One of my favorite "outtakes" of 2010.

Well another year is behind us. It’s hard to believe. Time flies, I guess. If you were to ask me a year ago to predict where I would be right now, I would be way off the mark.

This year brought a ton of changes, surprises, and detours, but it was a great year nonetheless.

During my archive search for the year’s best images, I began to wonder (like any artist I’m sure) if I progressed from last year. Did I make better images than last year? Have I evolved in my style? My first instinct was “no”, given the fact that I traveled so much during 2009 versus this past year, but after pondering for a week or so, I realized that the images that I made in 2010 were by and large a better representation of where I am taking my work. The portraits are stronger and more focused, and I like that.

Included in the mix are images from my Canon point and shoot G9, my Lubitel twin-lens, and my trusty Polaroid Colorpack III land camera as well as a few editorial event images, editorial portraits, images from advertising campaigns, experimental images, a few personal images, and even (*gasp*) a wedding photo. It’s a motley crew of images, presented in chronological order that I dug from 2010.

I have provided two ways to browse my favorite images from this year. In keeping with tradition, the first method is a simple slideshow set to the lovely music of Australia’s Bag Raiders. It’s definitely a lot more upbeat and fun when compared to last year’s slow, instrumental track. The second method is the usual Photoshelter slideshow. So whether you want to just hit play and dance while checking out my favorites or silently click-through at your own leisure, the choice is there.

Heres to an even better 2011!

Check out last year’s “Best Of” post, check it out, and let me know which set of images you prefer. Todd Spoth Photography’s “Best of 2009″ blog post.

BEST OF 2010 – Images by Todd Spoth

The cover of the Photoshop User magazine Jan/Feb 2011 issue featuring an image by Todd Spoth.

About a month and a half ago I got an email from Mike Mackenzie, Associate Publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazines, letting me know that they wanted me to be featured in Photoshop User magazine. I was thrilled to be featured in a magazine that I receive and read every month, especially after getting a personal tour of the NAPP/Kelby group headquarters just a few months ago. (see that post here)

I have been a NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member for years now and have enjoyed the benefits greatly. The guys over @ NAPP work hard at creating the most thorough training content for creative professionals using Adobe software. If you need to know how to do something in Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Bridge, et al, they know how to get it done. Like many of the professional organizations I belong to, I probably only use a fraction of the member benefits, but my favorite is the free 3-day shipping on every order from B&H photo. If you’re anything like me, you are frequently placing orders for this or that with B&H (one of the largest and best photo/video/audio retailers in the country). Being a NAPP member not only gives you complimentary shipping on every order, but upgrades it to 3-day rather than UPS ground. This benefit alone has made my membership worthwhile. Check out the NAPP website at http://photoshopuser.com.

I have been an Adobe Lightroom user since its beta release in 2006. Back then I was trying out Apple’s counterpart, Aperture, as well as Lightroom and ultimately decided on Lightroom. It was just a lot easier to use. The most recent release, Lightroom 3, has made my life a whole lot easier. The things you can do with the software is amazing.

Mike interviewed me about my usage of Lightroom and some of my basic theories concerning my approach to photography. The resulting interview, bio, and image gallery can be seen in a multi-page feature in the January/February issue of Photoshop User magazine. The issue should arrive to NAPP members this week, and hitting the shelves around January 4th according to the NAPP team. I always see the magazine front and center at places like Barnes & Noble, Borders and other places magazines are sold, so pick one up if you can! To read the actual bio and interview text simply click on the image of the spread below or click here.

The cover to the special Lightroom section featuring images by Todd Spoth.

Photoshop User magazine has a special Lightroom section, which is where my feature can be found. A selection of my images are on the Lightroom section’s title page (seen above) and the actual feature is comprised of a two page spread which includes a short bio, the short interview, another batch of images, as well as an additional page featuring a few more images (seen below) The actual design of the spread is meant to look like the layout of Lightroom itself, complete with basic camera settings for each of the highlighted images.

The main, two-page spread featuring a bio, interview and photos by Todd Spoth.

An additional page featuring more photos by Todd Spoth.

