Most of the stuff I post here is shot with one of my Holgas. But I love my Bessa R3A with the f1:4 Nokton lens, which I almost always shoot with wide open. I love the surreal bokeh that this lens offers. This image was taken in the Whip Hill section of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, just north of Boston, Mass.
The film (FP4) was stand processed in R09 (Rodinal formula) for two hours at a dilution of 1 to 200. The stand processing really subdues the extremely contrasty early morning light in which this image was taken.
It's a sad fact of life that I can recite line after line of dialogue from the films "This is Spinal Tap" and "Airplane!". But next to those fabulously funny quotes, my favorite bit of dialogue is from a late 1950's film that I have never seen.
In the film "Funny Face", Audrey Hepburn, as a fashion model, says to Fred Astaire, playing the part of a fashion photographer, "Trees are beautiful. Why don't you photograph trees?"
Astaire responds, "I do what I do for a living. It has to do with supply and demand. You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees."
Astaire's quote still rings true today. For me, the supply and demand part involves sitting in front of a computer most days doing post-production and retouching on very hi-res digital photographic files generated by some pretty talented professional photographers.
But in my spare time, I take a lot of photos of trees and such with very low-tech plastic "toy" film cameras, like Holgas and various Diana clones.
And Fred Astaire is correct more than fifty years later.
There still isn't much of a demand for pictures of trees.