Ted::Blogs(): Photo::Night Vision for the Darkroom

April 2006

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Death Valley 2006

During the Easter weekend, I took a long-deserved photo trip to my favorite place in the world, Death Valley. For the past couple of months, we've been having too much rain and it was great to get out in the sun again. I've been to Death Valley a couple of times before, and this time I tried to visit new places. This time I visited: Rhyolite, Stonepipe Wells, The Dunes (I can't remember the name right now), Golden Canyon, Artist's Pallette, Devil's Golf Course, Badwater, and Zabrieskie's Point. I took two bodies - Hasselblad 503CW (with 3 lenses) and Hasselblad SWC/M. I used Kodak TMX for 503CW with a tripod and Kodak TMY for the SWC/M handheld.

I have always been fascinated by selective focusing and shallow depth of field. To me, it is an explicit way to express the most important part of the image. For the same reason, I enjoy using vignetting as a visual effect. The series of pictures here are taken from various places including italy and california. Obviously, they are grouped as a series as they share the same type of visual effects, not because they share the same subject or geographic location.

I was born in the year of the horse. Maybe that's why I am fascinated with horses. When I started photography, I was very inspired by Keith Carter (another reason why I am so obsessed with selective focusing). After buying his book, "Ezekiel's Horse", I always wanted to have a chance to take pictures of this beautiful creature. Last year, I went to Vegas with my friends, and instead of playing golf, I drove out to Death Valley. I had the slightest idea that I would have an encounter these beautiful horses.

Until a couple of days ago, I wouldn't have thought that I would be buying a night vision device. But here I am, clicking on eBay's 'Buy it now' button for the ATN Viper Night Vision Goggle ...

I have been experimenting with a film developing technique called, "Develop by Inspection (DBI)". I am going to blog about this experiment soon, but here's the spoiler. Whenever you're trying a new film, you have to (well, you'd better) callibrate your development time in order to achieve full control on the contrast of the negatives. It is very time-consuming and although I know some people who loves the process, I'd rather spend time shooting pictures.

DBI is a technique where you actually inspect the negative during the development. In order to do this, you have to use a special safelight with Dark Green filter like Kodak's #3. So, I bought a new safelight and started the experiment a couple of weeks ago. However, you can't really turn on the light too long during the process, so it is best to use a footswitch so that you can turn it on and off quickly. I was browsing throught APUG's classifieds yesterday and not only found a good deal for the footswitch, but also learned that the seller was using a night vision goggle for DBI.

So, that's the story and I'm really excited about this. I am hoping I can use this for many other darkroom uses like, loading films, color paper processing, interneg (I am also planning to blog about this. Stay tuned) processing and so on.

Maybe I'll even find some use cases outside of the darkroom as well:)

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