random manual photos

i decided to dig deep into my vault of photos for this new post to find some photos that i haven't seen for a very long time. most of them were taken back in 2001 or 2001 before any of us were running around with dslr's that take 90% of the skill out of photography. these were done with my old pentax camera that was bought by my parents in the early 80's then shelved for over 20 years only to have 2 rolls of film ever pass through it's shutter. if it hadn't have been for that camera and the artistic lenses my parents bought back in the day with no clue of how to use them, i wouldn't have any clue on how take photos now and would have little to no interest. these are some random shots i took that were developed in a dark room in oregon. it's hard to take manual photos with digital cameras because of the lens configuration and the lack of user feedback you get from the camera. it's almost better just to take automatic photos with a digital camera and then tweek them in cs3/lightroom rather than try to take manual shots. the red felt pool table belonging to my friend andrew was a favorite shoot of mine because of the pool ball shots that i'll post later. one day i will make 6'x8' copies of them to put in our house in all their grainy glory. the goat is marcia moore's that we used to take care of along with many other goats and animals. the red chair was given to us by julia's mom and was on its last leg before i refinished it. we still use it but it's looking pretty shabby right now. during this time i was shooting a lot of t-max 1600 speed b&w film while manually push processing it 2.5 times (about a $12 roll of film!). that's what shooting in almost complete darkness looks like with no flash. i can't remember what the exposure was on these but it was in the neighborhood of 8 seconds.

october moon in wyoming

last night i decided to venture out into the cold once again to try and capture a perfect moon shot of a near full moon. the past few nights there have been a subtle haze in the sky that can ruin a clear night shot. i think the colder it is outside the better that moon shots turn out. this is probably the best one i've taken yet. once we get our new lens for the camera we'll be able to take much clearer shots than this one. there may even be some more detail and definition in the lower part that i'm becoming more interested in photographing.