Shadow Reflections
I like these shots, which were not made with the intention of looking at them together, but just because of the interplay of light and shadow. I guess my eye is caught when window reflections lay over the top of shadows made by light coming from a different direction. All of these shots share this effect. And recently I was looking at a timelapse video I made last year which has the same thing happen, as a surprise bonus. One of my most successful shots in this genre was posted a couple of weeks ago from Market Square – Square Lines II
One thing I learned from these photos is how much more area is caught on the film than outlined in the viewfinder of this camera – in the first two shots I thought I had cropped my own shadow out of view. I don’t mind how they came out, so have not cropped back to what I thought I was getting.
The last few weeks at Burnt Embers have been dominated almost to exclusion of all else by photographs shot on film taken with an Olympus XA2. You all may be wondering why a point and shoot film camera is all I am up to these days. …
… But in fact it isn’t. For instance, today’s shots are made with the Olympia XA (which allows focus control and aperture selection so is not a point and shoot). But there has been a lot more going on too – I have returned to my old office for a few weeks to train new staff, worked on loose ends from the summer research, and made plans for two upcoming jobs. On the photography front I have shot 999 digital images at the wedding of friends, edited about 200 of those shots (lots of dupes and duds), made several digital shots or edits for the other blog that comes out of this computer but not by my hands, attempted the rehab of an Olympus 35RC (stalled for lack of tools though I did shoot a roll without a working light metre), more successfully rehabbed (I hope) a Yashica Electro 35GS which is now gestating a roll of film, shot a couple of rolls through the Olympus XA, purchased, cleaned up and made ready for shooting a Nikon F2A, digitised about 6 rolls of film, tried (so far unsuccessfully) to come to grips with new scanning software (Vuescan), organised my 2013/2014 negatives (most of them) into archival storage, swatted at (unsuccessfully) a few thousand fruit flies and changed my diet.
This is by way of listing some of the reasons I have got in a bit of groove (or rut you might say) with the XA2. A groove easy to fall into because there were so many pleasing shots on those 3 rolls of film, and there are a few more to come. Even so, I am jumping out of the groove today – a small jump since I am sticking with a very similar camera. And I do have a few other things lined up, or at least the ideas for them. One is a few posts on found images – the ones that are on rolls of film in cameras that I purchase, receive as gifts, or in one case on a bunch of CF cards I purchased. It is interesting to see these lost and forgotten images, and to try to place and date them. But those posts are not quite ready. Also, I will do a post on how to recover something from colour negatives with light leaks. Quite likely I will be doing a post about some of the other film cameras that I have tried out recently. And I fully expect to be using some DSLR shots as well as it is still in use, it’s just not in my pocket all the time.
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Olympus XA, f2.8/35mm lens, Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 film, scanned with Epson V700
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Just reading all you’ve been doing tires me out! I really like that overhead shot of the cafe. The couple eating are ideally placed – I really like that shot.
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Thanks Andy. I am glad you like that shot. It is of course pure luck. I went that way again today, and the arrangement of people was far more busy. But I took a shot and maybe it will work out too. One thing to like about film – one shot at at time, over weeks or months, can give a bit of a time series of a location. With digital, I likely would take several pictures each time I was there, and not come back so many times.
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Also, what I particularly like about that shot is the transparent shadow from the glass table – it adds to the different kinds of direct and reflected light very nicely. And helps to balance the couple too.
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The Like button doesn’t seem enough for me. I don’t know what else to say except that I really like these.
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Thank you so much Linda! It is surprising how often such situations are there to see, if one looks for them. And if the light is low in the sky which it is getting to be mid-day around here. Unfortunately it is often behind cloud in winter as well. I hope to find some nice examples when the sky opens over the next few months.
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Whew! Don’t forget to sleep once in awhile. I need a nap after reading your to-do list. I feel like a slug. Seriously, the Olympus is doing a fine job of providing photos. I’ve always been a fan of their hardware, even the new dslr they sell today. It’s also evident that your scanning technique is excellent. Keep them coming.
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Thanks Ken. It made me feel better about not getting much done to type out that list and realise that indeed I had been busy.
I like all the Olympuses I have put my hands on from the Pen through to DSLR and Micro 4/3 cameras. The more recent ones don’t have the simplicity and elegance of style and design that the Pen/OM1/XA series had but they seem to consistently have fine optics and to take nice pictures while working well in the hand. I think I read somewhere that Olympus started out making microscopes and have kept a commitment to good optics ever since which shows even in their lower end cameras.
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