Christopher Ebarb

Difficulty With On-Location Shooting

We arrived at Mt. Lemmon, AZ at around 7:30am. It was very cold. I had anticipated the cold, so I brought extra jackets as well as a blanket that Sommer could use between shots...but I felt it wasn't enough. The temperature was around 35°F degrees. But we carried on.

As a photographer, I tend to make shoots very difficult for myself. I rarely use assistants, and I bring heavy equipment. For this shoot my setup included a 4x5 press camera, a Mamiya RZ67 (people that have shot with these know how heavy they are), an AD400 Godox light with modifiers, a C-stand, and two 15lb sandbags. My Pelican Case weighed about 80lbs. The location was also about a 1/4 mile from where we parked. So I dragged an 80lb Pelican Case while also wearing a backpack through 1/4 mile of rough terrain. Luckily Sommer was there to carry the C-Stand for me, as well as the dress I'd made for the shoot.

Other than dealing with the wind (this is why I bring sandbags) and the freezing temperature, the shoot went very well. We shot for about an hour before we had enough of the cold and decided to pack up.

The Technical Stuff

As I mentioned above, my equipment consisted two different cameras, and one flash with a 48" Strip Softbox.

Large Format

I hadn't shot large format in some time, so I thought this shoot was a good opportunity to dust my Busch Pressman Model D.

I loaded four sheets of 4x5 Ilford HP5. My plan was to take four "primary photos" and supplement each with a set of medium format photos. But due to the wind and cold weather, I felt I didn't have the time to setup some of the more complicated shots that I wanted to capture on large format. So I went with "plan b" and decided to keep the shoot simple. I did a handful of basic setups and primarily focused on shooting medium format, and if I liked a composition enough I'd quickly setup the large format camera.

The photo at the top was the very first photo I took, and honestly turned out to be my favorite. I've been experimenting with tilting the bellows of my camera which gives the portrait the tilt-shift effect. I feel it gives the photo more depth than with traditional focus, almost a 3D effect. I plan to continue experimenting; I want to find more subtle ways to use this method.

Medium Format

I brought my Mamiya RZ67 and two backs loaded with Ilford HP5. I shot with a 110mm f/2.8 fitted with a VND and a 1/4 Tiffen Black Pro-Mist filter. I like the 1/4 Pro-Mist filter because it adds just the smallest amount of softness to the photos without looking like an 80's music video.

It was very bright out, so the VND was set to it's darkest (2.1 which is a 7 stop reduction). The RZ67's shutter speed was set at 1/250 and an aperture of f/2.8. The 4x5's settings were set at 1/60 and a f/4.5 aperture. I got consistent exposure between both cameras.

Lighting

I did standard Rembrandt lighting (pretty much the primary way I light most of my photos) using a Godox AD400 fitted with a gridded 48" strip softbox. I don't recall the power level, but it wasn't at full power. I typically try to make my lighting look natural, so I kept the power low enough so the photos didn't look like they were obviously lit by a flash. I used a gridded strip softbox to keep light spill onto the environment to a minimum. The photo below looks the most un-natural of the bunch.

As you can see, the flash casted an un-natural looking shadow. If I'd been able to lower the flash down to her level, and moved the light closer, it might have given a more dramatic look as well as softer shadows. But when it's 35°F I couldn't spend too much time thinking about it.

Developing & Scanning

I developed two rolls of 120 and four sheets of 4x5 in Kodak D76 developer at 1+1 dilution. Nothing exciting.

I scanned everything on my Epson V850 at 3200dpi, converted the negatives using NLP (Negative Lab Pro), cleaned up dust and made basic exposure/contrast adjustments in Photoshop.

In Closing...

I don't have anything else to add. It was a good shoot and I'm very happen with how the photos turned out.

This was my first full blog post in years, and I apologize if my thoughts are all over the place. I do enjoy writing about my work and I hope to keep up with at least a weekly schedule and hopefully over time I can improve my writing.

Thanks for reading!

Links

Website

Instagram