Q1:
What Kind of Camera do you use?
A1: The answer to this can be found here
in the Gear section.
Q2:
What kind of film do you use?
A2: I used to shoot primarily print film so most of my older
photos (Vietnam photos and some of the US photos) were taken
using a variety of print films ranging from Kodak Ektar 25
to Fuji Superia 800. Nowadays though, I shoot slide film almost
exclusively with Fuji Velvia being my all round favorite and
Kodak E100VS being my film of choice for places like Mexico
with a lot of red scenery. I also use Fuji Provia 100F when
I want the extra speed and the ultra fine grain or for beach
photos because I like the way it renders blue skies and turquoise
waters.
For the black and white pictures on this site,
they were all made using color film which was either scanned
in as B&W or converted to B&W using Photoshop. I generally
don't shoot with B&W film because I only have 1 camera
body and I don't want to miss out on any good color photo
opportunities should they pop up. With color film, you can
always go to B&W but not the other way around. Also, shooting
color allows you to be flexible in how you want to render
your B&W photo. In Photoshop, you can use the color information
of a color image to mimic various filters when converting
to B&W. For instance, you can mimic red filters to darken
the sky or yellow filters to provide smoother skin tones in
post-processing but you couldn't do this with images shot
on B&W film. Some people feel there's no substitute for
the "look" of true B&W films but the results
of converting color images to B&W are suitable for my
tastes.
Q3:
Do you "Photoshop" your photos?
A3: All of the photos on this site have been "Photoshopped"
in the sense that Photoshop was used to fix the shifting that
happens anytime you scan in film. Other than that, most of
the photos pretty much look like they do on the film (or how
I think they look in the case of negative film). I'm not a
purist though so I will crop, do levels adjustments, constrast
masks, and other digital editing techniques, but most of the
time they are minor adjustments and none of the pictures on
this site were composited with the exception of the photo
of the Texas Windmills.
Q4:
How did you make those photos where parts of the picture are
in color and parts in B&W?
A4: This is done by selectively
grayscaling color pictures in Photoshop.
Q5:
How much film do you shoot on a trip?
A5: This depends of course but the short answer is relatively
little. Not including the rolls used for taking snapshots,
the Cuba gallery was made using ~12 rolls of film, Vietnam
with ~22 rolls, ~28 rolls for Mexico, ~5 rolls for Guatemala,
and 1 roll for Belize.