In addition to being featured in the issue, I was surprised when just a few days ago, when I received my own physical copy in the mail, that they had chosen one of my images for the cover as well. The interesting part is that the cover image was actually not taken with one of my expensive SLR bodies, but my point-and-shoot Canon G9, which has since been sold. Oh the irony! Regardless of the tools that captured the moment, I think the image looks great.

I initially sent Mike and the guys over at NAPP about 30 or so images to choose from, so the final selection of images was ultimately left up to their team. Below is a short digest of the images they chose for the issue and links to their respective blog posts. There were several other, smaller, images the guys chose to fill out the thumbnail bar towards the bottom of each page, but the main images are all detailed below.

COVER

1. Portrait of Libby Johnston taken with the Canon G9. See “THE RED CURTAIN”.

LIGHTROOM TITLE PAGE

1. Portrait of Kingwood High School swimmer, Matt Barber. See “FUTURE OLYMPIAN?”.

2. Portrait of MLB pitching prospect, Jameson Taillon. See “JAMESON TAILLON”.

3. “Summer Solstice” image created to illustrate the hot Houston Summers. (no blog)

MAIN SPREAD

1. Portrait of my buddy Rob, who is a teacher. (no blog)

2. Matt Barber again. (see above)

3. “Favela Boys” from my 2008/2009 essay on Rio de Janeiro. See “BRAZIL”.

4. Portrait of “The Dog Whisperer”, Cesar Millan. See “THE DOG WHISPERER”.

ADDITIONAL PAGE

1. Portrait of Shawn Welling, filmmaker, dancer, choreographer and painter. See “MORE PORTRAITS”.

2. Portrait from the deserts of Qatar. See “DESTINATION: QATAR”.

3. Jameson Taillon again. (see above)

4. Portrait of friend and fellow photographer, Adrienne Byard. See “ADRIENNE & ELIZABETH”.

The images of the spread above were from PDF’s, I did manage to scan a few more of the pages of the issue, where my images are shown. Since the images below are direct scans as opposed to the PDF’s seen above, I used Photoshop to clean the scans up and make them look presentable for the blog! Go Photoshop! Ha.

Table of contents page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

About page featuring photos from Todd Spoth.

Masthead page where I am listed as a contributing writer.

Four images by Todd Spoth as they appeared in the 2010 show, "Convergences"

Back in June I was invited to participate in a group gallery show put on by my good friend, Alfonso Cantarero. The show, entitled, “Convergences” featured a lot of amazing work by several local artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. Once I saw that most of the participants were amazing illustrators, painters and street artists, I was humbled to be chosen as one of the few photographers to show. The show held a great opening night at War’Hous Studios Gallery on June 26th and featured some awesome music and good food.

In preparing for the show I struggled a bit with what I wanted to show. My anxiety only increased when I saw that most of the other artists were street artists. After a bit of thinking I came up with an idea. I had been sitting on some nice medium format scans from a few months ago (see this older blog post about the medium format images here) and thought that this was a great opportunity to showcase those. Since those images were square I decided to create a 2×2 grid of square prints. Ideally, I would have loved to have added additional images to make the grid larger, to possibly a 3×3 or even 4×4, but given the time and space constraints I went with 4 simple images.

I consciously chose images that were fairly recent (all but 1 was captured in the last couple of months) as well as images from my archive that were fairly unseen (besides being posted on the blog that is). If it isn’t obvious already, I love vibrant colors, so I wanted the prints to be displayed in color versus black and white.

As for the theme of the images, it came to me while struggling between wanting to showcase my portrait work and showcasing more of my abstract work that is not usually seen by many. I ultimately decided on a compromise and found 4 images that were centered around 1 person, but were still semi-abstract. Since the eyes are one of the most important component in a portrait I decided to choose 4 images where the eyes of the subject were obscured or hidden, giving the subjects a level of animosity and imposing a sense of mystery on the viewer.

Given the feedback of a few visitors to the gallery, I believe my theme was a success. Two of the images are digital captures, the other two are film scans. Each are 20″x20″ print was chemically produced onto Kodak E-surface paper and professionally mounted onto 1/4 inch foam core.

Now that the show is over I will be selling each of these prints for just $75. The proceeds from the sale(s) will help fund an exciting upcoming project. The prints can be shipped anywhere and I can accept any form of payment so please contact me if you are at all interested!

More detailed info on each image is below.

