Up On Da Statler

So a friend of mine was in a position to hook me up with a trip to the top of Statler City.  If you aren’t from Buffalo, that’s this place right der.  I invited Old Father Wahlstrom, and we trekked up to the roof to photograph the Rust Belt Utopia I call home as the sun set.

The tall walls were a real issue, especially since the 5d Mark ii (unmodified with Magic Lantern) can’t do long exposures in live view mode.  I did the best I could with the circumstances. 

The view was pretty incredible.  It was a clear day, and Niagara Falls was clearly visible.  Joe, the kindly man who took us up to the roof, told us that we should be able to see Toronto too, but I have no idea if that was true.

If nothing else, it showed me how fucking hideous the Buffalo Convention Center is.  A fairly new build, that horrible cube of gray concrete stood out like a sore thumb in the field of beautiful art deco and neoclassical buildings.

It’s on the bottom-left below.  Look at that fucking thing.

So now I just need to figure out how to get on some more buildings.   If you have any suggestions, I’ll buy you a six pack of Southern Tier.

Winter is Leaving? LOL JK

So my earlier declaration of winter’s end turned out to be a really tasteless joke.  This time I swear it’s true, and to celebrate, I went out and shot some film.

Fun fact:  I’ve never shot slide.  Not even a little bit.  I’ve heard Velvia is really tough to work with, especially in high-contrast settings, so I was a little bit nervous as I packed up all my film gear and headed down to beautiful Lackawanna, New York.

Yes, I’m still shooting on the rickety Crown Graphic.  Yes, I would like to upgrade.  No, I don’t have enough money to do that.

I ended up taking two exposures.  One was the Cargill grain elevator from this position:

To be honest, it probably looks a lot like this image.  I really just wanted to see how the Velvia rendered the scene.  I feel fairly confident that I nailed the exposure, so I’m excited to see.

The second image was a variation on this:

This one’s a little less representative, since it was shot hand-held in an effort to gauge the light.  I was using my 5d to confirm my meter readings, and I just snapped a shot because it was pretty.  I shot it at ISO800, at something like 1/100th of a second, so it represents the Velvia 100 at 1/4 of a second poorly, to say the least.  It actually came out pretty overexposed before Photoshopping.  What impact that will have on the Velvia is up in the air.  The actual shot was tripod-mounted and composed more carefully.  I’m curious to see how the exposure looks on that one.
If all goes well I’ll shoot a few more exposures this weekend.  I may send them in right away to get an idea of how they look before I burn anymore film.  Of course, they’ll all be posted here.

Until next time.