 Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I don't know why I'm still doing this. Maybe I just can't grow up. So you remember Mojave Mania part one and how that was like a halfway decent video? Well, maybe it's time to lower your expectations because here's part two. Anyway, we find our bold heroes in the thralls of the usual meat withdrawal and just like last time they stopped at Jude's barbecue for a barbecue meat sweat blessing going forward into the desert roads ahead except that our new favorite barbecue place wasn't open on that Monday. So our two photo losers were totally f***ed and the whole trip was doomed. I mean, yeah, we found another spot that tried their best but honestly, it just wasn't the same. I think this place was called Applebee's. Thinking of just calling it early and heading home instead we headed off into the desert to finish off our list of locations that we couldn't get to the first time around because my forerunner basically took a sh** in my open mouth and you know what? It was brewing up another one for me that day. We arrived at our first location, standard nondescript desert next to an abandoned house. Midday lighting is probably the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity and we'd have to deal with it right there and then. Luckily, I had a few tricks up my sleeve that might make the photography there a little more exciting. With me on this trip, I brought the same setup as last time, the four by five in the Hasse. The Dynamic Duo, a partnership, a brotherly bond between two slow and heavy cameras. The four by five that I have is kind of cursed if you ask me, but you didn't. I don't think I've taken a single portfolio worthy shot on it yet and it didn't seem like I would anytime soon. When you can't produce good work on a camera system, it makes you hesitant to keep using it, which is a bad thing, but I was determined nonetheless. I'm gonna start with the four by five and then maybe flip over to the Hasse. Inside the building was interesting enough for me to set up the four by five and knock out the first of the batch, which historically is usually never the one. You gotta allow yourself time to warm up a little bit I think. Anyway, since the place was clearly haunted by ghosts, I was working faster than ever. Oh sweet, put the camera on backwards. Love that. What am I trying to do with this shot? I really love having shoes that don't make me afraid to walk around the whole thing like this. Yeah, I know, right? It's nice not living in fear. I'm living in fear. That wasn't that funny. Forgive me. Before leaving, I loaded up my Grafmatic back with something called Rolly Infred 400, a stock that I had some sheets left over from some unsuccessful tests I was doing. Rolly Infred 400 has extended sensitivity into the infrared spectrum, so it can literally see what we cannot, which is kind of cool, but I'm kind of disappointed that it didn't catch any ghosts chilling in the kitchen area that I'd be photographing using this special wavelength. I mean, come on. It would definitely be a Polter Prize winner if I saw like the faint, transparent outline of maybe Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore making pottery or stealing the Declaration of Independence, whatever else they do in that movie. I never saw it. Light meter is this really cool function where you can average out readings. So let's do that. So it's saying one second for inside, one 15th of a second outside. This guy is one 30th. God, this door is creeping me out. 15 seconds. The average is saying to do half of a second at F16. To block out all the visible light and only capture infrared light on Rolly Infred, you can use an R72 filter that is basically just a dense black filter that the human eye cannot see through. With the filter applied, a lot of people just rate the film at ISO 6 instead of box speed 400 to account for the filter. I'd be using ISO 12 for all of these. More on all this in a different video unless I totally forget to do it and move on without a care in the world. Come on. So here's the fruits of my looms or labors or whatever the phrase is. It's okay. For starters, I hate it. There was no real reason to shoot only infrared for this one. I should have just popped the filter off and let the film ride at 400. There was quite a large difference in exterior and interior brightness, as you can probably tell. Outside is almost blown out and inside we are losing some shadow detail under the kitchen counter. In situations like this going forward, I think it'd be best to decide one way or another what you want to expose for exterior or interior instead of trying to magically get both. In this case, I probably should have just exposed for the interior and let the exterior bright ass sunlight just flame a hole into the negative. Anyway, because you don't realize the errors of your ways until later when you get the film developed, I decided to basically make the same mistake again with this composition, using this big ass window to frame the mountains. I also did not take the R72 filter off because I was being lazy and self-sabotaging myself, which honestly, these days is the only way that I know I'm actually human and not some sentient AI born to take bad photos and show them off on the internet in a way to feel the sensation of shame. Guess I'm not really waiting for anything. So F11, one, one, 