Sunday, August 3, 2014

Portraits from George's Island

A couple of weeks ago, the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers had the opportunity to perform again in Fort Warren, the Civil War fort on George's Island. It was a ton of fun, and a great opportunity to wear the pretty printed cotton day dresses we all made for the same event last summer.

It's usually not acceptable to take photos at a performance like this (at least during the performance), so I decided not to try and shoot during the event at all. Instead, I took photos at the end of the day when we were all picnicking before catching a ferry back to Boston. Last summer, I contributed to a Kickstarter campaign to reproduce an 1840s portrait lens designed by Joseph Petzval, but modified to work on modern DSLR cameras. I've discussed the original lens design in a previous post, but I wanted to share some of the images I took with my modern one!


exploring Fort Warren




getting prepped before the performance



one of the cool things about the lens is that since the f-stop must be changed by sliding a plate into the barrel, the modern lens came with a couple of neat "specialty f-stops." The star plate turns direct points of light into stars--see them in the background?
I am really pleased with these images, and I'm excited to use the lens again when shooting events! It's really interesting, though, that while these have a period look to them from the particular curvature of the glass and the way it flattens the depth of field, the overall image quality (because it's digital and not a wet-plate photo) is pretty noticeable. All the pieces are important to how things look!

For more information about my modern Petzval lens by Lomography, you can check out the lens website.