5/04/2006

Central Park, Towards 110th Street

First Mac Virus?

Welcome to our world.

Here's the first article I ever read about a Mac virus. Macs are moving or have moved to the intel chip. The question I have is how difficult would it be for virus makers to port their code to the new OS.

Tech Notes

I thought I'd just jot down a couple of things about the infrared photography that intrigue me:

THE RIG
Same old M3 usually with the 35mm or 28mm lens stopped down. Light red filter (#25). Kodak HIE film. The Leica lens doesn't have infrared marking for focus, though that could be easily determined with a couple of tests and a little bit of tape or something on the lens to mark the spot. So far I haven't worried about the focus shift because I've been shooting with wide angle lenses and I'm usually at F8 or F11. The film is developed in Ilfotec DD-X with the same times I use for Tri-x (- 30 seconds). I load and unload the film in a changing bag which I bring with me. It's a pretty crappy one which I bought from Adorama. Somewhere in the house I have a good one which I once used for loading large format holders but I can't seem to find it.

Meter readings are with the Gossen Luna Pro. If I'm shooting in sunlight it's set to 100 ASA. If I am going to bracket - I'll do one at what the meter reads and one a stop more open.

For street and urban shots that were printed in the darkroom, this film would be difficult to use. There may be numerous blown out areas that might be important to the shot. But with Photoshop (using things like multiply layers, gradient masks etc.) if the effect has gone too far - it can usually be tamed. Jim S. mentioned this to me. I've been doing applying various correction layers since the first test roll. The man in the spiral is an example where I used a multiply layer and a gradient map. Without that the entire shot is blown out.

The shot below this - towards 110th street has been dodged and burned in a way that I couldn't do in the traditional darkroom without resorting to film masking techniques that were once used to adjust contrast in color prints.

THE IMAGINATION

I find that just trying to think in infrared gives my imagination a jolt that it needs. Brain is going: how is this going to show up. Where are the lines? In other words, all the things you should be doing normally - get a bit of a push.

Black and white is already an abstraction and gives you a chance to accentuate the design elements. With infrared the design of the shot can become more minimal. For me - there is a similarity to city snow shots, or night shots - where all of a sudden the crap of the city becomes invisible, the trees and roads and rivers are simplified to a few lines.

There are a few avenues I'm interested in exploring: shooting with tungsten light for example where my tests actually show a higher ASA for the film. I had one crazy idea - using an infrared flash in a movie theater to do audience reactions. Don't know if I'll get to that but I've not seen it done before for pictorial purposes. I think a horror film would be best.

And now I realize I'm procrastinating getting to some matting and packaging by writing this so I'd better get on with it.