 episode four of making a zine. I know we're only a few episodes into this series, but this week we're in under a extreme heat warning and it's going to last all week. It's not going to be very pleasant to be out making images. Not out in the woods anyway. We're going to be about 100 degrees every day. So I thought I'd take this week off and take the opportunity to touch on a few points that I haven't been able to so far. We'll talk about some of the details and go a little more in depth on what this project is. And then I thought I would go ahead and pick three of my favorite images. We'll pick one from each episode and I'll talk a little bit about those photos. Give me a chance to go a little more in depth on the images. Something I haven't been able to do so far in this series. If you've missed what we're doing here with this zine video project is about. I'll just give you a brief rundown. So basically I'm doing a video series on making a zine where I'm going from making the photographs. I'm taking along on that process where I make the photographs and then we'll go over some of the editing. All the steps that you would take to make a zine and then at the end of the video project we'll have covered from the shoot clear to the printed product. There's a time frame that this will take place. The photography has to be done in the time frame of summer. So basically between June 21st and September 22nd. That's the time that I have to make the images for the zine. And then we'll have it printed sometime probably in late fall early winter. Now if you're not familiar with what a zine is it's a pretty informal term. For me it's a collection of photographs. Maybe with a theme, a body of work on a location or an environment. It's a collection of photographs that I can run together in a magazine format. This project that I'm working on right now is something I've been really wanting to do for a long time. This is something I would have liked to have done many many years ago. But because of the job I had as a photographer, I really didn't have time to do it. And when I would have liked to have done it, digital photography had kind of replaced film. So I really, I kind of missed the opportunity to do this project. So I thought well why not let's just go ahead and do it all in film. I'm getting a chance to do something that I wanted to do many years ago and just never felt the timing was right. Now that I've said it's black and white film, this is all 35 millimeter black and white film. Most likely I'll shoot most of project in Ilford's Delta 100. In my last episode I did use a roll of Ilford's Delta 400 because I needed a little more speed. But I anticipate most of this project being done on Delta 100. I'm rating these films at box speed. I really don't want to shoot it any slower than ISO 100, if I can get away with it. Which means I'll be doing a lot of work on a tripod, which is fine. But I have, it's a super fine grain, it's just a beautiful film. But I don't see any reason, at least from what I'm getting, any reason to shoot it anything other than box speed. When I shot the 400, I shot it at box speed and it turned out great. And I seem to be getting really good results with the Delta 100 at box speed. I'm developing all the film myself. I'm using a Patterson tank, takes a couple of reels, holds about 20 ounces of fluid. That allows me to keep the cost down and control the development. It's plus I can turn it around very fast. I would recommend anybody that is going to shoot black in my film to learn to develop. It's just so much more convenient to be able to come home and develop a film. And it's not hard to do. You might as well. The developer I'm using right now is Arista Premium Liquid. It's a concentrate, highly concentrated. And I'm mixing that to a one to nine dilution rate. I'm developing the film at 68 degrees. I don't know if you want to know this. At about seven, seven and a half minutes, I don't use a stop bath. I know that might be controversial. I've never used a stop bath in the thousands of roles of film I've developed. If someone wants to convince me of a really good compelling reason to add that process, add that cost, add that chemical to my process, then I'm all ears. But I've never in my life used anything but water as a stop bath. And the fixer I'm using for this project is Photographers Formulatory TF5. It's an archival rapid fixer. Seems to be working great. I don't really have any complaints. I've used it for quite a while. It's pretty affordable. Comes in a liquid form. And then you mix it into a working solution. And it's good for about 20 roles, I believe. The two film cameras that I have taken out so far is an N80. It's a Nikon N80 and a Nikon F5. And they seem to be working out pretty well for the project. I'm leading a little more towards the F5. I don't have to do a lot of hiking for this project. So the F5, the weight of it, isn't really a big issue. I am enjoying the mirror lock up. And some of these lower shutter speeds, the mirror lock up I think has been kind of important, especially when I put a longer lens on, which I have been doing for some of the forest tree shots and stuff. I do like the option of using the mirror lock up. So you'll probably see a lot of this project done with that camera. It's a great camera. It has a great meter. It's when I use it. If you're not familiar with my photography, I do a lot in black and white. And this zine is part of a series of zines I call Seeing Monochrome. I think this is number four, where I take a different theme or subject