This image is from a playful underwater shoot we did back in May at a very upscale condominium complex here in downtown Houston, Texas. The high-rise had a roof-top lounge pool that offered nice vistas to shoot against. We had access to a very nice (and expensive) underwater housing for our digital camera rig during the shoot and took advantage of that resource. The rig itself was VERY challenging to say the least, but it was a blast getting to try something new. I have underwater housing for my smaller digital rigs, but this was a whole new animal. This particular image was something I had captured in between sessions. Most of the portraits were shot with the models half in and out of the water and this image, shot as the model playfully jumped into the pool after her session was wrapped, was one of my favorite outtakes from the day.

This image, which is one of the two medium format film scans, is actually of my brother, Zach. We had just acquired the Lubitel twin lens camera and had taken it to a family gathering. I took my brother outside and had him pose in front of some foliage in the backyard. Being of that age, he feigned interest and I captured this image of him wiping his face between takes. I’ve loved this image and moment from the first time I scanned it in.

This image is the other medium format film scan of the 4. It was actually taken on the same roll as the above photo, only minutes after that image was captured. It was my first double exposure with the Lubitel twin lens camera. I really liked the brush that was growing in my father’s backyard so I captured an image of that and double exposed a portrait on top. I believe she was touching her face for some reason. This was another in-between moment that I loved. You can barely make out her right eye. We haven’t put many rolls through the Lubitel, but to this day, this frame is still my favorite.

This final image was the only image captured more than a few months ago. It was taken on July 19th, 2009 in the Limpopo province of South Africa. I believe we were in a van headed towards a game ranch in Alldays when I captured this. There was beautiful scenery all around us and I was stuck in the dead middle of a van stuffed with people and gear. I was annoyed at the fact that I did not have a window seat to capture drive by images so after a little thought, I made it work in my favor.

Finally, after a long weekend, the last post in the 4-part series is here, but for posterity, let’s recap the previous 3 posts.

(Click on each of the following to check out the post)

1 of 4: Oktomat

2 of 4: 5D II

3 of 4: Lubitel

Since the new Apple iPhone 4 was released just a week or so prior to my leaving on this recent trip, and given the fact that I had pre ordered and received the new phone, this post is pretty much a given. I took a handful of images and video after receiving the new phone and prior to leaving, however I was excited that I would be able to travel with the phone to put it through its paces.

I upgraded my phone from the Apple iPhone 3G which was 2 years old. The advancements made in the built in camera(s) were worth the price of the upgrade alone, as it is the camera that is ALWAYS with me, even when there is nothing else. I took somewhere in the ballpark of 3000 images during the life of my 3G (click here to see my previous posts from the older iPhone 3G) and am already on pace to break that record with this new iPhone.

Whenever I see something that inspires me or just need a quick photo of something I reach in my back pocket and pull out my phone. I started snapping images as soon as we were in the airport in Houston and didn’t stop until we were home. I believe I took around 600-700 images during the week-long trip, not to mention a ton of HD video clips as well. During our short stay in Chicago I snapped a photo of this beautiful church on the corner of W. Barry and W. Seminary streets. Moments later I started toying with a few of the image editing apps I have installed on my phone. After combining a few of the effects from 2 different 3rd party apps I stumbled on an effect that I found rather appealing. Throughout the remainder of the trip I would go back and edit images taken on the trip in the same manner and came out with another little iPhone photo essay from the travel.

The original iPhone4 image, the image converted to black and white, and the final image.

The illustration above shows the progression from the initially captured image to how the image looked after the first step with the third image illustrating the completed image.

The first step was to identify which images would work best for the project. I found that high contrast images with fairly simple content worked best. Huge group photos with a ton of people would often seem muddied up, so sticking to fairly simple images worked best.

Secondly I used the Photoshop Mobile app to convert the images into black and white, boost contrast and perfect exposure. The Photoshop Mobile app is great for those basic tweaks that any real photographer would need. Sure there are a few bells and whistles to entice the casual user into purchasing, but it’s the only app I have (and that I have found) that will let me crop and straighten images with a constrained aspect ratio. After saving the edited black and white image I was ready for the final step.