25th. Cool. Okay, well, at least I kind of have committed to exposing somewhat okay for the exterior. I don't have much to say about the shot, except that I also hate it. Maybe I wish it was slightly wider and that there was some detail on the interior to show that this was in fact a living room with a hole in the roof where somebody probably fell through. After that, it was finally time to shoot what Rolly and Fred film shoots best, a landscape. There were several abandoned structures in the area, so I had my pick of the letter. For shots like these, I kind of just let the lighting do the talking, mostly because I'm an introvert at heart and love it when somebody else takes the lead. But it's a nice tip for those situations where you can't quite pinpoint where you should set up. Because the sun was at an angle, lighting up half this facade, I positioned the camera at a nice quarter angle to force the lighting on the building to make it look three-dimensional. Edward Hopper did it a lot in his painting, so I just ripped that technique from him because I guess I'm incapable of being original. Anyway, like a high school theater class, this shot is extremely dramatic, and you probably wouldn't have guessed it took place in the middle of sh** high noon lighting. The sky kind of looks like outer space because of the R72 blocking filter. Overall, it's surreal, uncomfortable, and unsettling, just like my best man speech will be at Caleb's wedding. The wall here became a nice silhouette against the direct light and I guess bounce light inside the ruins. And as a nice little bonus, this dark corner really stands out nicely against the brighter neutral gray in the background. Metering can be kind of tricky for these midday harsh lighting scenarios, so I think what I did here was spot meter for the shadows right around here and then take a reading from the highlights about here and split the difference. Then I think I closed down one stop on top of that because neither ground would be quite hot and yeah, I wanted to retain some detail. Anyway, in the end, this shot looks like fine art or fart if you abbreviate to save time, and it didn't take much work, so there's your little photography hack for the day. Shoot infrared sometimes. The next setup was kind of a f**k it why not shot of some power lines next to a cursed baby head effigy. What is that? Average this one out. Sky, one eighth. Ground, one eighth. Pole, one eighth. Deep mountains, one eighth. That wasn't very exciting. I think it turned out kind of cool actually though through many small miracles that cannot possibly be attributed to myself. I set this one up with subject layering more in mind than lighting. The subject's being these power lines that stretch off until infinity and conveniently land in a mathematically pleasant area. Also a little bit of front rise to straighten out those vertical power poles, but I didn't get it perfect. Probably the biggest miracle of this damn thing is whatever in the power line f**k is going on here. The base of the pole is dark and contrasts beautifully against the bright ground behind it. But it grades up nicely to a brighter tone against the dark sky. I don't know how this happened or how I got so lucky, but s**t dude. I'll take it. The next location was right next to the highway, so of course it was a wash in graffiti. Something I try to avoid photographing because it is quite distracting and yeah, I don't need the words f**k dumpster displayed prominently in my work. Now I should say, midday lighting it kind of bland. I've been shooting nothing but a rolly infrared. It's been cool, but it's kind of hard to visualize shots with that because the look is so different. The buildings themselves aren't the most inspiring. Maybe I'm just being too picky. What would Edward Hopper do in this situation? He'd probably stop complaining and shoot something dope. I mean he wasn't a photographer, but you know what I mean. Anyway, after struggling hard to find anything to shoot I pitched my tripod down and reluctantly used the built-in frame guide on the camera instead of doing the obvious and easy thing removing the R72. So I did basically the same technique as before again here. I let the lighting do the heavy lifting. I put the camera at a quarter angle and from there I just adjusted very slightly so that our two power lines here kind of frame the building nicely. The resulting image was wonderful actually. The sky was the true star of the show to be honest. That's the real power of infrared film in the middle of the day because that same sky in real life was just a bright unsexy grade of blah. I could barely even make out that there were clouds there to begin with. I'm gonna get detail on both the interior and exterior so I elected to lean towards retaining more info and the highlights and just letting the shadows fall where they do. Maybe as a bonus it could hide some of the graffiti on the building. For the final shot instead of taking a good photo that I could be proud of I chose to shoot a detailed close-up of the corner of this building. I think I'm gonna try shooting this one wide open. Oh my god there's a lot of sh** in this lens. There's so much dirt. I think for this I'm gonna meter for the shadows inside the building and then go two stops faster. So yeah something clearly happened here. What that is that happened I do not know. My best guess