Photography Archive

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Hiking at Echo Mountain, California

By
Harlan Landes
– November 25, 2010Posted in: Nature, Photography

Almost every Thanksgiving, I visit my family in California. I was able to spend a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, and we packed those days with a number of activities. We spent a few hours hiking the Sam Merrill Trail to Echo Mountain. It was a tough hike for me — a reminder that I could use more exercise.

The weather was beautiful, however, and the views were amazing. I brought a small contingent of my photography equipment with me on the hike, including my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and two lenses: the 17-85mm and 70-300mm. I used only the shorter zoom, leaving the longer telephoto in my backpack for the entire duration of the hike.

My brother brought his new iPhone. The phone contains an amazing little camera that automatically combines three exposures to create an HDR image. The result is quite interesting, and someone could have a lot of fun with that feature.

I added the three best photos to Flickr, but I’ll include all three here as well, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Nothing Beats Medium Format

By
Harlan Landes
– November 24, 2010Posted in: Photography

The photographs I’ve posted so far have all been taken with a Canon Rebel XTi, a 10.1 megapixel digital camera several years old. It’s small for a digital SLR, so it’s easy to carry around, particularly when I limit myself to just a few lenses. But nothing beats shooting with a medium format camera, like my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. It’s a huge camera and inconvenient to transport, especially while hiking on the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park trails, but the image quality is fantastic.

These photographs were developed by a local lab, who also scanned the negatives. I have since purchased my own scanner (an Epson Perfection V700), so I’ll be doing my own scans less expensively in the future. These photographs were taken on the campus of Princeton University and on trails that follow the canal near campus.

I love the quality of the image I can get with medium format. I’ll of course need to keep practicing my photography skills to make the best use of this, but there is nothing better than taking the time to create an image with a camera that generates a highly-detailed negative. I suppose if there’s anything better than medium format, which puts 35mm and digital cameras with smaller sensors to shame, it would be large format.

Continue reading this post for some photographs or take a look at my Flickr collection dedicated to medium format photography. Read the rest of this entry »

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TheGoodLife at City Streets

By
Harlan Landes
– November 22, 2010Posted in: Featured, Music, Photography

Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.

Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.

Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.

My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.

View some of the selected photographs after the jump.

For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr. Read the rest of this entry »

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Portraiture Class

By
Harlan Landes
– November 19, 2010Posted in: Featured, Photography

A few weeks ago, I completed a class at the Arts Council of Princeton on portraiture, conducted by Peter C. Cook. Most of our class time was spent talking about portraiture, looking at photographs created by famous and non-so-famous individuals, and critiquing each other’s work.

We did, however, spend two sessions working with a model and one session in the darkroom developing our own black and white photography. This was my first opportunity to work with a model and my first time in a darkroom in the last twenty years. The last time I developed my own work was when I took a short session on black and white photography at summer camp as a kid.

I hope the model, Rebecca, doesn’t mind that I’m posting a few of my better shots (after the jump). My XTi produced the less appealing of all the photographs, so I won’t include them here. The best photographs came from my medium format Holga with black and white film and my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with color negative film.

For the full collection, view the set on Flickr. Read the rest of this entry »

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Central Jersey Walk for PKD

By
Harlan Landes
– November 18, 2010Posted in: Featured, Photography

In early October, I supported my friends Stacey Trzesinski McClain and Randi Trzesinski with their efforts with the PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Foundation. Stacey organized the Central Jersey Walk for PKD as she does every year, and I brought my camera along.

I prefer shooting outdoors if the weather is nice, so this was a good change from the indoor concerts. It was a little chilly that day in Mercer County Park, but it was a successful event with good participation. Walking undoubtedly kept the participants warm. As you can see from the photographs, the walk is a family event. Teams walked together at this event as a culmination of fundraising to support the organization.

My XTi was on call for the event, and I used a variety of lenses (28mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 10-22mm, 17-85mm). See some of the results after the jump.

Most of the better photographs are being displayed on the PKD Foundation’s Flickr page. Read the rest of this entry »

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