I have several impulse buy image editing apps that I have been into lately such as Red Giant’s Plastic Bullet app that turns your photos into vintage wonders, but the app that worked for me here is Stephen Spring’s Pic Grunger. It’s a simple application that allows the user to select an image and apply any one of several built in textures. Some of the textures look better than others when outputted. I originally dug the “cracked” look, but since it didn’t hold up too well when I transferred them to the computer, I decided to go with the “creased” look. The app seems to output the images at 1000 pixels on the long end (about 1/3 of the original size) which is definitely a negative and I wish there were more choices of textures, but other than that, the app is awesome. The vintage, sepia tone, textured feel produced from the app gave the images a punch that I really dig.

A few of my favorites are in the slideshow below. Check back periodically as I will most likely be adding more images to this gallery from time to time.

Now that all 4 parts to this blog series is complete, please drop me a line to tell me which set of images you liked most!

JULY 2010: IPHONE OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

Today’s blog is the 3rd in our 4-part travel series and focuses on images from our Lubitel 166, twin-lens, medium format camera.

We put a few rolls through the Lubitel during our trip, but it is fairly new to our collection. It was acquired back in March and it takes a bit of getting used to, but I have definitely made some frames I really dig. A few months ago I made a blog post highlighting a few of the first rolls through it. (<—– click over there to check out the first Lubitel blog!)

The Lubitel 166+ (the version we own) is a twin-lens medium format camera that is a reissue of the older Lubitel models, which were actually based on the old Voigtlander Brillant camera. Unlike its predecessors, our version is plastic and very lightweight, which is both a benefit and a hindrance depending on how you look at it. On one hand I love that I can hang it around my neck and almost forget it’s there, but at the same time, I get nervous when I have to stuff it in the bottom of a full camera bag for fear it might be crushed, or crack somehow. Luckily I haven’t had any issues. The controls are fairly simple, but anyone who has ever tried to carefully compose a shot with a TLR and a waist level viewfinder (without a tripod) will understand the frustration. As someone who came from a graphic design background and puts a lot of stock in careful composition and lines, I sometimes find myself frustrated when trying to fine tune a shot, but after the film is developed and I realize I nailed it, (if I actually did nail it) I feel like I just conquered the world.

Given the time and effort that goes into every frame, we only managed to run 3 rolls of 120 Kodak Portra 400vc through it during the trip. Shooting the 6×6 format (which I prefer to the rectangular) we only get 12 exposures per roll, meaning that we walked away with 36 total frames about half of which I liked and are in a slideshow at the bottom of the post. That is an almost 50% keeper rate, which in the world of photography, isn’t bad at all. The vivid color film makes the colors pop nicely as you can see in the above image of the cornfield against the blue sky. The images have a definite mood and texture to them which I like. If you’re wanting a quick snapshot of a scene and have only a few seconds, there are other cameras that will do a better job, but if you can spare a few minutes and can take your time in a fairly static scene, the Lubitel can give you a nice image. Of course, it’s no Hasselblad, but for the price and weight, it can’t be beat.

15 of our favorite Lubitel images from our trip are below, including a few more double exposures as well. Let me know what you think of them on the Todd Spoth Photography Facebook page or Twitter page and stay tuned for the last post in the series (which may be the most interesting) coming soon!

JULY 2010: LUBITEL OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

The abandoned building which once was a bustling Hoover Appliance factory. North Canton, Ohio.

I just wanted to start this post off by thanking everyone that took the time to check out the previous blog post about the huge Blurb book we created for my grandmother. A record number of viewers checked out the blog and I am still getting positive comments from all over the globe.

I talked a little about the trip to visit family in the previous blog, however this blog will be the first in a series of four, dedicated to the images made during that trip. Even though it was a mostly personal trip, I still managed to capture plenty of images along the way. The fact that the trip was a no pressure, non-business, situation allowed me to take out some old toys and have a little fun.

Each of the four blogs will concentrate on images captured with a certain camera or device, digital, film, cellphone or otherwise. You’ll have to stay tuned to check out the upcoming blogs, but today’s blog focuses on the Lomo Oktomat, a tiny plastic camera that captures 8 different frames onto one single frame of film. The tiny plastic lens all aimed in slightly different directions make this toy camera one of the funnest cameras in my collection. And you can’t argue with the price either!

