FFP 2020 – November – Out of Focus
November is here….wait, what? I keep telling myself that it is not the end of the year, but it is. Honestly, with this whole COVID-19 thing the year passed but not in a good way with fun memories from the summer or some trips that you took in spring or autumn. But I think I talked too much about COVID-19. I will stop now.
Usually in November I am expecting my annual creative rut to kick in, but it did not come this year. I was a bit surprised that I had ideas about subjects to shoot, even though the month’s theme is not so easy to shoot (I will get to that in a minute). It’s like everything went wrong this year. I cannot complain about November but the rest of the year…
So I mentioned that this month’s theme is not so easy to shoot. Let me tell you why. The theme is “Out of Focus”, which does not sound bad or could mean something that cannot be photographed, but I had some small issues with it. In October I mentioned that having a black-and-white film to shoot in autumn is never a good idea, but when I scanned the images I was very pleased (this is an understatement!) with the results. Autumn yellows look awesome on a black-and-white film stock. So this turned out to be a non-issue. The other issue is that I am using the FED 2 with the Industar-26M 52mm f/2.8 and an Industar-61M 55mm f/2.8, and the minimum focusing distance is 1m on both lenses. For something out of focus I usually use lenses that have a minimum focusing distance of 20-30cm so that I can get close and compose better. Of course I could have used some focusing rings but I did not wanted to include them in my plans to shoot since I was more interested to see the capabilities of the camera and lens combination.
With everything going well so far (NOT!) I set out to find some subjects or an idea of what I was going to shoot. Somehow not all that my eyes could see turned out to be a possible photo, and that made me a bit curious about what will I send this month. While I was at my in-laws house in a small village near the forest searching for subjects to shoot, a rain started and I had to get inside and cancel my search. But while I stood by the window and watched the rain, I began to see possible subjects. After 1 hour of walking through the rain (it was a mild rain, not pouring from the skies) I went passed some roses that looked appealing to say the least. These are the last roses that we will see this year, and some even had flowers. So far so good, but now the real test began. I started shooting from all the positions I could do in that spot (working the subject as they call it) so that I might get something out of focus with a visible separation from the main subject. All I can say is that I was shooting and praying that at least one shot was good enough.
Needless to say that the photo that I picked not only was good enough but it also proved the awesomeness level of these lenses, both of them are Tessar design (4 elements in 3 groups), and I was impressed by the level of sharpness and bokeh. These lenses will be used in future projects and whenever I fell like shooting with a rangefinder camera.
Marius
Frugal Film Project – The Zine!
The Frugal Film Project: one camera, one film, one year. Follow 13 photographers around the globe who complete this project…
The Frugal Film Project 