Black and White Winter in New York City

I went to New York City lately on vacation and shot a bunch of film while I was there.

I haven’t gone through the color shooting quite yet, but I did go through my black and white shots.

I didn’t get a strap with my Mamiya RB67 and didn’t manage to pick one up until lately. For the most part, I don’t like having my camera around my neck, so I’d just carry the RB67 around the crock of my shoulder. The problem is, that takes up a hand, so I’d pass it off to my wife, who finally decreed that I needed to do something about the situation, so I finally got an OP/TECH Super Pro Strap.

When I got back, I read Luminous Landscape’s talk about their latest realization in Antarctica that if you bumped the shutter speed up high enough, you could shoot medium format without a tripod and still get good results, something I had realized months ago. So, you have to remember that many of these shots were handheld and often times without careful metering.

I carried the RB67 everywhere and the OP/TECH strap really worked. It felt like nothing.

I compared it against a Hassleblad because the guy next to me in the plane trip back had one. It made the Hassleblad look like a toy in comparison.

I mostly shot color slide film with the RB67, but I did shoot a roll of Fomapan 400 just for kicks and developed it in Rodinal. The waist-level finder came in handy because I didn’t have to hold the camera in front of my face.

One benefit of the RB67 is that I can rotate the back without the camera. I felt it helped give a sense of height to the buildings.

Just a bird on the street, in the snow.

I’ve wanted to see this library since I saw Ghostbusters.

Most of my black and white was shot with my 35mm gear with a red filter. Most of the shooting was done with Fomapan 400 film, metered at 320 and developed in Rodinal.

Buildings of Manhattan:

I spent a lot of time just shooting pictures of attractive-looking bits of buildings.

I saw a nook along a straight wall and it struck me as interesting:

New York is kind of like a playground for street photography because there’s always a crowd of people doing something:

Pushing black and white film sometimes ends up being a sport more than a real photographic exercise. I wanted to shoot a roll of Delta 3200 and capture the city at night. I found that I could still get acceptable handheld exposures with a red filter on my lens, which became a source of amusement for me: