X-Pro1 Diaries: Arab Street Redux with VSCO
View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only
My latest purchase is the VSCO presets for Aperture and I’m absolutely loving them. I started my photography ‘back in the film days’ and film still evokes a strong sense of nostalgia for me. For reasons of ease and finance, I seldom shoot film now but still love the ‘film look’. Visual Supply Co. are folks that create pretty authentic ‘film look’ presets for use in both Adobe Lightroom and Aperture. The presets are nothing like the over -the-top Instagram ‘vintage toy camera’ look that is all the rage on Facebook these days, but an altogether more realistic film simulation. Although part of my brain sees a contradiction between buying a camera with a high tech digital sensor outputting clean, low noise pictures and applying presets to degrade and add ‘grain’ to the pristine image, I just can’t help myself. Perfection is overrated anyway.
What I like about the Aperture presets is the fact that its a preset, not a plugin - a subtle but important difference. Nik produces fantastic plugins but I resent having to output huge tiff files from my master images to work off, the VSCO presets work natively in Aperture, creating no huge tiff files to clog up my hard drive with, and are as non destructive as any of the other image adjustments one might employ in Aperture. At the moment, there is a range of Kodak and Fujifilm film colour negative as well as black and white presets to choose from, I have word from VSCO that they are working on colour transparency emulations for future release. My favourite films from ‘back in the day’ are Fuji Velvia 50, Provia 100F, Fuji NPH 400 (negative), Kodak 100VS and Fuji Neopan 1600 (b/w). Hopefully VSCO will work on having these looks available soon.
Kampong
Caution, One Way
Father and son portrait
A cat in the grass, probably thinks he’s a lion stalking prey
Giving the wink
”It was exactly this long …’
Mannequin massacre
Portrait of a plastic man
Headless
Lady in Red
Authorised Personnel Only
Conversations in the alley
Salmin and Co.
Giving me the eye
Plastic Fantastic
(photo taken with Canon 50E, Kodak Elitechrome 100 Cross Processed)
Let me take a second to cut and paste the image of her hips, Alysa’s upper body, Lisa’s lips and Cassandra’s lower back onto a canvas that is already completed. Because skin bleach is just a Ctrl Alt Delete to being born the wrong colour. We can fix it! Says the man with the overly white smile - and he can fix those too. Teeth. Cheeks. Because they are supposed to gleam unrealistically. Chins were meant to have sharp cuts. Thighs aren’t supposed to touch. The love we’re supposed to satisfy ourselves with; let me take a moment to trim that incase it adds to my jean size. I can try to find it through someone else. Later. Nature got it wrong the first time around, so we cut ourselves open.
Conversations by the Window Seatis an ongoing creative collaboration between Adrian Seah and Romila Barryman, with photos and writing themed around a common love of travel and discovery.
View other Conversations by the Window Seat or read more of Romila’s writing at her blog Daydreamsonlooseleafpaper
Tourists taking photos, digitally | Pisa, Italy 2010.
Canon 5D mkII, EF 24-70 f2.8L
The Kodak Moment
My friend, Dr Kenneth Lyen, recently sent me me a note, I found it very poignant and thought I’d reproduce it (with permission) on Handcarry Only.
“Alas, poor Kodak, I remember her well. a film of infinite beauty, of most excellent colors; the fulgent laughter, the tenebrific tears, the poignant memories. And now she is gravely ill, gasping her last breath. Poor Kodak.
Darwin’s natural selection is not a merciful forgiving softie. Adapt or perish.
Kodak is poised to follow the likes of Xerox (also slaughtered by arch-nemesis Fuji), and other dying technologies like the typewriter, the pager, the cassette tape recorder, the video cassette player, the floppy disc, the laser disc player, cathode ray tube monitor, the zip drive.
What is the Kodak Moment? It is the rare, one-time moment captured with a photo. Sadly it is going to become an ephemeral moment captured in distant memories.
Who will give Kodak mouth-to-mouth ventilation in a last-ditch effort to rescue her from the jaws of death?”
High-res
