Corners

I am not gone again, taking an three-year leave...  I'm actually busy developing film that I exposed in all of my Leicas.  I have run a number of rolls through my Ilfosol soup, but haven't scanned any yet because all the negatives are terribly curved. 

All in all, I didn't want to neglect this blog for long, so, given the response to the tilted framing question, here goes one more: let's do corners.  Here are some that I like, all made with my M4-2 and Konica Hexanon 35mm f2.

Ellwood Mansion's roof meets the blue skies of DeKalb.

Street near the main square in Woodstock, IL.

Funky mailbox at home in Prospect Street, DeKalb.

Chevrolet 1952 that used to be parked in front of a house in Lacas Street, DeKalb.  Its driveway mate was another Chevy '52, identical color and model, with the licence plate L17 9487. 

Stairs inside the Art Institute main entrance. 

And, speaking of entrances, here's a quinceañera, being photographed right in front of the Art Institute entrance on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. 

These are all corners, in one way or another.  Corners are meeting points, spaces of confluence, something begins and something ends in corners; hence the roof lines (all straight) against the capricious, irregular pattern of the clouds, the corner at the end of the tilted street view in Woodstock, which is not the same corner (but a corner nonetheless) as the one with the pot mailbox.  These corners led me to think about corners of things, like the Chevy corner, made in 1952 and never driven again after some point.  Then, what do we make of all the corners in the stairs inside the Art Institute, or the corner turned by the girl who just turned 15, who is "cornered" by the photographer into posing strangely sensual, next to a lamp post?

What do you think?

Possibly more corners next time... that, or some camera porn! 

Tilted frame

Even if I have a 35mm eternally attached to most of my camera bodies (my two M5s have it, and so do my M4 and M4-2, and one of my M6TTL), not always am I able to "take it all" in the frame.  Some times I have the need to tilt the camera in order to capture what I want within the frame.

All these photographs were made with my Konica Hexanon lens, with the exception of the 4th and 5th, in which I used a Voigtlander Ultron 28mm f2.
I do like the tilting of the frame; to me, it shows a slightly different view, less conventional, a bit quirky.  Hence, I do it often, and sometimes even in vertical.  If I find the ones I have in mind, I'll post them.  In the meanwhile, let me know if you have done this, when and why.

Sometimes I use color film

Sometimes I use color film.  My favorite is Kodak Max 400.  I simply like the greens and blues it yields.  I've tried other brands (Fuji, Konica, old Ferrania) and I always returned to the big K. 

Here is the reason.

My favorite corner: Thornbrook Road meets Park St.  There's something with that fire hydrant that draws me in all the time.

The corner of State street and another street in Sycamore, IL, at night.

Still Hall in Northern Illinois University, with a very appropriate sign next to the Photographer Huskie.

Sunset, as it's seen from Thornbrook Road.  Given that this is film, I knew I'd get the orangey tones in the sky (which is where I metered, by the way).

One small variant in all these shots (in addition to the fact that they all were made in February 2014) is that I used a different focal length—which only means new lens: a Cosina Voigtländer Ultron 28mm f2.  Do I like it?  I do, but I keep it on a (new) Leica M4-P body because it has the correct framelines for it.  In this camera, I had to guess a lot, hence the absence of "excentric" (not aligned in the center) subjects.