is that the sheet wasn't loaded properly and was bent a little in one of the corners so it gave the final photo this wavy distortion in a weird spot of defocus. I do like the thin focus lines separating the layers of the building but otherwise this photo is what it is in a world where it do be like that sometimes. I think I was just glad to be done with the 4x5 for now and move on to my one true love the Hasse. My son, my moon and my stars the 4x5 can f**k right off. Of the six shots on the Grafmatic for Rolly Infred they were all keepers but only like three of them were good. I don't know if their portfolio worthy or really break the 4x5 curse placed on me just yet. Down the road and off the road a bit was this old abandoned farmhouse with a very creepy underground cellar that I stayed far as f**k away from. Ain't no way in s**t that I'm going down there I'll tell you that much. I loaded up some Cat Labs 320 which is kind of a budget black and white film stock that I've never tried before. Alright so I'm going to shoot this Cat Labs it's a 320 ISO film but I'm going to shoot it at 200 because I've heard that it is pretty contrasty and I just want to make sure I have enough information. Inside the farmhouse was pretty cool there were a lot of interesting light textures to use and the color was surprisingly nice. I love the color in here. Too bad I'm shooting black and white. So nice that I actually went back to load up a second A16 back with Cinnestill 400D. Alright here's Hassey back number 2 I said recently in a video maybe I cut it I can't remember. I think there is a good way to shoot 400D it all comes down to how you interpret it in lightroom or negative led pro or Microsoft Paint. I'll see if I can get it right or maybe I'm just I don't know. Still haven't gotten this stuff for 4x5 yet so not super sure what that's about. I'm supposed to get it last year I think. Why Cinnestill 400D when I know that Kodak Gold would give me the results I was looking for. I don't know man. I think I was dehydrated and scared. You shot Cat Labs 320 before right? Yeah. Did you shoot it at 320? That's what I have it at yeah. Anyway here's probably the best shot. The light cutting across the frame of the window is great and the broken window jutting out is a nice detail. The highlights aren't completely blown out but they might as well be. Here's basically the same shot on 400D which has much more shadow detail. That sounds so good. Yeah, yours sounds better. All right sideways shot. Which is like a 32. I like this shot too but I think it would have been better with a wider lens maybe. I think all these would have been better with a wider lens to give more context. Time to invest in that 40mm for the system. Instead of a wedding ring, Monica can wait another 10 years. Anyway as as best as particles were probably filling our lungs I took this on both Cat Labs and 400D. I really like the layering and glint of light in the background. This is a rare case where color adds an extra dimension to separate the layers effectively. This is a good shot I think. I don't usually go for the linear kind of straight on stuff but the colors are working over time to pull this one off and I'm here for it. We have returned. After the incest monster seller farmhouse we decided to revisit an old friend. The house buried among the sand. The first time I shot this location it was a sunset and I was shooting with my 4x5 which honestly isn't really the most portable setup. This time around I'd be using the Hasse which seemed par for the course. Like a proctologist using the right tool for their job I'd hate to use the bigger tool here. The location itself was much less exciting this time around. The setting wasn't quite there yet and we had already shot it and kind of found the best angles the first time around. There's a chair there now. A little gremlin buddy from last time somehow moved in there from here. I ended up retaking this shot and I can't honestly say it's better than the 4x5 one that I did before. Inside the house was a little bit more accessible without a big ass tripod but I found the 60mm to be a bit tight again and I didn't really pop off any shots except this one. Which lesson learned. You gotta go wide inside. I know it looks like a total dream location for photography but I just wasn't able to find the moment. Something just wasn't vibing maybe because the fear of puking up barbecue sauce all over myself wasn't there due to the non-barbecue situation from earlier. I don't know. Anyway to make matters worse the 4runner was starting to have issues again and what better time to find out about them than in the middle of the desert alone. This time it was leaking a bunch of power steering fluid and coolant which made me leak tears. Whatever though the real cherry on top of this grilled sandwich was that our next location the one that we were saving our purity for sunset for would be kind of a disappointment. It was supposed to be a dune field of even more houses buried amongst the sand that we couldn't reach the first time because we did not have four wheel drive but as it turned out the buildings were significantly more buried than we thought and there wasn't really much to see or shoot. We went in anyway hoping for the best and you know we found a few compositions here and there. Okay go down. There was one diamond in the rough. A car left abandoned