This morning, I finished off a roll of Porta 160 35mm color film. Then I had it developed while I was at work. I can use the photos from this morning, and since they're developed already, just scan and edit them and then use them for the blog!
As I looked through the negatives, one caught my eye. It was of the morning light coming through the windows, and shining down on my bike. It was just a little bit of light, and only the bike got lit up. Sort of a spot light if you will. But it made some really awesome shadows on the wall. I only had two shots left at that point, and I wish I could have taken more. But I really like two that I could take.
The first one is the one I'll use for the blog today. It's shooting down the bike, looking at the far wall where the front end of the bike is projected. It's mostly about the helmet, but the photo makes you eye dance around a bit. The lightest part is the wall, so you look there first, then the bars because they're big, then you notice the lock and wheel that's in focus, and then finally the shadows of the wheel down in the corner. It's just a game your eye places.
I shot at f1.8, and the camera was set to auto so I dunno what the shutter was. Probably 1/250 or something like that?
I won't really go into scanning, since that's not something that a lot of people do, and it's fairly specific to the particular scanner. The scanner I used was a Flextight X, which is a 15k scanner or something ridiculous like that. It's the schools....
Anyway, once I got into photoshop, I started off by cropping the image down a bit. I wanted to get a little lighter on the shadow. Then I added a color balance layer to correct a bit. I cooled the yellows down, and added more cyan and magenta. Gave it more of a daylight look. Buuuuut it didn't look quite right yet. Next was a levels adjustment, I increased the contrast on both ends, then lightened the shadows just a touch. Not much. Curves was next, I did a massive increase on contrast, but only applied it to the shadows part and the helmet by way of layer masks. I wanted those areas to be, well, more contrasty and to draw more attention. With a selective color adjustment, I darkened the mid tone greys, as well as the whites. Gave it a little darker feeling, if you will. Then I decided I didn't like it in color, so I converted to b/w. Darkened the blues and lightened the yellows. This lightened the parts that were hit by the sun, and darkened the shadows. Shadows are blue, and the sun in the morning is yellowish. Finally, a little curves layer lightened up the bright whites. I like having full white.
I guess the real finally was dusting, since it's a film scan. This was just going through with the clone tool and clicking on all the dust spots. Something a first grader could do...
Cropped a little tighter...and done! I think this is my first analog photo I've done for the blog. The picture I took of a print doesn't count.....
See you tomorrow!
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