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Tully Samson Photography

Making Photographs

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Tully

A Lack of Inspiration

10 April 2022 by Tully

This weekend I got a day to myself and thought it’d be a lovely chance to head out and burn through some film. So, I loaded up my cameras, caffeinated myself, and set off for a walk. I walked for about two and a half hours and didn’t take a single photo. It was nice to get out of the house, but maybe I need to give myself a break from forcing new photos and concentrate on scanning and developing the film I have shot already.

Though, having said that as I’m writing this someone is doing some work on the house next to mine and all I can hear is drilling and sawing, so I might go out and try again.

Anyway, here’s a teaser photo from a trip I took a little while ago with my partner. We went down to the Morning Peninsula and stayed in Rye. I snapped this one as the wind was whipping rain around and I was just wearing a linen shirt because I didn’t pack a jacket. I love the pop of red on the building and the gnarled twisted bush/tree on the left.

Cape Schanck Lighthouse Museum. Mamiya C330, 80mm f2.8, Fuji Pro400H.

Filed Under: Meta Tagged With: c330, film, Fujifilm, mamiya, Mornington, pro400h

A Walk In The Park

31 March 2022 by Tully

A lovely sunny day in March I went for a wander around the Royal Botanic Gardens and Kings Domain. Seeking some respite from the sun we wandered down into the Fern Gully and were met with this scene. There was a good bit of haze in the air too which really helped this shot. I had a few attempts at getting a shot at 1/4s but got a hint of motion blur, 1/8s had to do. I like how the stones behind the waterfall have come out, a bit otherworldly, I might go back and just shoot that wall.

Waterfall, Sony A7iii, Sigma 24mm f1.4, 1/8s, ISO 640

Filed Under: Photo Tagged With: green, melbourne, Sony, waterfall

The Three Sisters

28 March 2022 by Tully

Christmas 2021 was a bit touch and go with COVID spiking and RATs rarer than hens teeth, we made it up to the Blue Mountains though! This photo is of the Three Sisters in Katoomba. The weather on the day we visited couldn’t have been better. The clouds were low, the light was soft as was the wind, and there were little wisps of cloud floating up from the forest below the lookout.

Three Sisters, RB67 65mm f4.5, Ektar 100.
Near Katoomba, RB67 65mm f4.5, Provia 100

These two photos were taken on drastically different film stocks. Ektar 100 is a punchy colour negative film from Kodak that has some amazing reds, which really make the rock formations sing. The Provia is a nice contrasty slide film with a fairly natural rendition of colour, leaning a little on the cool side.

Filed Under: Photo Tagged With: 65mm, ektar, mamiya, provia, rb67

Shooting on Slide Film

3 February 2022 by Tully

Slide film, colour positive, E6, it goes by a few names and is distinct from colour negative (or print film) in that the image, once developed, is basically ready for viewing. These films tend to have brilliant vibrant colours and good contrast. Looking at the slide film images on the film, especially larger formats, is something quite magical and is one of the main reasons I like to make images with it.

Slide film does have some downsides. They have very low exposure latitude (about 5 stops, compared with 12 to 15 for negative film) meaning they’re not forgiving of errors in exposure, and shooting in high contrast scenes you easily loose your highlights and shadows as washed out whites and deep blacks. They also tend to be exxy (upwards $20-25 per roll) and development is more expensive too.

In this post I’ll be looking at a roll of Fujifilm Provia 100f that I shot on my RB67 back around May through July 2021. Lockdowns and restrictions meant this roll was in my camera for quite some time, and I can only date about seven of the ten shots.

The Roll

The Roll

Into the meat of it, or me talking about how I’m not happy with any of these photos.

Frame 1

Reflections on the Yarra River, near Dights Falls.
RB67, 127 mm f3.8

This is actually an image I’m kind of happy with! I used a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter to keep the sky and the highlights on the trees within the range of the film, and to even them up with the reflections. In retrospect I should have used the wider 65mm to have more negative space between the tree tops and the edges of the frame. I can’t recall my thinking at the time, but there may have been things creeping in at the edged of the frame.

Frame 2

Another Yarra reflection, further upstream at The Old Alphington Swimming Pool.
RB67, 127 mm f3.8

There are a bunch of reasons I don’t like this image, mostly that the intended subject gets lost in the noise of three branches in the background. I remember shooting this, and the light was much better when I was setting up my tripod, and I waited a long time for the right cloud to float over the sun to shade the tall gums behind the green ones, but alas it didn’t happen.

Frame 3

Chicken of the woods, I think. Near the end of of View St, Alphington.
RB67, not sure which lens.

Frame 4

I love the colours, but I missed focus here. I didn’t have enough light. I remember crawling awkwardly into a bush to set up my camera for this one and had to use the mirror up mode and a 1 second shutter speed, in a vain attempt at getting more depth of field. It might still look okay in a small print, though!

Succulent Valiant House, Northcote.
RB67, 65 mm f4.5

I take a lot of photos of this place, I love the colours and the timeless feel of it with the California bungalow and 60s car. The sky in this particular one is blown out, always a challenge with this location. I might have better luck at sunrise, or just before. Along with the blown out sky, there is a plant stem right in the middle of the car, I have to hope they park a little further next time. It does show how much detail the lens and such a fine grained film can pull out of a scene though.