I must have picked up this little 35mm toy camera from Lomo for about $35 or so, at least 4 or 5 years ago (before Lomo and Urban Outfitters got in bed together) and have used it fairly sporadically ever since. I guess that is the nature of the toy camera or at least for the cameras in my collection. I have a ton of toy cameras and old Polaroid cameras that get taken out randomly. There are a few that I really love and travel with me often, but most are just for fun. There are a few Polaroid cameras in my collection I would love to take everywhere, but given the scarcity and thus, the price, of certain Polaroid films that is impossible, but that’s a story for another day.

For the Oktomat, there are few concerns. It is 35mm, which makes it easy to find and process the film, the size is tiny in comparison to some of my other toy behemoths, and the controls are pretty much non-existent, in a good way. There is no (real) viewfinder for you to fine tune compositions, no manual exposure dials and no options for a flash. You simply point (in the general direction of) and shoot. With a quick crank of the film advance lever you are ready to go. Since its 35mm you will change film less as it can have 36 exposures rather than 12 or 16. It takes the saying, “shooting from the hip” to a whole new level.

The frames are grainy and dirty (mostly due to my shoddy scanning abilities), some frames come out dark and unusable, some blurry and sometimes the plastic film advance dial doesn’t want to properly advance the film, but it’s all of the above that add to the overall appeal of the camera, especially when you can pull a nice, dreamy, diamond from the rough.

Libby's ink and watercolor representation of the Lomo Oktomat drawn on our trip.

We ended up carrying the Oktomat (illustrated above) wherever we went on our trip from roller coasters at Cedar Point to the middle of the Amish country. In total I believe we shot about 5 or 6 rolls through the camera which I had processed upon our return. They were then scanned in and rediscovered. Since the camera is so unpredictable by nature, it’s pretty interesting to see what came out when you are scanning the images in.

I did some basic edits to my 36 favorite frames and put them into a slideshow which is below.

Tomorrow will feature photos from a different camera so stay tuned!

JULY 2010: OCTOMAT OHIO – Images by Todd Spoth

The 400 page Blurb book, produced by Todd Spoth and Libby Johnston.

My family has been planning my grandmother’s 80th birthday celebration for about a year now. My family on my mom’s side is a close-knit group of individuals, however logistics is sometimes an issue as we are scattered across the globe from Tokyo to LA to Cleveland to Brazil. We agreed early on to all meet up in Cleveland to surprise my grandmother with a visit.

After I got my travel plans in order, I had to decide what to get my 80 year old grandmother. I had been involved in my scanning project for a few months then and almost immediately decided on producing a photo book as a gift to her.

I’m sure my family is not dissimilar to many in that there are hundreds and hundreds of amazing film images scattered across aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, that sadly, sit, unorganized and deteriorating in closets and trunks and attics and basements. Given my (somewhat forced) knowledge on digital archiving and preservation, I took it upon myself to start scanning in some of these legacy images, digitally. It was and has been a time-consuming and tedious process, however it is, in the end, worth every minute as now these digital files are easily accessible and archivable.

After scanning in hundreds if not thousands of weathered prints and negatives, I realized I had only scratched the surface. The images I had scanned thus far were from my own personal stash of images from my childhood and from a few handfuls of unorganized photos that my mother, who currently is living in Brazil, had sent over to me. The scanning in of the images using our Canon CanoScan 8800F flatbed scanner was definitely the most time-consuming and tedious part, from there we could concentrate on the book.

Libby and I worked through different concepts and ideas for the book, before ultimately deciding on doing a 7″x7″ book by Blurb using Blurb’s own Booksmart software. We had done several photo book’s with Blurb in the past and had a pretty good experience with them overall. We were coming down to our deadline in getting the book ordered so given the fact that we were familiar with the software and company as a whole, we chose Blurb.

We toyed with the idea of creating 3 or 4 mini-books or creating a really big book with intricate layouts, but in the end decided on a smaller 7″x7″ book that would be filled with full size images from our family’s past. The book was to be hardcover with an ImageWrap cover, meaning there was no dust-jacket and the cover would be printed with our own design. We decided not to mess with the different layout styles and simplify the book by having just 1 image per page, full bleed. There are a few exceptions, such as a few double-trucks, and a few carefully assembled layouts, but for the most part, each page is it’s own photo. This not only made our lives easier in the layout process, it would be a lot easier to experience, especially by someone who is 80 years old.

