Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

My cat hanging out on an autumn afternoon. Super Ricohflex TLR, Porta 160.

Autumn just getting started, but one maple in my yard is always the first to turn, and it always turns a brilliant red. So this afternoon I grabbed the Pentax K-01 and D-FA 100mm macro to take some autumn snaps in my little yard. I only shot for an hour in the heavy overcast, drizzly day. Here’s the results - click on any image for a larger view.

Leaf In Grass Stalks

This leaf caught in some decorative grass caught my eye and motivated me to get out and make some photos. The harvester (I grew up calling the Daddy Long Legs) was a bonus.

Leaf In Grass



Raindrops on Autumn Leaves







Late Bloomer

I live in the city and have a small yard - about 2700 square feet - but I’ve devoted about a third of ti to native prairie plants and they are taking hold. The grey coneflower booms in late July through mid September, but this year it lingered on a bit longer than usual. This one is probably the very last to bloom, here in October. I did not notice the leaf hopper till I processed the image.

Leaves on Pavement



Leaf in Thistle



Virginia Creeper












Cosmos Seed Head

I found some Cosmos seeds around the house in July and stuck them into some of the pots on the patio. they took off and grew like crazy. Here is one of the seed heads - I’m harvesting these for planting next year:

Hemlock Berry



Withered Leaf





Bones In A Pot

OK - so it IS October which means that Halloween is coming up… This rubber skeleton gets a few weeks of glory hanging by the door come Halloween. The rest of the year it spends bouncing around in the garage, getting dirty and building character. When I cleaned the garage yesterday I chuck it into some pots that are sitting out in the garage, and noticed it this afternoon. Soon as I get round to it, he’ll be hanging on the wall. As the song goes - When I die you don’t need to bury me at all, just nail my bones up on the wall…”

Another (probably the last) photo from my trip up north last week. These are sand dunes in Ludington State Park, just north of Ludington, Michigan. The dunes are located between Lake Michigan and Hamlin Lake. This was taken looking east, with Lake Michigan to my back:

Click on the image for a larger file.

The image was made with Rollei IR 400 B&W film and a Hoya R72 IR filter. I have to say I was a little disappointed in that the film just did not deliver much IR effect. It was a couple of years out of date, though stored in the freezer, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I’ve commented on this film before in this post. While up north last week I decided to shoot out my stock of this film, more or less just to get rid of it. I used a #29 deep red filter for most work, hoping to tease out some IR effect, but it really just behaved more like a standard B&W film.

The Hoya R72 filter really made the azure sky of summer turn dark black, but otherwise did not coax out much on an IR response. Here is a comparison of two shots of the same scene, on taken with the #29 deep red filter and one with the R72:

This time round I stand developed the film in HC-110. I rated some rolls at ISO 800 and some at ISO 400. The ISO 800 rolls I stand processed in HC-110, diluted to 1:100, for 75 minutes. The ISO 400 rolls were stand processed for 60 minutes. I experimented with more dilute solutions, but the double roll Paterson style tanks I was using have a maximum capacity of just over 650ml of water, and the solution could not get much more dilute than 1:100 with falling below the minimum amount of HC110 syrup needed per roll (6 ml). (Though they were double roll tanks only one roll was developed at a time with 650ml of solution.) The one time I did try a higher dilution I used only 4ml of HC110 concentrate, and the negatives were thin.

These shots were taken with a tripod mounted Pentax LX and FA 28-105 f4 - 5.6 power zoom lens (an older AF lens model.) I avoid newer film bodies (Mz-S, *ist) with IR film since they are reported to fog IR film.

Fall is coming… here’s an old shot from 2005 that I just got around to working on. An oak clearing in the Allegan Forest in early autumn, shot in 6x7 film format click for a large file):

The tool shed in Bachelor Cemetery near Fountain, Michigan. Someone meticulously hand wrote out a list of family names and the corresponding grave plats. I guess that someone was Justin. Click an image for a larger file.

Pentax LX, FA 28-105 f4-5.6 zoom, #29 deep red filter, Rollei IR 400 pushed to 800 and stand processed in HC110 1:100 for 75 minutes.

Been a while since I posted a Holga shot - so here goes. A few weeks ago I wandered through a clearing in the Allegan Forest, but saw nothing except for grasshoppers and flies. No dragonflies, butterflies, snakes, toads or other interesting subjects. I had a Holga with me and took this shot looking back into the scrappy dense woods that look all the more dark when you are standing in bright light. Click on the image below for a larger file.

Dragonflies have been scarce lately. I must just be going to the wrong places - my last few trips to the Allegan Forest have yielded only a few encounters with straggling Blue Dashers. The red meadowhawks that usually appear in high summer have been absent so far. Yesterday I visited the McLindon Trails to see if this park would bring a change of luck. I can’t say that dragonflies were out in abundance - they weren’t - but I did manage to find a few red meadowhawks. And since it was not breezy I was able to continue experiments with stack focusing in the field.

Here are the two stack focused shots I was able to get. Two shots of a whitefaced meadowhawk (click any image for a larger file):

And a non-stacked shot of a red meadowhawk:

And finally - a blue dasher from last weekend:

That’s probably it for August of 2013 - come September the Autumn Meadowhawks will probably dominate the scene…

Here are snapshots from a Chicago vacation, taken a few weeks ago. I’ve been in a film mood these days and decided to forgo the DSLR and take a film camera (Pentax Mz-S) and lots of film (Tri-X mostly) for this trip. (Technical notes at the end of the post). It was a good plan and I thoroughly enjoyed burning through film and developing it once home.

We spent three nights in Chicago, arriving late afternoon on Wednesday and leaving on Saturday afternoon. Most of these images were taken on Thursday, since Friday and Saturday were devoted to museums. I’ve arranged them in chronological order based on the time of day at which they were taken, more or less.

Click on any image for a larger file.

Morning

Buckingham Fountain



Tall Ships






Tall Boats



Trees Near the Waterfront




Running



On the Sea Wall




Afternoon

Detail



Hanging In Millennium Park



Abundance




Want



On Navy Pier





Chicago River



Waiting



Evening

Evening Reflections



Zombies Prowl




The Orchestra Plays




Wrigley Building



Carbide and Carbon Building



The NBC Building



Evening Street Corner



Carriage Ride



Dark Alleys






After Evening

Spirits Three



Dreamland



Peace

Technical Notes: All photos were taken on Tri-X 400 or on Arista Premium, a film that is quite similar to Tri-X. With a few exceptions, development was either HC110 Dil B for 7.5 minutes (ISO 400) or for 16 minutes(rolls pushed to ISO 1600 for night shots.) I developed the first 4 rolls in HC110 Dil H but was not happy with the additional grain.