe to drive on changed my plans. After a trip to the tire store, I decided to head downtown to see what I could capture from a street photography perspective. The Southbank I decided to start my day on Jacksonville’s Southbank. If you’re not familiar with the city, the St. Johns River splits it in two. The sides are logically known as the Northbank and Southbank. Despite many visits to the Southbank, it’s been years since I walked the eastern side. Downtown Jacksonville After exploring the Southbank, I crossed the river and headed into the heart of downtown. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of life downtown on the weekend. With just a few exceptions, our homeless population comprises the bulk of those you’ll encounter. As I walked the streets with my expensive camera, my nice clothes, watch, cell phone, etc. and noticed the many people around me in a very different state, it made me realize how blessed I am. Despite the many challenges I face during the week, I still have a roof over my head and food on the table. Sometimes […]

Jul 12

by fmadmin in gear 0 comments tags: sooc, tri-x, x-h1

Time for Pancakes

Ok, well, probably not the type of pancakes you’re thinking about. Although, I have to admit, that would be pretty good, too. No, today we’re talking about a new pancake lens. I wanted to try something a little smaller and less obtrusive for street photography and thought a pancake-style lens might fit the bill. I opted for a 25mm f2.0 manual lens from TTArtisan. The lens arrived today and right off the bat, I love the small size and metal construction. I’m not a huge fan of the screw-on lens cover, but hopefully I’ll get used to it. I’m curious to see how it works with the UV filter when it arrives. Since Amazon didn’t deliver until after 6pm I didn’t have a lot of time with it. I was determined to do something with it, though, so I slapped it on the X-H1 and headed out the door to pick up my chicken wing to-go order. I only snapped a few shots but it did a pretty decent job. I’ll spend some more time with it over the next few days and try to provide an update. All shots were with the Kodak Tri-X 400 recipe. I set the […]

Jul 09

by fmadmin in film-recipe 0 comments tags: cineplus, fujica half, sooc

Fujica Half/Cineplus Shootout

This afternoon, I made a couple of trips to try out some new recipes: Fujica Half and Cineplus. Overall, I think they’re both very nice. Fujica Half definitely is the more muted of the two. I think it’s nice for a more vintage, subdued look. It feels very well suited to summery photos. Cineplus has some very nice, rich colors and lives up to its description of “punchy” colors. I was surprised at how good the sky looked, for example. This first example was taken at one of Jacksonville’s hidden gems, Walter Jones Historical Park. I got my hair cut today and decided to see if there were any parks nearby. This was about a 9-minute drive and while it didn’t ring a bell, I instantly recognized it as the location for a family portrait session I’d done there about 10 years ago. All of the pics are handheld and I tried to line them up in-camera but forgive any jumpiness. I’m too lazy to try and clean them up for the before/after. Later in the day, and after a crazy storm blew through, the sun came out and I decided to head to the beach. I spent most of […]

Jul 07

by fmadmin in film-recipe 0 comments tags: recipe

Chrome Summer

As I was looking for a recipe that I could use on a trip to St. Augustine, which happens to be the oldest city in the US, I stumbled upon Superia Summer. This is actually a recipe for the X-Trans IV sensor so it wouldn’t look 100% accurate on the X-1H anyway, but I still liked it. However, it was missing just a little bit of that nostalgia. I started playing around with other film sims and, as much as some might say it’s overused, Classic Chrome really seemed to give it more of a vintage feel. I’ve provided a before/after comparison for your review. Take a look at the yellow tint that Classic Chrome gives to the grass, for example. The only difference between the two is the base simulation. Unfortunately, the X-H1 doesn’t have the Classic Negative simulation, so the before shot is using Pro Negative Std. I’d love to know what you think. July 8 UpdateI made the trip to St. Augustine today despite the heat. I made sure to duck into the AC every once in a while so it wasn’t so bad, to be honest. I spent a lot of time and about 200 shots […]

Jul 07

by fmadmin in art 0 comments tags: sooc, x-h1

Daido

Daido Moriyama is a Japanese photographer renowned for his black & white work. A visionary of the 1960s, Moriyama’s work has landed in collections around the world such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York. A recent Facebook challenge led me to explore the Daido Moriyama film recipe for Fujifilm cameras. This post is the result of that exploration. Today (July 8th), I headed to St. Augustine, Florida, America’s oldest city. The previous images were captured in my front yard or driveway and I really wanted to put the recipe to test in the real world. I’m pretty happy with the results. Hopefully you agree.

Dec 14

by fmadmin in lightroom 0 comments

Salvage Thine Images!

In photography, as with most other pursuits, a thirst for knowledge will help keep your skills honed and your interest piqued. To that end, I’ve been on a mission lately to get serious about knocking off the cobwebs and really using my post-processing tools tho their fullest. Today I was reading Piet Van Den Eynde’s Dodge & Burn from Craft & Vision and after spending some time digging a little deeper into the Develop module I decided to revisit some earlier pictures. On my recent trip to Savannah there were several shots that were pretty much blown. When they happened I was really more in snapshot mode and didn’t pay attention to how the camera was set. In one case the scene was incredibly overexposed and in then the pendulum swung the opposite direction leaving me with an image so dark that the scene was barely visible. Here is the result of just a few minutes worth of work. [twentytwenty] [/twentytwenty] I hate to admit that the image took quite a bit of work. I boosted the exposure more than I’d ever like to. Heck, I boosted just about everything. I also played around with dodging and burning the […]

Nov 29

by fmadmin in lightroom 0 comments

B&W Conversions

Yesterday I took a trip to the Georgia State Railroad Museum and had a great time. It made for a great trip back in time and one of the things that really caught my eye was the 1913 steam locomotive #30 made by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO). After posting this image I thought I’d share how I created it. I found #30 in the roundhouse sitting with some other engines. I really wanted to focus on this beautiful locomotive, though, so the first thing I did was crop everything but the front of the engine out of frame. I think this gave the perfect look and focused the viewer’s eye where it needs to be. The first step was to apply the generic B&W conversion within Lightroom. For this post I’m using Lightroom 5.6 on my Macbook Pro. [twentytwenty] [/twentytwenty] The histogram looked pretty much perfect to me. There wasn’t any clipping on either end and I was happy with the overall tone of the image. However, I still felt it was a little too bright so I dropped the exposure about 2/3 stop. Next I dropped the highlights and boosted the shadows with a very small increase to the […]

Oct 05

by fmadmin in journal 0 comments

To Blog or Not To Blog

I always have a hard time with this decision. I see the value in recording my thoughts and certainly want an avenue to share my knowledge, learning, etc. in addition to simply sharing my photography. I just have to be a realist and not beat myself up too much if I don’t post many updates. I don’t have a lot of free time so bear with me. I’ll update when I can. Maybe it’ll be a new technique or perhaps a gear review. Whatever I end up with, I’ll try to make it worth your while.