Our last rule we imposed on ourselves for the production was that all of the images that would appear in the book would be film images. I have tens of thousands of digital images from more recent family events, however for this project I wanted to focus on the past and concentrate on the amazing archive of film images I had recently acquired. Not only was I scanning in 35mm prints from my childhood, but I had discovered a lot of priceless gems such as a set of prints of my late grandfather during his time in the Air Force as well as images of my grandmother in her 20′s, living in Japan.

The old prints of my grandfather during the war are among my favorite images.

Typically during my own portfolio editing process, I toil with cutting down the number of images into a tightly-edited package of only the best, but for this project I had to change my thought-process. We initially tried to edit some of the images down, but ultimately decided that this was not a portfolio and that my grandmother and family would be thrilled to see as many photos as possible. After checking out the page count limitations on the Blurb website we decided to produce as many pages in the time we had to finish the book. Libby worked tirelessly to layout as many quality pages as she could while I worked to come up with a design for the cover. We really wanted to max out the number of pages out at 440 (the Blurb maximum) but due to time constraints we topped out at 400.

Prior to deciding to go for quantity with the page count, I scoured the Internet looking for photos of other large Blurb books, but came up empty. There were a few here and there, but for the most part, there weren’t any real images, which is my inspiration for this blog post and the images that follow.

I tried for days designing different cover ideas for the book. One of my designs included a black cover with “La Familia” in an Old English typeface dipping across the front. After a visit to the local Japanese market I had the idea of doing a parody cover of the packaging of some Japanese rice crackers. I explained to Libby my idea and with both of us in agreement she went to work. She created the entire front and back cover from scratch, mimicking every detail of the original packaging and adding in subtle details as they pertained to the book.

The inspiration for the cover, (right) and the final product, (left)

Since Libby spent so much time and did such an awesome with not only the layout but the cover design as well, I decided to take an older film photo of her and design a credit page for the back of the book.

The custom credit page I designed with a childhood photo of Libby.

When we received the book we were excited to flip through all of the pages and see them for the first time. I was pleased overall, but there were a few things I noted for our next Blurb book endeavor. First, the ImageWrap cover  needs a pretty significant amount of bleed room to actually wrap around the covers of the book. Blurb warned us about this, and it looks fine, but we would have liked a bit more breathing room for some of the cover elements. Since the book is only 7″x7″ and 400 pages, more of the images get lost in the gutter as opposed to a 12″x12″ book with only 10 pages. This really wasn’t too much of an issue once the book was delivered and started to get worn in, but it was a concern. Other than that, the project was a complete success and my family, especially my grandmother had a great time looking through all of the images and reliving all of the memories.

In addition to helping with the layout and cover design, Libby also constructed a tiered-trio of custom made boxes to present the book in along with a few other small gifts. All of the family members were also given a DVD with a similar custom cover layout that had digital copies of all of the images I had scanned in. My goal with the DVD’s and book is to inspire the rest of my family to organize and scan in their weathering prints so that we can properly maintain and archive our family’s history.

If you have any thoughts about the project or have created your own huge Blurb book, I would love to hear your comments and experiences. Please let me know what you think!

400 PAGE BLURB BOOK (JUNE 2010) – Images by Todd Spoth

For Libby’s birthday I got her a vintage Lubitel twin lens camera. She has always loved twin lens units so since the ones in our current collection had completed the transition from functioning camera to sitting on the shelf with the rest of the old-timers, I decided to get a new one. I went with the Lubitel, because it is lightweight (a definite plus for her) simple and is a nice marriage between accuracy and that nice vintage look.

She ran a roll through it while on a business trip a few weeks ago and the results were nice. This week, however, was my turn to test the new toy out. My “toy” for the past few months has been my vintage Polaroid Colorpack III camera so while I was used to the slow process, I was not used to the lack of instant gratification that I get with not only the Polaroid, but with my digital bodies as well.

It took some time to re-calibrate my sense of sight with a waist-level viewfinder once again, but the resulting images were decent. My design background influences my photography and the way I see the world, so my natural OCD with lines and things were put to the test with a very disorienting and someone dim viewfinder. There were scenes that I had wished I would have shot over the week or so that the roll was in the camera, but it gets rather cumbersome when I am juggling a digital camera, a Polaroid camera, an iphone with its own fairly decent camera, and now this Lubitel. The new toys are both fairly large and cumbersome in their own right as well as being plastic and not as robust as my digital bodies so there are definitely challenges.

