Next month I will be attending the wedding of a close friend of mine. It's sure to be a blast and while they have hired a pro to cover the event, I really want to take some great pictures. Normally, I would probably cover a wedding using a pretty typical equipment kit. Two DSLR bodies, three or four lenses and a couple of TTL strobes would probably do the trick. But, for this event I have decided to try and do something a little different. First of all, I plan to shoot the entire event in black and white. Second, I plan to use only available light. That's right, no flash whatsoever.

I think I have a few options here. The ideal digital tool for the job would be something along the lines of a Canon 5D MKII, or some other small DSLR that does really great in low light and high ISO. This camera coupled with a fixed, fast lens like the 24 f/1.4 or 35 f/1.4 would be just about all I'd need.

Of course I don't currently have any of this equipment, so I would have to either borrow or rent.

Alternatively, I could try and shoot this event on film using Tmax p3200.  I have used this film plenty of times in the past, and it's really great stuff. The grain is HUGE, but smooth and pleasant, and you can even push it a stop or two if you really need to. Of course, I'd need to acquire a bunch of it ( please tell me Kodak still makes this stuff ) and, I'd need to set up a processing line to get at the images.

Last week I watched Michael Mann's Manhunter. It's a real gem of a movie starring William Peterson ( CSI Las Vegas ). Manhunter is essentially the prequel to Silence of the Lambs and was remade and titled Red Dragon in 2002. Although I really like Anthony Hopkins as the venerable Dr. Lecter, I have to say, Mann's highly stylized version from 1986 is still my favorite. All this Michael Mann business of course lead me to watching a few episodes of Miami Vice ( which I posted about here ) and so naturally I have been taking a few screen captures. Not really sure where I'm going with this, but I really liked this one which was only on screen for a second and is fitting with yesterday's post about surveillance.

It's interesting how these things all tie themselves together. Last semester at MICA, we had a few visiting artists who sort of hit the nail on the head. Flickr searches, surveillance in cinema, photo archives--it's all beginning to meld together. The above image was captured on my laptop screen at 1440 x 900 pixels. As you can see the actual image area is cropped to TV format, and additionally cropped by the original editor for the in-camera surveillance effect. Not too may pixels to work with!

I just ran into this music video on the web. The band ran around to different locations where they knew they would be recorded on surveillance video cameras and performed. Then, because of England's version of the US Freedom of Information Act, they were entitled to the footage. Pretty cool idea I guess!

Here is some more info at The Future of Media blog.

One of my all-time favorite films, Kodachrome is officially dead. Announced this morning, Kodak will cease to produce the legendary film, which has been around for some 74 years! I guess those “nice bright colors” just aren’t nice enough anymore.

Kodachrome was certainly one of the first films I really fell in love with. It had such a specific characteristic about it that made it really appealing to me as a budding photographer. At one point I remember reading about a new checmical process that was aimed at bringing Kodachrome back to the fore, but I guess it never panned out--too bad. I will really miss you, Kodachrome.

The gallery at right was created by searching the term “kodachrome” at flickr.com.

It's video day today here at micahwalter.com! I have just uploaded the first in series of one-minute "Live Portraits." I am currently uploading them to flickr as they meet the "less than 90 seconds" rule, but I also have them on Vimeo.

So far there is just this one, but I made a special page for them over here. 

Briefly, these are shot on a Sony HV1-1VU HD cam in 24p mode ( might go back to regular for this ). I am still playing with what to do with them once they are done. So far I have just done some basic contrast enhancement in Adobe Premiere, but I am also curious how they would look in B+W.