bw – Fotografia

Saint Francisville (Final)

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Nelson in Uncategorized

This is the third and final post of photos I took on my last trip home. The photos are of a church that I have a bit of a connection to in a third-person sort of way. My father told me years ago that when he was about the age I am now, he helped paint and do roofing work on this church. Considering the fact that this was almost forty years ago, the connection is distant at best. But when I walk past this church, I imagine him much younger and working on this building. Here are the photos. I still marvel that a little point-and-shoot camera could give such great results. I did have to tweak contrast just a tiny bit in post, but it was the smallest amount of adjusting I’ve ever had to do to any images I’ve taken up to this point.

When I go back, I’ll be doing a bit of shooting with my Bronica SQ-A to see what I can do in medium format. I hope you enjoyed these images. My next post will be in color. Portra and the Nikon FA.

Saint Francisville, Louisiana

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Nelson in Uncategorized

A small town in Southeast Louisiana, St. Francisville was founded in 1809 and is home to a large number of historic buildings and homes that are representative of the time period. There’s a Wiki page that has some general information, but you might have fun clicking on the “Myrtles” Wiki link you see. Ghosts!

Speaking of, I feel like I’ve been a ghost lately. Not posting and just reading and silently admiring life happening through the posts of the WP bloggers I follow. I’ve been a busy guy, but admittedly a bit lazy, too. I hope you like the photos I took during my last trip to St. Francisville. They come from my first attempt at B/W film using a point-and-shoot camera. The Olympus Stylus Epic has blown my mind once again. I took a bunch of photos, and almost all of them turned out beautifully, only needing a small tweak because of the intense midday sunlight I was working with. I will admit the photos are rather touristy, but the deep South is not a place where one walks up to someone’s house taking pictures at their doorstep. The police department, the courthouse and the jail are all a block from where these photos were taken, if you know what I mean.

I’m going to break the photos up into a few posts, so let’s get started with the first post.

This is a house along what is a long street of historic homes. I didn’t have my notebook with me, so I can’t tell you the name of it. Funny thing, though, I met the owner’s son just before I took this photo. The kid was completely oblivious to why people stop to take photos of his house. Poor kid.

This is the garden/backyard of the house in the first photo. I loved the light cutting through the trees down onto the grass. The lawn and the statue did give me a feeling of “Midnight and the Garden of Good and Evil.”

This is a house that tends to be a repeat photo every time I go home to visit. Something about this place makes me want to take rolls of photos. I really do wish I could get closer to this place. The detailing is simply breathtaking. Perhaps next time I go home, I’ll walk up to the door and ask. Hopefully there aren’t any mean guard dogs trotting around.

The combination of the bright sunlight and ASA400 film produced a lot more grain than I wanted in these. I think the next trip will require some Ilford PanF 50. Hope you like these, and look for more tomorrow.

Photos From the Past

Posted on July 21, 2012July 21, 2012 by Nelson in Uncategorized

I’ve had these photos for some time, but hesitated to post them because they’re not my work. They’re mostly my mom’s work. The images in this post came from a photo album I smuggled out of my parents’ house several years ago. Good thing, too, because a hurricane all but destroyed this house four years ago.

When my sister called me to tell me what had happened to the house, the first thing I said to her was “Get the photo albums OUT of that house! Any pictures you can find, get them out!” Turns out, my sister had gotten them out of the house shortly after my father moved in with her because he could no longer live alone due to health problems.

In these photos, I am roughly the age my father is in the pictures he’s in. Every time I look through them, I’m drawn into what was my parents’ world before I came into existence. They’re in my hometown of Jackson, Louisiana, which is less than a blip on any map you might come across.

A final note. I pained greatly over whether or not to digitally clean these photos up, as some of them are pretty badly damaged. I am in the process of cleaning up some of the photos that are more extremely damaged, but I decided to present the photos pretty much as they are. I did balance some of them out for better contrast, but only a little bit.. and they’re easy to spot. At any rate, I do hope you enjoy them.

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This is my mom at roughly 30 years old. This photo was taken where she herself grew up, which is an even more remote place than where they raised me. And it’s not your imagination from the photo. She’s pretty tall.

This is my dad at roughly 38 years old. I love this photo beyond words. My dad looks so incredibly happy here. Mom and dad had both fairly recently divorced from previous marriages, and it looks like they were really enjoying one another’s company. The shadows in this photo make me smile every time. It’s amazing how the shadows can tell a little more of the story than was originally intended.

So one thing you might not guess from the photo below is that my mom was the daughter of a preacher. And from what I’m told, he was very devout and extremely strict. That makes me love this photo even more. Mom was a bad girl! I

This is the last photo I’m posting today, but it’s one of my favorites out of the entire bunch. I love this one because dad is reading a trashy detective magazine. I would have never guessed him to be the type to read such a publication. In all honestly, he was probably bored.

I hope you enjoyed these. I’ll be busy tomorrow re-sealing a Pentax K1000 that my boyfriend picked up for me in the midwest. If I’m done early enough. I’ll be putting a test roll through it. Once all that is done, I’ll be touching up some of the really bad photos from the series you see in this post. I am all about keeping things as they are, but some of these photos are damaged beyond being really enjoyable. I hope you have a great weekend, and I’ll be posting soon.