double exposure test
Point Mugu
Xander and Mike | Point Mugu
Mike and Gino at Magic Tree
Mike Ambs | Light Test
A few weeks ago I met up with Zadi at her office to shoot a few quick shots of her on my 4x5. The night before, Mike and I set up the lights and did a couple of tests. The ring of hot lights looks awesome, but in my excitement I was unaware of how awkward the lights looked when not properly framed behind heads and such. Also, Mike needs a haircut! Otherwise I’m in love with the light, the odd shadows on the face don’t bother me a bit.
Mike and Xander | Angeles National Forest | December 2012
We went on a day adventure with our friend Gino. We were hunting for giant pine cones and boy did we find some!
4x5 Portrait | Mike Ambs
Mike does his best Hemingway
I call these miracle photos.
There were 5 rolls of 35mm waiting to be developed so, as not to waste chemicals I decided to shoot a roll on the Holga. Nothing terribly exciting, set up the tripod and flash against our chalkboard wall. Mike and I made lots of faces and even pulled Maeby in on a few. I even had a yard stick on the floor to make sure we were the proper distance from the lens.
After finishing the roll I noticed the focus wasn’t set correctly. It was set to group shot instead of portrait. I thought to myself, “well, shit”. I proceeded thinking maybe they will turn out cool anyway and I can just pretend I totally meant for the entire roll to be out of focus.
Next, I head into the garage where I do all my film loading and turn all the lights out. It takes me 30 stinking minutes to load 2 rolls because of I-don’t-even-know-what! Once that battle was over I stand up to feel my way to the door and notice the fire alarm red light flashing and also the light switch was glowing. Neither piece made enough light to be detected by my eyes, but again I thought to myself “well, shit”.
Moving on, I gather all the chemicals to develop. I pour in the developer and set the timer for 6.25 minutes. I agitate the film every minute and when the time is up I pour out the developer and start to add the stop bath. Except it wasn’t stop, I had just let my film sit in the stop instead of developer because my labeled caps got mixed up. That accident actually helped pull out the shadow details, so not a total loss :)
Somehow, all the mistakes I made ended up working out and I learned a few things.
The group setting on my Holga has a focus length of 3 ft., not 6 ft. like the manual states. Wrestling with my film under faint blinking lights isn’t as detrimental to 35mm tri-x as I thought (even so, I’m black taping that little bastard). Lastly, washing your film in stop for 6 minutes doesn’t make it melt into a pile of mush, it helps bring out shadow details!
Learning is fun, you guys!!
2012-09-15 FToM - Pitch Practice Breakthrough - Memo
In the last few years that I’ve been working on this film, I found it harder and harder to answer the question: what’s your film about? It was one of my most dreaded questions. People would introduce me at events, saying, “this is Mike, he’s a filmmaker”, and when that happened, it was usually all downhill from there.
Erica has really, really, really been pushing me to figure out a way to answer that question, because, well, it’s becoming more and more impossible to avoid it; and if I’m going to get anywhere with this film during IFP Film Week, I can’t just freeze up and stare at my feet everything someone ask about For Thousands of Miles.
The above audio file is of me practicing the film’s pitch with Erica late last night - it is the first time, in all the years I’ve been working on the film, that I a) answered that question clearly, and b) it took less than 3 minutes!
This moment wasn’t just a breakthrough for answering that question when it happens to come up, but it was a real breakthrough in presenting the film going forward.
This was such a big break-through. I’m sorry I dragged you through the mud, but I’m proud of you for being able to *finally* talk about the film!! <3
(via mikeambs)
This shot of Mike and the Einstein statue at the Griffith Park Observatory is fun, but the error of my processing ways is all over them. yuck.
This whole developing my film at home thing is about to lose my affections. More specifically, developing 4x5 film at home…35mm and 120 are more forgiving than large format.
Aside from the fact that my developer was a bit warm which resulted in the crushed shadows in this shot, it has taken me several sheets of ruined film to figure out that the chemicals are not able to properly agitate. The negatives have tons of artifacts, or lines of varying degrees of development, scratches, water spots and just general icky-ness. I know it’s user error, I never see these problems when I send the film out to be processed. I think my next step is to acquire a new processing tank.
