Yes, I know this is a photography blog 🙂 However, I am also a Chinese calligrapher. My speciality is large scale calligraphy – words that are 3 feet or larger. They look great at your home, in yoga studios, martial arts schools etc. More details on my work and how to purchase forthcoming.
Yearly Archives: 2018
9 posts
Go over here to buy cards! Perfect for the holidays! http://richardman.photo/photogallery/gallery1/
Jeremie, posing for another portrait for the Heart on Our Sleeves project, portraits of transgender people on 4×5 large format film. They ballet dance for fun, and we tried a couple poses. This one comes out nicely.
This and the follow-up posts are the results and observations of comparing four slow/medium speed 120 B&W films: Rollei RPX-25, Ilford Pan F+ 50, Rollei Retro 80S, and Fuji Acros 100. The number at the end of each name is the ISO speed of the film (so called box speed). These are some of the slowest general purpose B&W films available today (Acros has been discontinued in early 2018 but still can be purchased at a few online places). I used 4 different film backs on my Hasselblad 203FE with a sturdy FLM tripod so I can take four images […]
I love my 4×5 for portrait and landscape work. Nevertheless, it is without questions that medium format is more flexible. To see how far I can push medium format, I borrowed 2 film backs, in addition to my 2 backs, I will be doing some testing on some slow and medium speed film: Rollei RPX25, Ilford Pan F+ 50, Rollei Retro 80S, and Fuji Acros 100 (sadly discontinued earlier this year) Be back in a few days with some results! #ishootfilm #filmisnotdead #hasselblad #hasselblad203fe
One nice thing about using a large format camera is that you have access to the best lens ever made most of the time for a very good price (e.g. a standard $200 150mm Plasmat lens is as perfect as they get). On the other end of spectrum are the soft focus lenses. I have a couple hundred years old Cooke soft focus lens which I will write about later. Today I want to talk about the almost-unobtainable Congo 150mm/F4 lens. Almost-unobtainable because this thing never comes up for sale, and I even had a couple people looking for it […]
Yesterday, Facebook asked me to share an old memory from five years ago, which happens to me with my first view camera: It was quite a change from using rangefinders and SLRs. I am used to manual focus and not relying too much on automation, but still, there is no auto-exposure, no autofocus, no auto-anything with a view camera. Not only do you need to use a dark cloth (which is sort of cool in its ways), the biggest block is to remember removing and inserting the dark slide from the back between exposures (a dark slide prevents the film […]
(Originally written August 2016) “People only notice the politics in stories they disagree with.” — in a conversation between Sheila Williams and Stanley Schmidt, Worldcon 2016 They say “words have power”. With these words: “Eli will be entering college in a few days. Even when he was growing up, he had always been uncomfortable about not being able to do “boy sports” and other “boy things”. He was enrolled at a local all-girl Middle/High School in 6th grade, but finally understood at 13 that he was actually a boy…” and other similar life story short descriptions accompanying a set of photo portraits, […]
A Review of the Gibellini ACN45 4×5 Large Format (LF) Camera, a post I wrote in 2016 on another site. Large format photography is a dying breed. From its heyday as the medium of choice for the world’s great portrait, landscape, fine arts and commercial photographers such as Avedon, Adams, Mann, Misrach, Penn, and Roversi, large format photography is now but a niche market for a few remaining diehards. But for the few dedicated souls who appreciate the format, amazingly enough there are still a few companies such as Chamonix and Shen Hao making new LF cameras. It’s in this […]