This week started great with a sunrise shoot at the flood wall before work on Tuesday. I was thinking about the shot I had gotten the previous weekend and wanted to go back and see if I could work on it a little more. However, I almost didn’t go out, the weather made me hesitant.
When I woke up and looked out the window, it was completely overcast, except for a small looking break out east. I was back and forth on whether to leave or not, but at the last minute I finally made the decision to head out. Once I got out onto a main road, the sky out east was completely clear, and the clouds above were beginning to catch some early glow. So I was hustling to make it over in time so I didn’t miss any light. I did make it to the parking lot in time, but still had a long walk to the flood wall, so I got to running. Just like last time, my legs were on fire and my gear has never felt heavier, but I did make it.
For the composition, I tried getting lower and a little closer to the wall, but one thing that was preventing me from making that the final spot is there was a small waterfall that was falling onto some sticks. This was causing a decent amount of water to spray onto my camera and lens, so I only got a shot with about a 1 second exposure before I moved everything. This was for the better though because I moved to the edge of the rock I was on and set up a shot with the river taking up pretty much the entire bottom of the frame. I also pulled out the 10 stop ND and was able to get a shutter speed of around 3 minutes.
After those first few shots, I switched over to shooting with my Nikon N6006, which is a film camera from the early 90’s that I bought from a nice family a couple of years ago. I haven’t been using it lately though, but for this shoot I loaded it up with some Ektachrome and also switched the 16-35mm lens over to it. I got a similar angle with the wall taking of the whole left side of the frame, but I did have to attempt a focus stack. The 16-35mm is too new of a lens for the N6006, I am not able to switch the aperture value on the lens, so on the film camera it’s always stuck at f/4. After those few shots I put on the 35-70mm, and got a few shots of the skyline and other scenes before I packed up and headed to work!
Wednesday
On my lunch break today I went on a walk downtown with the N6006 to finish off the roll of Ektachrome in it. It was a bit overcast, so my goal was to find subjects and scenes with good color contrast. Not too much else to report back on here, I stuck around the VCU medical campus mostly.
Friday
I sent off some more film rolls today, 2 recent rolls of Ektachrome (the roll from earlier this week and one from about a month ago) and 3 rolls of Ultramax. The Ultramax rolls were shot in 2025 on a trip to Utah that I went on with a group of friends. I kind of forgot what I even could have shot on these rolls, so I’m excited to see what comes back!
Saturday
Today was the first meet up for the RVA Photo Collective and we had a pretty good turnout, and it was all people that I haven’t met before! We met up at The Branch Museum in The Fan, then took a walk around for quite a while. During the walk I started out shooting film on my Hi-Matic E, and I was shooting Fuji 400. I brought it out because it was a little overcast and all the trees were full of life and vibrant green. Those who know, the consensus is that most Fuji films handle greens exceptionally well, so therefore I loaded it up.
I was firing shots off left and right and made it through this roll almost instantly. It was a lot of fun though, focusing on shooting greens was easy, but it was enjoyable looking for different shots that I would usually do.
After the roll was shot, I moved over to digital where I then focused more on finding textures and intimate shots. During this, I think I was still focused on greens because most of the shots I got were of bushes, trees, etc. However, most of them show off some color contrast, mostly with green and yellow. The shots below were fun because in this wall of green ivy, I found a small hint of yellow buried deep within.
