Sunset over Oia

Some weeks ago, we went to Santorini for the first time. It was very beautiful indeed, with (relatively) few people and many flowers. Of course, when you go to Santorini you can't miss the sunset at the 'sunset-village' Oia, which is praised as the best sunset of Greece (... the Mediterranean ... the world?). In any case, it might be the only place where people applaud the sun night after night for its marvelous performance. (Click on the image for a much larger - yet still not full resolution - version.)

Zara II

We did some more photo-shooting for the Zara People-project. This time, we were not so lucky, unfortunately ....

Modelling

The retailer Zara is advertising its new collection by asking customers to upload pictures of themselves wearing clothes from this collection. Each week, some of them are selected and shown on Zara's webpage. Last weekend, we made a photo-shoot in our small garden ... and Wednesday, Ioanna got a mail informing her that a picture of her had been selected. Since you can find this picture already here, I post today our other entry (which was actually my favourite).

Tribute to Ansel Adams

I am currently reading the >Photography Series< books from Ansel Adams, the legendary american photographer. I really enjoy his dry writing style ("A view camera favors a far more contemplative approach, partly because it is slower to operate.") and there are many things to learn, both for the future use of my "new" Linhof, but also for photography in general. One of the amazing features of his photographs is his use of the dynamic range of the negative / print: Even deep shadows or bright highlights contain details for the viewer to "discover". To practice what I learned from the books so far and to honour the great Adams, today two pictures taken in the morning in our small garden.

Linhof I

Last friday, I bought something at an auction for the first time - not on eBay, but a real auction with real people and an actual 'once - twice - sold'. It was a lot of fun! I was lucky enough to buy a beautiful old large format camera to a more than reasonable price! It's an old Linhof Kardan with a 180 mm Schneider-Kreuznach lens. The camera is at the same time very simple and very versatile. It's possible to completely take it apart and, more importantly, to move both the objective and the film holder in virtually any position. The film holder can be moved up and down, as well as tilted along the horizontal and vertical axes. The objective can be moved and tilted both horizontally and vertically. This means one has complete freedom for selecting the orientation of the focal plane (see Linhof III below for an example).

Linhof II

With this kind of camera, you have a screen (the so-called ground glass) in the place of the film before you take the shot. This allows you to carefully set up the camera and compose your picture, with all the tilts and shifts that you might wanna use. It's actually very similar to a 'live-view' feature on a modern digital camera (apart from the fact that the image is not upside-down ;)! Then you have to take out the screen and put the film holder in its place. In this way, you make sure that the film will 'see' exactly what you have seen before. The image on the screen will usually be much darker than the surrounding light (I brightened it in the picture), which is the reason why photographers used to cover themselves and their cameras with large pieces of black cloth.

Linhof III

This is a close-up of the ground glass from the setting shown in the picture above. I strongly tilted the objective- and image planes, which results in a tilted focal plane. While the faces of the dolls are in focus, their feet, which are roughly in the same vertical plane, are out-of-focus. On the other hand, the metal arch in the garden and even the distant branches of the trees are in focus. This technique, which has been used for architectur and landscape photography for many decades, is becoming very popular today for creating the illusion of a miniaturized reality. It is used for both videos and stills and is today typically achieved with tilt-shift lenses (which are insanely expensive) on digital SLR cameras.