Encounter Studio: experiments + journeys

brief notes on experimental photographic journeys

Posts for Tag: Linhof Technika 70

black and white

I have struggled post-processing  this tree or scrub  on the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga. It had lots of promise  for a black and white image when I came across it whilst walking the poodles   late one  afternoon.  That was over a year ago now,  and it was when Suzanne was walking the last stages of the Heysen Trail. 

I recall  that  it was on  this occasion  when I was crouched amongst the pink gums  setting up the camera that I began to realise that what is called  the scrub or bush in Australia is actually a number of  very different bioregions;  and that we really do need to move beyond an undifferentiated, colonial sense of “the bush” as an amorphous sameness.

using Colour Efex-Pro-4

When I started  going through the archives looking for material for the Adelaide street portfolio on the website I came across some old images of Andamooka that were made just  before the turn of the century.   I had scanned them after buying the Epson V-700 scanner, but I'left some of them  sitting in the archive because  I lacked  both the skills and the software to post-process them at the time.  

A good  example is the  photograph of an old shack that I made using  the Linhof Technika 70 and Kodak Portra 160NC film.  

I decided to see what I could do  with this image a couple of days ago.  I converted the colour digital file to black and white and then  worked on a black and white  version using Silver Efex-Pro 2 . It looked okay--much better than I expected actually -- so I started to  work on the original  colour image using Colour Efex-Pro-4: 

I'd forgotten I had this software on the studio's computers.  It had came as part of the Nik Collection  package that was a free upgrade when Google acquired the product--- I was eligible as I had previously bought Silver Efex-Pro-2.   I'd forgotten  about  Colour Efex Prox-4 as I was only interested in Nik's  black and white plug-in software at the time. I  used the latter as I found that Adobe Lightroom was  rather unsatisfactory  for  post-processing  the digital files of my black and white negatives.   

roadside vegetation

This picture was made one afternoon along Halls Creek Rd in Waitpinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. Halls Creek Rd is part of the Heysen Trail,  and  I often walk along there on a  late afternoon poodlewalk in the winter time. It's fenced on both sides of the road, it is protected from the southwesterly winds , and the western sunshine gently lights up the vegetation.

It's a pleasant walk in the late afternoon and  I've made a number of photos/studies  of the roadside  vegetation along this section of the Heysen Trail.  This was one of the first: 

On this occasion I exposed  some old Portra NC 160 ASA film that had been sitting in  the 6x7  film back of the Linhof Tehnika 70 for 5 years or more.  I thought that I'd better finish the roll  of film and  have it developed as I had nothing to lose.  Though the negatives were a bit flat and the colours  were washed out  the  digital  files were okay when  I scanned the film. Some  of the pictures looked a  bit odd,  but I didn't mind.