Cities are vastly different spaces during the day than at night, leading me try out experimenting with the blending of shots for my review of Rollei RPX 400 black & white film.
I got the idea for this week's theme after speaking to my friend Conor (I've known him for nearly 30 years now, and he just happens to be a great photographer too), and him telling me about the work of Stephen Wilkes, who has painstakingly shot and blended day and nightscapes from major cities all around the world (also available for purchase here).
As with everything photographic, my first thought was "yeah I can do this with film, why not, let's go do it now...!". Of course, you cannot compare thousands of hours of high precision work with my quick and dirty (and extremely non precise composition) shots...but it's all about having a bit of fun at the end of the day.
Of course, as Conor practically came up with the idea, I also volunteered him to do the photoshop work afterwards (I've paid him with copious amounts of film to use with his absolutely legendary Pentax beast of a camera).
Here are the results, with some commentary on each scene. I shot 2 rolls of 12 shots (for day and night).
Hauptwache, Central Frankfurt. Cut right down the middle, I really like this shot, weird how you can see the streetlights on the right side of the shot.
Balancing my camera on my bike seat is not exactly going to get precise alignment, hence the "underground" trees on the right of the shot. Still, really cool transition and kind of looks like the cyclist is heading into the night, literally! Quick note on film, these are all really good both day and night, very clear and crisp images!
Horizontal transition in this one - the old jail turned fancy bar.
Frankfurt's Alte Oper. Horizontal transition as I think my alignment of shots was not the best (meaning they were rubbish)...see below for individual shots.
This was actually my first of the day shots and luck would have it there was some big band march around the city and here is where they were congregating.
The night shot. Really great details on both, very good experience with this film so far!
Great, and exactly the effect I was hoping for. The weather was very changeable with the night shots, so some have really black skies (which works great for this experiment), whilst others are a bit cloudy and shot at dusk.
Kleinmarkthalle - Frankfurt's old market. A real magnet for the locals and tourists alike on weekends (see right side of image), contrasted with an empty nightscape on the left. Pity this was not with a very dark sky, as it would have had much better contrast.
Overall impressions
I suppose for this week I got a bit carried away with the overall experiment of photograph blending and thought less about the film. However, I was impressed with how well this film performed during both bright days and dark nights as I look at the final shots. Very
Look at the shot below, it came out very well despite it being the middle of the day and extremely sunny. I wonder how this will performs with close-up portraits.
The same shot at night, look at the clarity on the architecture of My Zeil shopping centre, great stuff!
Rollei RPX shows some promising results at a great price point. I am curious how the 35mm version performs, as these were all shot with my Hasselblad and 120mm film. I am definitely going to stock my fridge with some of this film when this project is over, and try it out on portrait photography.
I must say the day / night experiment was worth it (Conor probably disagrees after his photoshop efforts...). Although it's probably not something I would try again, as to get it right requires much more precise measurement of a scene and even more time spent in front of a computer afterwards. Also let's remember that this project is all about shooting more, processing less!
As always, there is plenty more to look forward to in the next few weeks including a joint post with Conor, and a trying out a very special edition Lomography film!
See you next time!
Neil (and thanks to Conor for all his help!)
