Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Personal’ category

4. Bezirk, Wieden, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, Fuji X70

3 fave images, 30 days in Vienna

Featured: Karlsplatz (4.) – 15 May 2022.

I recently spent 30 days in Vienna, examining her history of art, architecture, music, and science. A nation’s capital city is also worthy of photographic examination, and there are many opportunities throughout the city to absorb Vienna’s unique urban charm and style. I snapped over 10-thousand images which will keep me busy “in the archive” for some time. The following three images stand out, at least for now. Perhaps, I’ll feel differently about them in 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years’ time.

( Click here for images and more )

West Dyke Trail, West Dyke, Richmond, BC, Canada, fotoeins.com

21 March 2022

Mum? Hi, Mum; it’s me.

Happy 91st birthday to you.

We’re not really marking your birthday this year.
And I didn’t get to celebrate your landmark 90th last year.

You fell, 7 weeks short.
And then, 5 months after you left, the rest of the family returned
from across the big western pond. They’d been away for over 25 years.

The haunting frequency is variable, but a clear certainty.
A shadow of a bony hand always reaches in, to squeeze.
A sound to the shatter seems the inevitable.
What’s not is the lucky guess of the strike:
the heart, often; lungs, maybe; at them eyes, sure.
Squeeze and stab become one and the same.

Gotta see, always see;
but that’s not the death wish of choice.
Not today, anyway.
The desperate cloak to hold on is my shield.
If I let go of you, maybe the rest of me will, too.

The year that’s gone, a faint stir in the empty house.
That maybe, finally, you & Dad are getting along.
That maybe, you’re keeping an eye on your granddaughters.
That maybe, you’re finally free.

Mum? Yeah, hi; it’s me.

Happy 91st birthday to you.

媽,
祝你生日快樂.
阿亮輝.

Comet Neowise, C/2020 F3, comet, noctilucent clouds, Solar System, night sky, SFU, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby Mountain, Burnaby, BC, Canada, fotoeins.com

Low light levels, mid-grade attempts

Above/featured: Comet Neowise (C2020/F3), from Burnaby Mountain, BC – 16 Jul 2020 (UTC); more details below.

One of my first lessons in photography was: covet as much natural light as possible. I’m the first to admit I’ll chase that light very hard, especially during winter conditions when days are often grey, dull, and short. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made to get “that light.”

But diminishing light offers different challenges and opportunities to the variety of ways a person might think about a scene or situation before them. Getting the desired effect might require opening the aperture wide, upping the ISO level, lengthening exposure time, or adding light with an artificial flash. If a person’s journey goes down a “dark” path, what might a combination of internal ability and intuition mixed with external planning and happenstance create?

( Click here for images and more )

My Fuji X70: Kodacolor (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: After Girard: Vancouver-Strathcona, 14 Oct 2021.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has been a real boon to my approach to photography for personal projects both domestically and internationally. To satisfy my curiosity, I’ve provided examples of X70 images made with two Fujifilm analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes:

•   Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm), simulating images with the Kodak colour transparency or slide films produced between 1996 to 2002;
•   Kodachrome 64, simulating images with the Kodak colour film produced between the mid-1970s and 2009.

In this post, I examine the Kodacolor film-simulation, a reproduction of which Fuji X Weekly’s Ritchie Roesch describes as “producing a classic Kodak analog aesthetic.” According to Roesch, the digital film-simulation is closest to Kodacolor VR analog color film from the early-1980s, whose ISO200 version is still available for purchase as “ColorPlus 200” (Kodacolor 200).

The following film-simulation recipe creates images similar to the look of “Kodacolor VR 200 (film) that’s been overexposed.” My X70 settings are:

  • ‘Classic Chrome’ built-in film-sim
  • Dynamic Range: DR400
  • Highlight: +1 (Medium-High)
  • Shadow: +1 (Medium-High)
  • Color: -2 (Low)
  • Sharpness: 0 (Medium)
  • Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
  • White Balance: 6300K; -3 Red, -2 Blue
  • ISO: Auto, up to 6400 for “grainy” appearance (or fixed to 1000)

The recipe above is for the X-Trans II sensor; the corresponding recipe for an updated or more recent sensor is found here. All other recipes sorted by specific sensor are found here.

The following images were made at locations throughout metropolitan Vancouver. Minor adjustments to brightness level, rotation, and geometric distortion have been applied from straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) to posting.

( Click here for images )