Crown Hill Cemetery is an Indianapolis landmark, and the final resting place for many prominent and not so prominent denizens of Indiana. They say death is a great equalizer, however we humans still try to be different even in death. Some chose elaborate memorials while others simple tomb stones. A few graves have statues of angels watching over them. I have always found them fascinating. I never tried to photograph them for some reason but was inspired to do so recently. Part of the inspiration came from a recently acquired Kodak Kodet Duaflex II Camera and the rest from a recent trip to Savannah, GA, home of the St. Bonaventure Cemetery. The Kodak camera has a 75mm fixed focal length lens with a f/15 aperture and a shutter speed of 1/30 sec. So I had to go with a slow film and I chose the Ilford FP4 Plus B&W Film for this project. I also used a Tiffen #25 Red filter as it was partly cloudy that day and I wanted to take advantage of the weather conditions. The camera takes 620 format film which is not manufactured anymore. I used a 120 film roll by modifying it to fit in the film chamber of the camera. Even then I was only able to get 11 exposures out of a possible 12. I don’t know why that happened and will definitely investigate further. I developed the film in Kodak HC110 for 9 minutes using Dilution B at 68ºF. I started with a 30 second agitation followed by a 10 second agitation every minute. Only 6 negatives were useable. I ruined the first two exposures because I forgot to reset the switch back to the single exposure (I) mode from the bulb (B) mode. The other 4 were out of focus because I was closer than the recommended closest distance for the lens.
Travel
29
Jul 10
Angels of Crown Hill Cemetery
20
Jul 10
Retro looking Small town diners – hanging on to a bygone era
Some more photographs from our trip to Highland Indiana. I couldn’t help but notice some old fashioned diner signs while driving around town. Here is one for the Miner-Dunn Hamburger joint. You can read all about it on YELP:
Next up is Johnsen’s Blue Top Drive In. This place is reminiscent of a by gone era. You can read more about it on Urban Spoon:
8
Jul 10
Celebrating Fourth of July in Highland, Indiana
Small towns have the best parades. It is something that everyone looks forward to and the entire town turns out to support the troops and the community. Highland, IN is one such community. We were visiting a good friend of ours and took advantage of the opportunity to see the Fourth of July parade. We were sitting opposite the setting sun so it was pretty darn hard to get good photos of the parade. It did however work very well for the photo above of a marching officer and his US flag against the sun.
The vintage car broke down threatening to hold up the parade. But some men jumped to the rescue and pushed the car along.
And finally yes that is me with a StarWars Stormtrooper. I found him hanging out with Darth Vader 
5
Jun 10
Balancing ambient light with a Nikon Speedlight (flash)
I still have a lot to learn on how to use Nikon Speedlights. There are some amazing resources out there for anyone wanting to learn and one such resource is the Strobist Website. On a recent trip to Florida we stopped at a beach in the historic St. Augustine area. The sky was pretty ominous and the ocean was rough because of a small Atlantic Storm. As we were walking to the beach from the car I saw this pigeon sitting on the fence against this dark grey sky.
I took a meter reading of the sky which came to 1/250 sec @ f/11 which would have been too dark for the Pigeon. I set my SB-24 Flash in Manual mode at 70mm Zoom, 1/16th power and f/11 giving me a working distance of roughly 7 feet. I fired off a couple of shots and each time I changed just the distance from the pigeon. I am pleased with the result and the fact that I am getting the hang of Speedlights and using them efficiently.
