Shooting Beautiful Oyster

Still-Life photography is harder than it sounds. The subject is in front of the lens and there are some light here and there and thats it. Did you you realise? It sounds easy! No! Lucky I got the Lighting result I wanted without a sweat, and 4 hours of oyster retouching later BAM! One photo of oyster coming up! 

The 4 hour photoshop was to remove the black dots which was on the oyster, only If we had skilled oyster opener person in the studio, I might have spend quarter the time I did spend on this photo. 

Camera: Nikon D800 + Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8 G

Photographer: Bugra Ergil (me)

Stylist: Zoe Springer 

Model: Oyster from Selfridges London

P.S. This is my Leap Day blogpost!!! 

Behind the Camera - Age

Here is a polaroid group shot from "Age" Shoot, If you look close I am the only one wearing colourful clothes in a team of plain black dressing people. . . And if you really look at the photo you will notice that my legs and feet are transparent like Marty McFly, and if you don't know who that is, then you're probably too young and you should get back to doing your homework!  

Camera: Mamiya RZ67 Pro II + Mamiya Sekor 110mm W

Film: Fuji FP-100c

So why my feet and legs are all back to the future-like? 
Simple: Since Mamiya RZ67 Pro II don't have self timer, I had to turn the room in to a camera, well not a perfect camera but a functioning camera. Mamiya RZ67 Pro II had the longest exposure of 8 sec. So in theory If I Prefocus the camera, turn all lights and modelling lights off and close the curtains to a level that it will block all major lights from outside source, and have the aperture set to something like F22, then the photo will not be exposed until I remotely trigger the Strobe Lighting, It should expose us like someone else take the photo. Against my best effort, the studio was not a complete blackout studio so the floor and reflective things got exposed a little bit by the time I run to the position and trigger the strobes. Luckily everyone was wearing black and the very little light that got in the studio did not expose the blacks by the time I got there! 

Finishing My First Bottle of Kodak HC-110

This is not a big accomplishment but it's still exciting in my opinion. 

Ever since I started to process my own negatives at home, I finished  my ever first bottle of Kodak Black and White film developer HC-110. I had to process about 100 of 35mm film however I think I processed a lot less since I processed great amount of medium format as well as 35mm film. 

Last Friday was very productive day in my Darkroom/Toilet, because not only I processed my negatives, I also processed my two other friends films as well. 

Here below a photo of how my toilet looked like at the end of Friday, and yes I can say that I actually spent my Friday in my Toilet!