and buried in the sand in the middle of nowhere. Since sand is basically kitty litter and I had cat labs in my hassy I made the obvious connection and shot away. I took a set of three and I think they're all good for different reasons. I want to pick one for the portfolio but I don't know yet which one. My brain is telling me this one for the detail. My heart is telling me this one for the wavy sand texture and my plums are telling me this one for the layers. Either way if you know what kind of vehicle this is and whether the toilet came standard with the car or if that was a premium add-on feature I'd be curious to know. After stealing the catalytic converter we wandered around for a bit in the dunes and eventually called it quits. Half tempted to leave my falling apart four on our out there you know after I siphoned all the gas and got a little buzzed we headed to the nearest highway feeling kind of defeated just don't work out. And you know we thought that was that but it was not that. That day had just been kind of a drag overall. Most of the time you kind of just know in the moment when you slam out some bangers but never really felt that all day. Until after sundown we cruised on down old route 66 and stumbled across some really cool buildings which were either abandoned or not abandoned as most things are if you really think about it. I started by polishing off whatever was left of the 400D and in doing so I was starting to feel something again. I mean these shots are basic and not too pretty but eventually I pulled out the 4x5 and my extra special holder that contained two sheets of preloaded ectochrome e100. For the first time all day I had some semblance of a plan. A bunch of different cameras and a bunch of different lenses and a bunch of different... While Caleb was going on about digital ICAs and how he's totally abandoning film my analog ass was setting up an experimental shot that probably wouldn't work but it did. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Though what exactly happened here and why does it look like it was taken directly after a nuclear apocalyptic inferno. Well I don't know man sometimes that's just kind of the vibe. If you didn't watch my previous video then you probably should before my mom finds out and kicks your ass because in it I used something called a Tiffin Smoke 3 filter which basically creates this simulated layer of well smoke. If you've ever been to Santa Cruz on 420 you probably recognize it. I slapped that bad boy on the 4x5 and went absolutely plum-wild with some ectochrome that I correctly incorrectly loaded so that it would be red-scaled and well, yeah, it's a unique effect to say the least. An effect that somehow fits well into my own portfolio. 11, 2 seconds. Rush probably kicks in after 10 seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Oh. Got a little stuck so we ended up doing probably 4 seconds. For the nerds out there that want the data I shot these at 40 ISO instead of 100 ISO because we have to let more light in to blast through the rear anti-halation layer. I also still had some Catlabs 320 but none of them even remotely turned out even at 200 ISO. The shadows just fall off super hard on that film stock and it becomes pretty unforgiving and low light. But with that roll of 16 shots I got 12 keepers and one portfolio shot that I'm still kind of undecided on. The 400D was a different story of the 16 shots I got about 14 keepers and I'd say no portfolio shots. But speaking of portfolios I'd like to thank today's sponsor which posts my own photography portfolio online, Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one website building platform that provides everything you need to build a website of your dreams for whatever you're cooking up in your noggin. With hundreds of professionally pre-designed templates for you to pick from it's easy to find the one that suits your needs best. Whether it's for a photography portfolio like me, your small business, or even just a grainy days fan fiction website, Squarespace has you covered. If you don't know the first thing about designing a website then worry not. Neither did I when I got started. With Squarespace's intuitive user interface and drag and drop modules, building your own custom space is easier than ever. And if you hit a snag, Squarespace even offers 24-7 award-winning customer support. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainy days. And if you use the code grainy days at checkout you can get 10% off your first purchase. Anyway, that was kind of a wrap on the day. A day that had admittedly been kind of a let down. From bad film stock choices to subpar locations, I think it was just a day that was doomed to fail from the get go. And I can't help but think it was all because our new favorite barbecue spot was closed that day. Thanks universe. I took a few shots worth being proud of, with this inflamed ectochrome being the standout performer. It is entirely possible now that the 4x5 curse has been lifted after I took a beauty with the old beast. I really like the Roly and Fred shots too. I think there's a lot of potential there with that stock, especially because it likes a little abuse and prefers to be shot, no cooked in the middle of the day. That's the end of the Mojave series for now. On to bigger and better things elsewhere with new forerunner trauma acquired. See you next time.