Still life-ing in the studio

  Nautilus and seashells are old news.  Been done.  Still, I'm having a good time with some 100 year old busted crockery, broken and complete shells, lighting, 8X10, et.

Using an Ektar 250 Wide Field lens from the 50s or earlier.  The Ektar is an old lens but I like the angle of view and perspective.  I'm not sure this camera is going anywhere else but right now it's working in the studio.

There's the old monster with a light shade clamped to the side.  I use more camera controls than you might think shooting still life images.  I appproach them like little buildings and either look up, down or straight in at them.

The busted cup group:  Conneticutt.  Canyon de Chelly.  Shiprock.  Texas.

I'm using light dams and scrims and reflectors, et.  Every still small-product trick in the book.  I have a box of old crockery I picked up on a hotel photoshoot 20 years ago up in Conneticutt. (I was interested in the creek full of old busted dinner-ware than I was in the photoshoot, though the client was happy at my hotel results.  There had been THREE hotels on that site, it turned out and the old ones just tossed trash out the back door into the creek.)   The tin funnel was given to me by Debbie Fleming Caffery that has been sitting around the studio for 30 years.  Ebay Nautilus and a broken nautilus whose origin I have forgotten.

Learning.  Light from the wrong side.

  Figuring exposure and contrast with a Pentax spot meter.  Not using strobes, just Dynalite modeling lights in little softboxes.  By the time you cipher the bellows extension, the reciprocity departure and then cut the development time a bit for the extra contrast brought on by the long exposure, you are juggling lots of cats.

  Fun process.

Wish I could enlarge 8X10.

This assembly is probably still in place in front of the camera, unless overnight vibrations got it.  It has a soft place to fall if it all tumbles down- that cost a nautilus to learn.  I'm going to go pull the trigger on it sometime today.  19 pieces of 8X10 film left.

  The water temps are going to fall.  Outside the first cool air front of the season is raining its black heart outside right now.