One Year/100 Paintings

January 10, 2019

One Year 100 Paintings - #101, Self Portrait. For this painting, I used Procreate on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil and a self-portrait photo. I was going for a loose painting to capture the expression in the photo. I made a pencil sketch on a gray toned background and decided to leave the faint lines of the pencil sketch in the final painting. This was the last painting I worked on for the project and though my original plan of painting 100 acrylic paintings was not possible, I combined paintings of different mediums, digital and traditional to complete 100 paintings for the project in 2018. I am happy to say that I received a new Guerrilla Painter 5 x 7 pocket box for Christmas from my wife (it was on my wish list) and I’m excited to get out and try it in the field.

I have recently left my job of many years to pursue a new position and hope to work as a freelancer while doing so. I will be focused on starting a new career in 2019 but I want to continue to work on my creative pursuits in the process. My creative goals for this year are to paint more Plein Air paintings and continue to improve my digital painting and urban sketching skills. I also plan to use my new MiNT InstantKon RF70 to shoot more Instax Wide film and get to really know this camera. I will post samples of my photos after I’ve gotten a chance to try it out more.

What are your creative goals for 2019?

tintype effect on instax film

October 10, 2018

My process for making tintype effect on Instax film with iPhone apps and Fujifilm SQ10 Instax Square camera. The Tintype iPhone app converts regular iPhone photos to tintype images in either a square or rectangular format. There are various settings in the app for black and white, sepia, or color, with or without frame, eyes in portraits, depth of field and grain effect. The other app that can be used is the Hipstamatic app that uses a combination of the Tinto 1884 lens and D-Type film, but only saves in the square format. After the photos are saved to the iPhone camera roll, I transfer them to the micro-sd card for the SQ10 Instax Square camera using a lightning port micro-sd card reader. The photos can then be printed from the SQ10 Instax Square camera. I have sometimes used the sepia filter to get a warmer print. These could probably also be printed on a SP-3 Mobile Instax Printer, but I don’t own one of those to try it out.

I’ve also printed the tintype effect photos on the Kiipix Instax Mini printer using the rectangular shaped photos from the Tintype app. This works really well for antique cars, old machinery, or anything that would look good with a vintage photo treatment.

26 Instax Packs - #23

September 2, 2017

26 Instax Packs - #23 - Light Painting with Star Wars Instax Mini Frame in Lomo'Instant Automat. I shot through a entire pack of film in about 20 minutes one morning before work, experimenting with light painting using the Lomo'Instant Automat in bulb mode triggering the shutter with the remote control lens cap.

The light I used was the one that was included with Lomo'Instant Wide box set from a couple of years ago, I had never tried it out. Though light painting was interesting, I think it could be a lot more fun with a few of your friends and a small flashlight.

26 Instax Packs - #15

July 21, 2017

26 Instax Packs - #15 - Minnie and Mickey Instax frame in Lomo'Instant Automat. I took the metro rail down to Washington, D.C. to visit Alan on one of my days of July vacation. He had just gotten a new car and happily drove us around to visit the Renwick Gallery, Rock Creek Park with the historic Pierce Mill, and then the Jefferson Memorial.

I shot most of the photos at Pierce Mill, trying to capture interior window lit photos, some of them turned out ok. I also tried the double exposure portrait on a texture technique, but my camera batteries died so I wasn't able to print it out until I got home.

26 Instax Packs - #10

June 18, 2017

26 Instax Packs - #10 - Skyblue Instax Mini Frame in Diana F+ with Lomography Instant Back. Wanting to shoot a pack film, but not knowing what to take photos of, I spent and hour or so at Codorus State Park on a pleasant Saturday afternoon with my Diana camera. I still need to work on getting the right expsosure and composition with this camera, but I do like the photos they look pretty sharp when they're right.

Fuji Instax Square SQ10 Camera

June 2, 2017

Week 21 - Fuji Instax Square SQ10 Camera - I have been eagerly awaiting the new Fuji Instax square format camera and film since it was announced last fall and I was able to order one on release day, May 19th. My package arrived the following Monday and I set about charging it up and briefly looking at the instructions. I had already read about the specs in numerous reviews, and on the Fuji Instax Square website and watched all the YouTube video reviews I could find.

I've used two packs of Instax Square film with it so far and I really love the results. I like how I can use the LCD screen on the back of the camera to frame up my shot to get just what I want in the photo and also to make sure the horizontals and verticals are all lined up. Even after making the photo, I can edit it by zooming in, panning left/right, up/down to get the composition just right before printing. I like the editing features where I can add a little vignetting (darker or lighter) a look I really like in my photos. The filters are nice, the ones I like best are the monochrome and sepia ones. Brightness can be adjusted as well. After editing, you can choose to print the photo. I really like that I can go out and concentrate on shooting photos, come back and look through them and choose and edit which photos I want to print. I can make additional prints, make further edits or go back to the original photo setting if I choose. The camera can also be used for traditional instant photo shooting where the photo comes out right after you take the picture.

Another thing that I'd been playing around with is that photos taken on other cameras can be printed from the SQ10. The files have to be saved with four letters and four numbers in the jpeg format into the root folder of the micro sd card that goes into the camera. Files from my iphone worked just fine, but I found that photos I had shot and scanned from film negatives required a little workaround to be read by the camera. I opened the files in Pixlr and saved them as jpegs with the exif data removed, and that seemed to work. I think it's neat that I can print photo scans from film negatives that were shot with some of the vintage cameras in my collection as well as my Holga. This may seem like a lot of trouble to go through, but then isn't film photography more fun when doing things the long way?

I haven't explored the bulb mode or the double exposure setting yet, but overall I am really pleased with the camera. I feel like now I will get many more keepers out of my instax photos than the sometimes hit or miss results of traditional instax and other cameras that use instax film.

26 Instax Packs - #5

April 21, 2017

26 Instax Packs - #5 - Baltimore, MD - Fuji Instax Mini Stripe Frame in Lomo'Instant Automat just after dawn (except for Magnolia Blossom). Closeup lens used for flower bloom photos, all handheld, on auto setting without flash.

26 Instax Packs - #1

March 20, 2017

26 Instax Packs - #1 - Lomo'Instant Automat with Winnie the Pooh Instax Mini Frame at the Nixon Nature Center.