Shoot at the San Marcos

                                  Marc Harvey Photography

Shoot at the San Marcos

Recently, I found a small breeze way downtown between two early twentieth century apartment buildings.  Photographically, I’ve always had a propensity to photographing concrete and stairs, building facades and their architectural details.  I fell in love with this little area.

Over the next week or so, I took my time and scouting the scene out.  I could see that I was going to have some issues with the sky and the sun coming through between the buildings.  I took some scout shots on my IPhone just to see where everything fell.  I really wanted to pick up the different textures of the wall, slab and foundation that were visually available.  In addition, in the middle of the walkway there was a door that led to a basement apartment with a wonderful light just inside the door that I want to get also.

       

So a week or so later, I returned to the spot with my Pentax 645 120 film camera and set up to take the shot.  It was early afternoon and a bright sunny day.  I know this wasn’t the best light, but I wanted to get the sunlight scraping across the brick and concrete.  I knew I would need to deal with the sky but I was going to exposure for the shadows and process for the highlights.

Here is my contact sheet from the shoot that day and as you can see I have blown out sky and on the right of the frame and I have really bright sunlight coming through the neighboring building’s carport.

After running my edge black test strips and printing this contact sheet, I decided to print the negative in the lower left.  I used a 3.5 filter and had to burn the sky considerably.   The carport was also a trouble area, and I don’t know if I completely got it.  I’ll probably still go back and keep working on it.

And in an additional shot I did get the door I wanted.  This however is a digital shot on my Canon 60D with a wide-angle lens.

Next week I want to show a studio shot I'm working on with a few other students.