As seen in my previous post I got a new camera and have been learning how to use it.  The example photos in that post did not turn out super great, which is as I expected.  The purpose of that photoshoot was to:

• See if the camera worked at all (it does), and

• See if the light meter worked (it does!)

Shortly after determining that the camera and light meter were functioning correctly, I opted to set out and use up one roll of Kodak Gold 200.  I then sent it off to Reformed Film Labs, who did a wonderful job developing the film.

Obviously, not all of the shots turned out as I’d like, and the ones that I do like could be better, but here are my favorites:

This is what started the whole trip – a week or two prior, I had driven south a ways and happened upon an old abandoned house.  Respectfully, I didn’t venture inside (also, there was not enough light for good photos) but I wanted to get a shot of it anyway.

This one turned out quite desaturated.  I’m assuming this is because the river was so bright (reflections of the sun around 6pm).  The river was also extremely flooded and flowing quite quickly, and this bridge was very old and narrow, which was a bit nerve-wracking.  All-in-all, I like how it turned out, though I need to learn how to shoot in extreme brightness.

Here’s that bridge I mentioned.  It’s a lot smaller than it looks – my Fiat 500 only had about one foot of room on either side to spare.

Here is the water on the other side of the bridge.  I attempted to do some artsy framing with the support beams.

This was from around the bridge area.  This image is also fairly desaturated, but it shows how flooded it was that day.

This was an attempt at shooting at night.  I’m just happy that the picture isn’t super blurry, so I did something right.  Interestingly, the curve of lights on the bottom half of the image were created by the lens, so I have something unique going on with my lens (Helios 44M).  With some time, maybe I can learn to use it to my advantage.

More from the night-time photoshoot.  I didn’t even realize my second cat was hiding in the background.

My wife says this one is kind of creepy.  I, however, like it (probably because it’s kind of creepy).  This image very clearly shows the sort of spiral blur that the Helios 44M lens is apparently known for.

More experimentation with lights in the dark.  There are only, like, three actual lights in this picture, the rest are all ghosts from the lens. (Or maybe they’re just ghosts).

Here is one of my dog, who went on this expedition with me and enjoyed feeling the breeze in her hair.

Another one of my dog.  This one is probably my favorite, and I regret that the very top and very bottom of her face are cut off.  Even so, I think it turned out nicely.

Here she is posing with my car.

This is a flower from my backyard. I was testing out depth of field.

Here is one of the roads I drove on that day.  I think maybe a bit of depth is lost here, because it’s actually quite a long stretch of road.

Conclusion

Well, that’s only like 14 out of 36 pictures.  The rest are either repeats of a scene that I really wanted to make sure came out right (they say one in one-hundred photos are good), are photos that didn’t turn out too well, or are photos that I just thought were a bit boring and decided not to showcase.