Time for annual Spring portraits. Nothing fancy, but a nice natural setting and a good pose.

After months of talking and planning, I started teaching photography to kids this week. I know, right?

With the terrible financial situation for California schools, funding for a lot of programs has been cut. As involved parents, we try to do as much volunteer work as we can for our son’s classes, and are active with PTA and school events. The boy is a nerd – and proud of it – qualifying for the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at his school. The funding deficit has left the junior high without a budget for activities for the gifted kids, so I suggested that parents might lead classes in some area in which they had expertise. I offered up photography, of course, and others signed up to teach computer programming, video editing, and the like.

I’m leading a four-session course (four hours over four days) covering some history, basic principles of photography, creative aspects like composition, along with a sprinkling of science.  On the last day we’re even going to develop black and white film. A lot of these kids have never shot with anything but a phone camera, so that will at least be something they’re not going to see anywhere else.

The jury’s out on how well I’m doing – I caught my own kid zoning out during my presentation today – but it seems to be getting across to at least some of the class, and I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile.

I’ve been slogging through a serious creative drought for months. I could blame it on the time of year, the weather, everything that’s been going on at home and at work, but when it comes down to it, I’ve just been lazy. Sometimes things come without effort, but when they don’t, I need to push. I haven’t pushed.

I’m making myself get out more, and finding more inspiration for it. I’m trying new techniques, in-camera stuff with filters and post-processing HDR. Next week I start teaching photography to middle school students. If that doesn’t get me thinking, I don’t know what will.

St. Ann's Beach, Laguna Beach, California

Happy New Year, everyone. Time for the annual renewal, recharge, relaunch or whatever. I’m promising myself that some things will get done.

According to Flickr, I made my first film post back in April of 2009. Since then, I’ve shot many feet of stock, learned quite a bit about line and shadow, and managed to become a decent processor of black and white negatives. I’ve enjoyed sharing my work by scanning negs and posting them online, but they never have the same impact that they would framed, hanging on a wall (I’ve had a shot at that, too).

When I decided that I wanted to try developing, my father-in-law eased me into things by giving me a trove of film paraphernalia that was sitting unused in his garage. Besides a Yashica Mat-124G TLR, the bin contained a Paterson tank, reels, thermometer, and other processing accessories, alongside an enlarger (covered in dust-abating trash bags). I gladly accepted the lot – I’d been studying up on developing, and it seemed achievable. The whole darkroom thing felt like a far-distant goal.

An axiom of photography goes something like, “It’s not a picture until it’s printed.” I’ve got a nice Epson 13×19 inkjet photo printer that produces big, beautiful color images – I need to use it more for that – but I’ve never been sold on the black-and-white output. At the same time, something just feels “less-than” about digitally printing a photo that came to be in an analog process. I’ve been itching to carry that through to the next step, emulsion to emulsion. A week ago, something in my head told me it was time.

I stripped away the plastic of the bags covering the apparatus and found that I’d been gifted an late-70s Omega rig with a Chromega B Dichroic color head. What’s that? It’s purported to have been of the better enlargers for home printing of color photographs. I don’t plan to print much color (if any at all), but the color filters built into the unit are perfect for controlling the contrast of black-and-white prints as well. Its external power supply buzzed a satisfying buzz when switched on and the in-line timer did its job when asked. The whole thing seemed in great shape, except for the burned-out halogen lamp. With a replacement for that and a few more supplies, I figured I’d be able to convert a windowless bathroom into a weekend darkroom and be on my way.

My father-in-law was excited about the prospect of showing me the ropes, so I took him along to Hollywood on a Freestyle run. As always, the staff there was awesome and hooked me up with what I needed – bulb, trays, tongs, safelight, and paper. I went with cheap Arista chemistry and paper – a resin-coated pearl – as I knew I’d be blowing through a lot of it in trial-and-error exercises.

At home, we set to work light-sealing the bathroom door. It was easier than I’d expected, with a simple blanket-and-towel arrangement. As with film developing this time of year, cooling the chemistry down to the proper temperature was a pain, but that was the biggest trial of the afternoon – I’ll take it. Trays out, safelight on its perch, tongs at the ready, we got to it.

