Photography On Location: The Post Office

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You know how I frequently find buildings here in Orange County that I photograph with my Shen-Hao TFC 617-A panoramic 6x17 camera? Well, here's another. This time I found myself a nice little mid-century modern post office. It's got a killer roof line and some killer lights. I mean, the lights aren't "killer" like "cool looking", the lights are mood killers. I'm talking about those security/flood lights they blast parking lots with to keep out the riff-raff. This building has some of those. The roof-line though, that actually is killer as in "cool looking."

As an architectural photographer, I find those lights irritating. Especially if they're LED lights. They're so damn bright and in-yo-face that it's nearly impossible to get that perfect moody balance of ambient and artificial light. They just overpower the whole damn scene. By the way, what's the deal with LEDs? If you look right at them you'll burn a hole through your retina and yet most of them barely throw any light onto their subject. The source-brightness-to-subject-illumination ratio is outrageous. Is that a lensing thing with the light itself? Does anyone know what the hell I'm talking about?

I used my preferred film for these early-morning scenes: Kodak Portra 160. I shot some Kodak Tri-X, too, though. That was in a Mamiya C220 TLR camera. The black and white shots are meh, but I think the shots I got on Portra came out pretty good. They'll make good additions to the book I hope to make someday.

Thanks for watching!

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