Pressed! Letterpress Workshop at Two Paper Dolls in 35mm

This set of photos were taken at the Two Paper Dolls letterpress and design house in Wayne, PA during a Design Philadelphia event back in October. Shot with a Minolta x-700, the photos come from the first roll of Kodak Portra 400 film I had shared some photos from a little while ago.

The day consisted of a tour of the Two Paper Dolls facilities (their space is quite lovely), an overview and demonstration of how their presses worked by their pressmen and finally, the group got to create an awesome letterpress calendar on a Vandercook press. I’m not a designer by profession, but definitely have an appreciation for great print design, so it was fun to be surrounded by all sorts of wooden type blocks and get an inside look at how these guys produce some beautiful work.

Entire set can be viewed on my flickr.

Results after first use of Kodak Portra 400 (meh)

Here are some shots I took in Florida using a Minolta X-700 and Kodak Portra 400 film.   I really need to start documenting the settings used when taking these shots so that I can tweak here and there and come out with something better than this.  I do realize that I need to work on my manual focus and familiarize myself even more with the manual settings of a camera.  I’m somewhat comfortable shooting all manual on a digital camera – but I have my screen that reassures me and if I’m off by a bit, I readjust.  I’m not sure how great the light meter is on this Minolta camera but I don’t trust quite trust it yet.  Even with that, I must say I do love the look and feel of analog photos. All photos are pretty much right out of the camera.

And these last two are my favorite, probably because of the light leaks…

I must shoot more!

I think I need to start posting more personal work with the goal of seeing what works, what doesn’t, get back to camera basics and ultimately become better at the type of photography I like and want to be good at.  I’ve already become super addicted to mobile photography with Instagram (@mjmercado47) and I’m close to 900 pictures, having posted and/or taken a picture everyday since early July.  Shooting definitely becomes more enjoyable on beautiful days – as it was on Friday – and when one is feeling at ease, relaxed and comfortable.  While some of you may have been wrestling other customers at Walmart trying to get that $300 Black Friday laptop deal (I personally prefer Cyber Monday!), I spent the day outside. First, trying to do a car photoshoot and second, enjoying great fall weather, blue skies and the ocean. Pictures below taken with my Canon 60D and a 17-50mm Tamron lens.  Fixed White Balance in Lightroom and finished processing in Photoshop.

Casa Negrón – “Historic” family home photographs

This set of photos were taken earlier this month while I vacationed and visited my family in Puerto Rico. The images are of the house my great great grandmother Antonia Negrón owned, lived, and raised her family in. The house has been abandoned for decades, with old furniture supposedly still left inside, but by now possibly destroyed by time and the elements. The house is closed up so I couldn’t take a look inside in the few minutes we stopped by to photograph, but I would have loved to – maybe during some other visit.  All photos taken, edited and designed with an iPhone 4S.

Panoramic photos using the Pano app and iPhone 4S

I upgraded from my iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4S recently. I took a few panoramic pictures using the Pano app. Below a view of Playa Santa in Puerto Rico and the view of a cloudy November sunrise as seen from my uncle’s property in Orocovis, Puerto Rico.

Experimenting with a 35mm – Take One!

A few weeks ago I borrowed my Dad’s dusty, “old” Minolta X-700.  I picked up a pack of FujiFilm 200 from my local Shop Rite (it was the only pack and I wanted film right away).

I’ve seen some beautiful work done with film, so with some trial and error and doing more personal work, I’d like to produce some great stuff using film.  I would definitely like to try out a medium format camera soon, but for now, I think I will experiment with what I have.

I debated about editing the photos below, but decided that I wouldn’t do much to them. I did a few corrections in Light Room – mostly just playing with the Auto White Balance and Auto Tone settings, but for the most part, I tried to keep them as close to what came out of the camera as possible – simply for the purpose of knowing what they look like right off the camera.  I had to go to my local Walgreens to develop (and even now they send it out), so the quality obviously isn’t as great as it could be if I had send it to a “professional” photo lab.