matter and I do the whole thing in black and white. This is the first one that's all black and white film, all 35 millimeter black and white film. But in the past, I've done some with a mixture and mixture of formats, mixture of digital and film for the Seeing Monochrome zines. This zine is on a specific location. I've gone through all this before, but we're working in an ecosystem. It's about what kind of art can we make in nature in this environment? It's got a nice creek running through it, waterfalls, forest, lots of plant life. A great location that's within 10 miles of my house. So I'm able to get there quite often. Now, I am a little bit worried by the time frame I decided to do this in. I'm a little bit nervous that I'm not going to have enough photos for this zine by the end of summer. But I really wanted it to be a summer project. I wanted it to be in that time frame. I wanted to be able to show that this is what this environment looks like. These are the artistic images I was able to make in summer. We still got some time. I just hear the clock ticking. I need to get back out there and make some more images. In this part of today's episode, I take three of the shots I've made I've been to the park four times. I've made three episodes on that. I've combined a couple of visits into one episode. So for each episode, I'm going to grab one photograph and I'll show it up on the screen and talk a little bit about it. Go a little bit more in depth and talk a little bit about why I like the shot, why I think it works. Just something that I haven't been able to do so far in the videos I've made. In episode one, we start at the lowest part of the park. It's the first set of waterfalls. It's my favorite place in the park. It's not a large waterfall, but I really like this location. The image I made here, I think, has a really good sense of depth and the motion of the water. I find it peeling. And I like the journey the eye takes back to the waterfall. And behind me is another drop off and another waterfall. At this point where I've made the photograph in episode one, the water is still too high to really climb down and make an image. But I think here pretty soon we'll be able to start working on adding that into the mix. Episode two, the image I really like, well, it probably is going to end up being the cover shot unless I come up with something better, but that was really the theme of the episode because I went out looking for a cover shot. So I went to the upper part of the park and I thought that might be a good location for cover shot. I thought it would be interesting to make this cover a wrap around cover, which means I had to make sure I had the waterfall on the right hand side. And I went ahead and did a mock up of the cover after I made the photograph and I think it's going to work. Now I shot this image different than I would have if it wasn't going to be a cover shot. It's probably pushed a little bit more to the right than I would have composed it as if something I'd be framing for my wall. I think I might have an example of how I would have framed it if it wasn't a cover shot, but because I wanted it to fit on that front cover a certain way, I went ahead and made an extra frame to push it over just for that purpose. I don't think it's a strong composition, a strong composition if it was a standalone photo on a wall, but I think for the purposes of the cover I think it works pretty well. In episode three I went looking for a bird shot. On my last visit I had noticed some birds kind of walking around and playing in the water near the waterfall. I didn't have a long enough lens to do anything about it. I thought oh no, I could see something in my head that I thought that it could be an interesting photograph if for some reason I could get a shot of the bird up on a rock in front of the waterfall it might be kind of cool. So that was the mission on this episode and I took my old Takina 400 millimeter, something I just keep around for video and occasionally a wildlife shot and I took that long to see if I could make the photograph and I also took along a roll of Delta 400, gave me a little bit more shutter speed. Because I was shooting film I didn't know if I even had something in focus. I didn't get a lot of frames. I got a couple fairly close shots of the bird and I was a little upset that I was out of place when it came right by me. I still managed to pull off a couple shots and just as I was getting ready to leave the bird jumps up on the rock right in front of the waterfall and I took the frame. It's the shot that's the least wildlife looking of all the shots but it's the one I like the best. You might not even notice the bird at first glance because it's so small in the frame. This little bird in the big world but once you see the bird it's hard not to see it. It becomes the center of attention even though it's so small. But for me that this image is the best of the bird photographs. It's not probably the best wildlife shot but I think it's the best shot for the project. If you haven't seen the past episodes and this series seems interesting I'll leave a link in the description so you can get caught up. Get ready for episode five. If you haven't subscribed to this channel consider doing so so you won't miss notifications. I'll leave you with this quote one that is from one of my older videos between the heart and the head between passion and intellect. That's a great photograph. I'll see you in the park in the next episode. So until next time thanks for coming along for the ride.