My lazy day
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
@george-k said in My lazy day:
Great day, Aqua, even though I didn't understand shit about the photography stuff you posted.
Basically I fucked up. That pretty much sums it up.
Who knows? It may turn out better than you think...
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Catching the right light was always so frustrating for me. It was one of the main reasons why I stopped taking pictures. That, and I wasn't very good at it.
Do you develop your own film?
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@friday said in My lazy day:
Catching the right light was always so frustrating for me. It was one of the main reasons why I stopped taking pictures. That, and I wasn't very good at it.
Yeah, it's a funny thing. Photography has nothing to do with the technical stuff, even though that's all middle-age white guys want to obsess over. It's all about training your eyes to see. That sounds kinda "woo," but that's literally what it is. The first step is to get the technical details taken care of and off the table so that they no longer hinder you, but that's only the preliminary requirement. Training your eyes takes your whole life, you're never "done."
You also gotta be very comfortable with failure.
About one out of fifty photos I take I actually keep. That ratio hasn't gotten better over time—it's just that the ones I keep have gotten better. In fact, I can't tell you how many times I've gone out for an entire day, walking for miles with the intention of taking photos, and the one good image I got all day came from the coffee shop I stopped at in the morning, or on the metro on the way home after a whole day of failures. It happens all the time. That's what makes it fun, though.Do you develop your own film?
Yeah, but only a little. I have a lab box that I use to develop black and whites (easier process). You don't need a dark bag for those, but they're a bitch when you're developing more than one roll. If I triple down on film, I might get a paterson tank but for now, I send most of my stuff to a lab and develop the easy stuff at home if I don't have too many rolls.
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
The first step is to get the technical details taken care of and off the table so that they no longer hinder you, but that's only the preliminary requirement. Training your eyes takes your whole life, you're never "done."
Yeah - I'm not good at photography. (and quite bad technically). But I do have a decent mirrorless.
Some of my best shots are technically bad, but with good composition.
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@xenon said in My lazy day:
But I do have a decent mirrorless.
Which one? (Because c'mon, the gear stuff is damn fun.
)Another thing: there's a massive difference between being a proactive photographer (portraiture, landscapes, etc.) and a reactive photographer (street photography, documentary, etc.)
Proactive photographers create a scene. They have in their heads what they want the photo to be, and they make it happen. I absolutely suck at this and I'm not even interested in getting better.
Reactive photographers train their eyes to see what's there. That suits me a whole lot better. I don't go out and say, "okay, I wanna take pictures of X/this kind of shot." Every time I do that, literally every time, the photos come out crap. I gotta just go out, have fun taking a stroll, try to notice, and use what I've learned to make the best photo I can out of that. It's the only way I've found that actually works for me.
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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@mik said in My lazy day:
I used to be quite good in the days of film. Even had a darkroom. I'm afraid digitals have ruined my eye.
Get you an AE-1 or something, c'mon man!
Have any photos from then?
Please love yourself.
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
@mik said in My lazy day:
I used to be quite good in the days of film. Even had a darkroom.
My father set up an ad-hoc darkroom in the master bath. This is in the mid 1960s. He taught me all kinds of stuff about developing your own film. He had a 2 ¼ Hasselblad and a 2 ¼ Rolleiflex, irrc. It looked something like this:
When I went to Europe, I shot (I think) Kodachrome slide film on my Pentax 125 camera (no flash, no auto-focus, no light meter). I remember processing those rolls and rolls of film in that bathroom.
Still have the slides.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Rolliflexes are bad ass.
@george-k said in My lazy day:
Still have the slides.
Dude! Share 'em, that'd be awesome!
Please love yourself.
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Wow, those are great. Where were those taken? (And what camera?)
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
It's all about training your eyes to see. That sounds kinda "woo," but that's literally what it is.
This is so true. I have a friend who I think is quite a good photographer. He has the "eye". We can be together in the same place, but his pictures turn out so much better than mine, not because of Photoshop, or finishing, etc. He "sees" what makes a good picture. Doesn't really know he is doing it - seems somewhat natural for him.
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
Wow, those are great. Where were those taken? (And what camera?)
Mayrhofen Austria, July 1967.
I believe it was this camera (or something very similar to it):
Mine was not an "Asahi" Pentax, but just a "regular" Pentax.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in My lazy day:
@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
Wow, those are great. Where were those taken? (And what camera?)
Mayrhofen Austria, July 1967.
I believe it was this camera (or something very similar to it):
Mine was not an "Asahi" Pentax, but just a "regular" Pentax.
Badass.
You can kick those things down three flights of stairs and they'll still work, even a decade later. Mine in high school was just a "regular" Pentax as well, but yeah, a K1000 nonetheless.I currently have a refurbished (read: completely deconstructed, repaired and reconstructed) Asahi K1000 that I'm messing around with.
You're lucky you took those with Kodachrome. They brought back Ektachrome recently, but even that was amazing. Considering the massive rise in interest, it's very odd that the film industry has yet to really return to meet demand.
Please love yourself.
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This post is deleted!
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@George-K @Aqua-Letifer You guys inspire me to find my old camera I had in a box in the closet.
I got this when I was much smaller, but took many pictures with it. I have not used it in a while.
I realize it does say "Asahi Pentax". Maybe that was the name when it was sold in Asia? And only Pentax when sold in the US?
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@taiwan_girl said in My lazy day:
I realize it does say "Asahi Pentax". Maybe that was the name when it was sold in Asia? And only Pentax when sold in the US?
It depends on who actually made them.
"Asahi Pentax" K1000s are very common, and they're more or less the standard issue K1000s. The ones only called "Pentax" were made in China, not Japan, and they're crappier. (More plastic parts.) There were also some Taiwanese-made K1000s, but they were better-built.
The OG K1000s were fully branded as manufactured by "Asahi Optical," and they came from Japan.
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@aqua-letifer said in My lazy day:
Which one? (Because c'mon, the gear stuff is damn fun. )
It's one of the early Sony mirrorless with the e mount (when they were branded NEX)
I mostly shoot with a 1.8 / 50mm prime... I need a 35mm.