After my assignment covering a triathlon (blog forthcoming) I swung by the lab and processed my initial test roll which took exactly 1 week to use. I used a 12 exposure roll of Kodak VC (vivid color) 400 ASA for the maiden voyage and was pleased overall. We scanned the frames in using our Canon CanoScan 8800F flatbed scanner with the included negative carrier. I ended up with about 5 images that I liked which I guess isn’t bad for a roll of 12 and for my first time using the camera. I do wish that I was able to somehow scan the images in with the borders intact so that I can see the film info and frame numbers, but I was unable to figure out a way. Libby even constructed a custom carrier, but the scanner’s native software kept throwing us error messages. If anyone has any idea on how I can accomplish this, please let me know.

The 5 selects from the 12 shot roll aren’t the greatest images ever, but I really enjoyed the simple square format and that good-ole film look. They all came out pretty sharp for a plastic camera. There are a couple snapshots from the triathlon this past Sunday, a couple from the previous Sunday visiting family and a random shot from a commercial assignment earlier this past week. The above image is one of the two double exposures that I attempted during the roll. I exposed an image of an interesting area of foliage with an overlay of an image of Libby rubbing her face.

Hopefully Libby will let me “borrow” the camera for some more random fun or possibly a project in the future.

LUBITEL 120 SCANS (APRIL 2010) – Images by Todd Spoth

No, this is entry has nothing to do with the USSR or the Cold War, but we do like red. Libby and I have some bold red curtains that span an entire wall in our living room, so we decided to have a bit of fun with some gear that was laying about being inventoried. These past few weeks have seen little shooting as I have been laboriously preparing my entries into the various photo contests that all have deadlines either fast approaching or shortly past. I had some lighting gear laid out over our living room floor space so during a break in the editing action Libby (and in a few frames TT) graciously posed for me during an impromptu portrait session. The trick here was that I used my point and shoot Canon G9 camera instead of my big cameras. I’ve had the G9 for a little over 2 years now and still love it. I used to use it for multimedia projects back when I was in Colorado, but now that my main camera bodies both shoot full HD video, Libby has taken over the G9.

One of the major benefits of the G9 is its hotshoe and its ability to sync with a flash up to 1/1000th of a second +. Knowing this, I slapped a pocket wizard on the G9 (which looks silly as the wizard is just about the same size as the camera itself) and went to town. The background light is a little harsh, partially because the G9 doesn’t render colors as well as a proper camera and partially because the light was just thrown up there, but you get the drift. After several different expressions we wrapped up and I went back to editing.

I put together 9 that I particularly liked into a little grid, which is below, along with a slideshow of the individual images.

Every year Libby and I send out a self-designed holiday card using our own skills as graphic artists and photographers. When it came time to produce this year’s card we had some initial trouble coming up with a fresh idea. After a bit of thinking I came up with the idea of using images taken specifically with my iPhone.

We whittled down hundreds of images from 5 continents and numerous events down to 70 colorful images that all appear on the front of the card. I wanted the thumbnails on the front of the card to be large enough to be readable to the viewer, yet small enough to maintain the graphic element of the grid. After putting the design together, we were both pleased with the initial outcome, but wanted to take it a step further. I decided to create the online aspect to supplement the physical card. IPHONEADVENTURE.COM is the manifestation of that.

Since all of the images that were chosen represent a significant moment or memory from 2009, we wanted this project to go beyond just a tiny thumbnail, and to explain itself, in context.

All 70 images from the physical card, are viewable in a larger, un-cropped format on the website. In addition, each image is accompanied by the date the image was made, the GPS coordinates corresponding to where the image was taken as well as a short and candid description of the image. Since the iPhone automatically embeds GPS location data into each photo taken with the device you will be able to see exactly where we were when we took the image via Google Maps. Clicking on the coordinates in each image’s description will open up a new window with data about the location.

Happy Holidays to everyone. Please take a moment to visit our little end of year project, IPHONEADVENTURE.COM

(ps. the image above is also an iphone image!)