I remember the Santa Monica Pier and the Sindbad's nightclub from a visit to California in the mid 80's -
I think I shot a few slides with a Nikon FM - I will have a look to the archives ...
Great memories !! Thank you for sharing !
Forgot to ask : Did they ever restore the building ?
This was taken in the 80s. When I got the FE2 it was more from ignorance - in hindsight, I probably would have preferred the FM - nice camera, though I've never had the FE let me down.
On restoration, I'm not helpful. 'Was happy to have moved from Calif. 17 yrs ago.
In my scruffy gallery, the shots of the knarled tree, the canon on the cliff, and the merry go round are from this period. 'Looks like the merry go round may have been lost in the conversion. Posting now.
Great color too, was this a transparency? I hate to say this HiHo because it betrays my insensibility, but i would never have taken this photo just because of the fence. Yet, there is so much going on here to like my choice would have been a terrific loss. Good on you, mate, for bringing it home!
You're most gracious, Michael. Thank You.
This was a neg, which most likely means it was Kodak Gold 400 at the time.
The presence of the fence here, a light spot at a frame edge, some bozo intruding on an otherwise ideal composition - these are the things that make me crazy. Often I discover errors I didn't notice while shooting. 'Having to clip the tail of the Salmon on the bldg side to get rid of an ugly window. It seems like it never ends! A tip in one book that I struggle to remember in the midst of excitement - is to inspect/review the corners - which give me some feel for being in the right location. Rest of the edges, positive/neg. space in main area. Actually this is all crap - I'm lucky if I keep the fat lady in the bright red coat out of the corners. I'm learning. Just not quickly enough.
'Hope the day was good to you, Michael.
I will say there was absolutely nothing wrong with that salmon. It did not need the whole tail to be a perfect picture. Great framing and outstanding whimsy. And more importantly, you did not waive off taking it, which i do way too often. One more thing i will say about "cropping" that i am trying to get better at. I way too often even in large format insensibly "crop" with the viewfinder, which leaves me with compromised image into the borders of the film where i can do nothing to make right. An image needs to be fully represented on the film, not perfectly cropped on the film. Cropping is for the darkroom. Latitude to make cropping decisions later is far more important, so having plenty of margin is a good thing. The print is shown, not what all was in the negative that doesn't belong. It will never be seen. Maybe one can't be quite as generous in 35mm, but in the long dimension you loose the "wings" anyway if you want to fit to 8x10 format print. Peter's photo of the giraffe is a great example - there really was nothing more to the sides of the image, so it makes sense to bring in as much sky as possible and generous ground, in order to make cropping decisions later. In his case, since he was trying to balance among several images, he needed generous above and below margins to work with.
you mentioned the 'fat lady' i immediately thought of this:
That's her! She's the one that walks up & stands in front of the waterfall, the flower, the car...!
My knoggin is still thinking about including context that gets cropped out vs getting it right in the camera. A crop sensor digital & 35mm both seem a little more demanding than 6x6. With enough real estate on the neg, I don't worry about filling the frame to the gills. Tiny neg - yeah, I tend to try & fit 9.97 lbs in a 10lb sack. It may be that getting it right in the camera isn't just frame filling, but filling does help preserve some detail. I'll be brewing on that a while.