Here’s another new side project that I’ll be doing throughout the year from now on. Many of you probably know that I now have a fiance, a real one this time, and seeing as I’ve decided to spend the rest of my life with this person, heck, I may as well turn it into another project.
‘Vignettes of a life with you’ is basically an excuse for me to mess around with different ways of presenting the shots I take of my fiance.I originally shot the photos with my Bessa R4a rangefinder, 40mm f/1.4 and Kodak ISO 100 Ektachrome, and was trying a whole bunch of things the other day to try figure out a good way to digitize/scan the images without actually buying a good scanner. So, I made a film ‘holder’ out of two bits of black cardboard that I glued together and used that to hold the film while I shot each frame with a D700, zoomed in 24-70 and an SB900 + umbrella in the back to act as a ‘lightbox’. So, technically, even though I shot used natural light for the actual shots, I still photographed each frame with flash 
Habits are hard to break I guess.
Anyway, considering that I couldn’t get any closer (don’t have a macro lens), the shots basically ended up with black borders like you see below. The rest was cropping it to a square and cleaning up the rough edges in photoshop. Here’s a shot of the setup, taken on my iPhone. As you can see it’s not a very sophisticated setup; just an umbrella and a DIY bit of cardboard clamped in place.
So, these will be popping up one at a time for the duration of this year (and maybe more), so I hope you enjoy them! Also, let me know what you think of the process. I’m sure there are better and more intelligent ways to do what I’m doing.
Vignette No. #1
Vignette No. #2
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Interesting idea. My wife has been bugging me to scan and retouch the photos we had shot of our wedding 7 years ago, and while my scanner is decent, it’s no Imacon. I might give that a try just to see what I can get out of the old film.
Hey Stephen, thanks for leaving a comment! Good luck with getting those photos digitized, it does take quite a while to shoot even one roll of 36!
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