With guidance, I did well enough. I made a few boneheaded moves – mixing up tongs, placing paper on the easel wrong-side up (made an interesting ghostly image) and such. A couple of the runs took quite a few tries to dial in the proper exposure, but I didn’t mind. Like seeing that first strip of negatives come out of the tank, watching an image quickly rise in the developer under the red glow gave me a charge. I don’t know what I thought would be so daunting – it’s easier than film, really, and you get as many chances as you need to get it right. My reward for a few hours’ work was a small batch of prints that I’d consider a passable first effort.

The next day, my son and I made another set of attempts, and came up with an even better batch (shown above). We accomplished one of them – a tonally-complex architectural shot of a passage at UCLA’s Royce Hall – in a lucky single pass. The results so far are easily good enough to set me on a quest for mastery of the process. Next time, I need to work out the system of filters on that enlarger so that I can control the contrast of the prints, which seems to be the trickiest thing.

LAist plucked one of the new Vito shots from the Flickr pool to feature with today’s homepage “Extra, Extra“. It’s got some classic LA elements, I think.

Since I changed jobs, I don’t have easy lunchtime/after-work access to Los Angeles, so I have to make more of a trip of it if I want to blow some film capturing its charms. I had some time last weekend, so I took the little Vito out for a spin. I didn’t have any specific aim, so we meandered through Burbank, Hollywood (Sunset, mostly) and up over Mulholland Drive. I think I have the hang of the Voigtländer’s workings now, and got a few frames worth posting. I’ve started a Vito Flickr set.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve found a lot of ways and places to acquire film cameras, but the Bargain Camera Show had not been one of them. Held once a month, it’s a multi-room swap-meet of sellers and buyers – some pro, some not – that convenes in a slightly-musty Elks Lodge in Pasadena. I’d been a couple of times, and my visits left me unimpressed. The vendors who had something worthwhile to sell were well aware of the value of their product, and weren’t afraid to gouge. The others were just hawking junk.

I’ve been participating more often in gatherings sponsored by the LA Street Photography group on Meetup.com, and somebody threw together a trip to the Pasadena show. I like meeting new people, and browsing gear with others who appreciate it (especially analog stuff) is fun. It’s a low-investment trip, so I put it on the calendar. When the day came, the social part of it was a bust – there was no good way to identify fellow group members, and the BPOE hall became crowded quickly.

Building on that disappointment, a couple of trips around the tables confirmed past experience. The place smelled a little better than on my last visit, but the stock and prices were not inspiring me to part with my money. On what I’d decided was to be my last round, I passed a table that I’d skipped due to crowding. The selection was small, but the pieces were all clean and well-presented (opposed to the jumble found on many tables) and the couple running it were pleasant and helpful. A small folding-lens job caught my eye – the German Voitländer Vito II, manufactured circa 1951. I didn’t know anything about the particular model, but I knew of the Voitländer reputation (they’re the oldest name in optics and camera manufacturing) and had always been intrigued by the folding design. It felt good in the hand and was in excellent cosmetic shape. The seller said it was in good working order and came with the original leather case, but he only wanted $40.00 for it. I couldn’t pass that up, and left the show happier than I’d expected to be.

When I got it home, I couldn’t help but admire it for a while, turning it over and inspecting it from all angles. The thing is a charmer – easily the prettiest camera I own. It’s got quirks like any other, but it was easy enough to figure everything out after I located a PDF version of the manual. Some of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on point of view) are the folding lens mechanism, the aperture/speed settings, and the focusing. Like some of my other gear, the Vito has a non-coupled viewfinder; frame through the finder, focus by distance estimation. Many of the frames from my first backyard test roll suffered in the areas of focus and exposure, but I got enough decent ones (see below) to know that the failures were my own.

In any case, I seem to have become their go-to American grainy-black-and-white film guy.

The lovely Viewfinder Magazine has featured my image “Last Standing” in their July 2011 issue.