I shot most of these on Aperture Priority (whereas, I usually like to shoot manual, I needed a little help this time) with a Minolta 28-70 f3.5-4.8 lens.  The shots below are from walking around Cape May, NJ on Labor Day.  The day started out very sunny and ended up pretty overcast, but still a gorgeous day.

A few lessons/observations:

First, the frame-counter on this camera doesn’t work, so not only can I not see what I have just shot (I missed having an LCD screen the first few shots), but I don’t know how many exposures I have left.  Winding the film – yeah it didn’t quite work very well for me the first time around.  I must have not loaded one roll of film correctly, so it didn’t catch well – yeah – I walked around for a while shooting pictures, but not really because the film was not advancing!  I finally decided to open it up because I knew that I had clicked way more than 24 times with that one roll.

The film advance lever stopped working towards the end of the day, so I couldn’t advance my film – luckily I think I was already toward (if not already at) the end of the film. Exposure – don’t forget your Sunny 16 rule and use the built-in light meter (it’s something I am just really starting to get!).

Up next, I have a few rolls of Kodak 400 Black & White Tri-X film I got from eBay and some Fujifilm 400 I had found at a Rite Aid.  Hopefully, I can test them out soon.

Emely & David – Preview!

Emely and David are super cute.  He’s outgoing with a great smile; she is beautiful, sweet and kind of shy – but when these two look at each other you can tell they are very in love.  I got to second shoot Emely & David’s special day two Saturday’s ago.  Here’s a little preview!

Beatriz & Alejandro – Part I

I met Beatriz & Alejandro through my good friend, Nathanael (he planned the wedding and the invites shown here – him, too!), early last month.  I knew that I  would have a great time because right off the bat, Betty and I hit it off.  She is funny, outgoing and opened the doors to her house to me as if she had known me for years. Alejandro is definitely a family man, who is grateful to have a great lady and their children by his side.  It’s been a long road for the two of them but on August 20th, they decided to formalize their union in front of their family & friends at a small location.  I was able to spend the day helping document this special moment, and not only was it a great learning experience for me, but it was a lot of fun – I was treated as a member of the family and they wanted to make sure that I had as much fun as the other guests.  Here’s part one of the day – the second half coming soon.  Enjoy!

 

One frame from this weekend

This weekend I was able to second shoot a wedding and here’s one frame that so far, I love. My new friend, 3 (almost 4!) year old Frida holding her mom and dad’s wedding rings.  I still have plenty of photo’s to go through – and this time around, I think I did a little better than before  with my photography- so I’m excited to keep editing.  More to come soon…

What’s Cookin’: Anniversary Dinner

I’ve sort of avoided the kitchen lately, but this weekend I decided to get in there and make something awesome. Friday afternoon I had been browsing the Food & Wine website gathering ideas and Sunday evening it all came together quite successfully.

The occasion was my parent’s 30th wedding anniversary – yeah – not many people can say that nowadays, but it’s definitely possible! It took a quite of bit of work to get dinner together, and even though I probably spent about 5 hours in the kitchen in between prep, cooking and cleaning time, I enjoyed it! So now, for the menu…

(and I really wish I could have better documented everything but that probably would have added an extra hour to my day in the kitchen. You will have to forgive my crappy photos.)

So, they were greeted with Strawberry Lemon Mojitos and a cheese plate with some fruit.

First appetizer prosciutto wrapped peaches with basil and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. (I realized today the original recipe was pancetta wrapped peaches, but for some reason I had prosciutto on the brain – it still worked out well)

Second we had grilled tomato crostini.

So the next drink was a lemon basil manhattan, followed by the main course:
Tamarind and Bourbon glazed ribs.

I first threw them on the grill to get a sear and a grill flavor. They were finished up in the oven and glazed about every half hour for about 2 hours.

To accompany the ribs, I made a mango cabbage slaw and some yuca fries with a chipotle mayo dip.

And that was it! For dessert, we bought a cake from our favorite local bakery (because I don’t bake). It was a lot of work, and time consuming but I must say everything turned out pretty good and everyone was a happy!