the highline. (ok, ok, mostly mike d.)

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Mike D is the only person I know who will tolerate the lengths to which I will go to take a photograph, and the only person I know who will tolerate that I will want that photograph to contain the nearest person at hand — given that we live two blocks apart from each other, share fairly similar tastes in food and drink, and have what might amount to a codependent relationship, that person is usually him.

So if there’s going to be a photoshoot on the Highline, so I can test out a few theories re: black and white film, and pushing Portra 160 a stop and a half, Mike D will most likely be right there with me, or really a couple of steps in front of me, as I bark out orders:

Take a step closer! 
No, one step to the right!  THE RIGHT!
Chin down!
DON’T LOOK AT ME!

And so on.  It’s a testament to our codependency friendship that he suffers through all of this fairly cheerfully.  Buying him a glass of whiskey also helps.

So, yes.  Last weekend we hopped onto the Highline and I snapped away.  Even got a few not of Mike, including one — see right below — that was taken pretty surreptitiously, which isn’t easy to do when you’ve got a bulky Hasselblad + Zeiss lens to contend with.  Whenever I see this photo I can’t help but smile; this couple is so wonderfully in lerrrrrrv.
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Also, most of these photos were taken between 6:30 and 7pm last Saturday, just a half hour before sunset (I know because there’s an app for that.  No, really.)  We shot the black and white photos with Ilford HP5 400, pushed one stop (ie, as if it was at ISO 800), and the color photos with Portra 160 at ISO 320 but pushed by the lab (at my request) two full stops.  This makes sense to probably two people reading this post, but long story short: this color combination really makes the Portra film pop in a way that it doesn’t seem to normally.

And so I’m going to keep at this, to see if I’ve stumbled on a good workaround to the crazy expensiveness of slide film (Provia 400x is $9.95 a roll.  A ROLL.  Portra is half the price).   And I’m sure I’ll have Mike around to help out with the test shots.   We’re codependent tight like that.
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