Frames 5 and 6

Dried flowers in the window, the lounge at my house.
RB67, 65 mm f4.5
Frame 6, the safety.

I took a safety shot here because I was keen to have this one in the bag and wanted to reduce the chances of losing it to scratches on the film, light leaks, or something else going wrong.

I can’t remember exactly when I took these photos, such is the blur of lockdowns. I do remember looking across from the TV at the soft light falling on the dried out flowers in the window and jumped at the opportunity to use a couple more frames from the Provia in one of my RB film backs. Looking back I probably should have thrown up my giant white backdrop behind me to reflect a little more light on the flowers and lift the shadows a touch. Maybe also shooting straight on to the table so that it was level in the background. Having said all that; with few touch ups to remove cat hairs from the flowers and a square crop, I think this will look great up on the wall.

Below is a zoomed in crop of the image. It shows just how blisteringly sharp the Mamiya lenses and this film stock are, eking out every little detail on those petals. This is a low res scan, but I think I’ll still push a 25 cm by 25 cm print out of it given how clean and sharp the image is.

Zoomed crop of Frame 5

Frame 7 and 8

This is another safety shot of sorts. The light got a little better as I was about to pack down and I took another image.

I took some time off work after lockdowns eased in late July, and went out, by train, to the Dandenong Ranges for a long walk in the bush with my cameras.

Trees in Dandenong Ranges National Park
RB67, 127 mm f3.8

Quite simply, this sucks this photo is missing a well defined subject and the ground is way too messy for my liking. This was the first composition of the day and I was still getting into the grove. The rest of the photos on the roll are about as good, however I picked up my game and the shots I got on a roll of Ektar 100 a little later in the walk are much better. The light here is nice and even, no hot spots of sky. To improve this, I’d have a person in frame on the right balancing the closest tree in the frame, filling that space, and hiding some of, and distracting from, the ground clutter.

Frame 9

Tree and undergrowth in Dandenong Ranges National Park
RB67, 65 mm f4.5

Again, this doesn’t really have a good subject, and the burnt out whites in the sky are unfortunate. I can’t actually remember what my thought process was for this, so it can’t have been particularly inspiring at the time.

Frame 10

Grasses and path in Dandenong Ranges National Park
RB67, 65 mm f4.5

I really like all the green and I got the exposure right. The framing, not so much. I think I could have moved forward, beyond the tussock on the left, and shot in a portrait orientation. I’d be able to avoid the patch of less interesting grass on the right and replace it with tree trunks. I’d also aim for a faster shutter speed to avoid the motion blur from the slight breeze that plagued me all day.

Summary

Overall, not a bad roll I’d say. I learned some things and got a couple of frames that I’ll print. What I didn’t mention up above is that to get a look I liked more I had to warm up the photos a bit, in future I might shoot with a warming filter on in neutral cloudy light. Or I might try out Ektachrome E100 and see if that’s a bit warmer out of the box. I don’t have any left in the fridge, but I’ll definitely pick up some more and shoot with it again. Maybe head-to-head with E100, I do have two backs for my RB.

What will mostly keep me coming back to slide film though is be the feeling I get looking through the roll I just got back seeing the images almost come to life.

Filed Under: Roll

Polly Woodside

23 January 2022 by Tully

Looking for something a bit different and a bit fun I picked up a couple of rolls of Lomography Redscale 50-200. Redscale is a film that has been loaded into the canister or roll backwards, so that you expose the film through the orange film base. I’d done a little research on it before starting to shoot with it, seeing results I liked the look that shooting it at around 50 ISO (more yellow, less red, and interesting blues).

On a sunny day in early 2021 I took a long walk around South Wharf and Docklands, the burned through a roll pretty quickly. That’s easily done on an RB67 with just ten frames.

This is definitely my favourite from the day. I had to wedge my camera in the fence around the ship, making framing and levelling it a bit of fun (especially with the flipped image in the waist level finder). In an ideal world (one with an open gate and still no people) I’d have fit the whole ship in there and not had cut off the bit above the prow.

Polly Woodside shot on Lomography Redscale

I decided to leave the film boarder on this shot to show what film I’d used and some of the imperfections. The RB67 back I used for this seems to have a slightly wonky film transport, hence the film label bleeding into the frame in the top left corner.

Thanks for reading!

Filed Under: Photo Tagged With: film, lomography, mamiya, melbourne, photography, rb67, redscale, ship

My plans for this site

20 January 2022 by Tully

I’m hoping to use this site to showcase my photography for my friends. I just want it to be a nice simple site where I post images, rolls of film, and trip diaries.

Single images: I plan these to be short posts about images I’ve made discussing choices and my creative process.

Rolls of film: I’ll do the above, in less detail, about a whole roll of film.

Trip diaries: They might be about something as short as a day trip, but I’ll be saving these for when I’ve shot a lot of images in a particular place.

The Grampians

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Recent Posts

  • A Lack of Inspiration
  • A Walk In The Park
  • The Three Sisters
  • Shooting on Slide Film
  • Polly Woodside

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