I mentioned Katherine the dancer a number of times, but I haven't posted a photo of her in ages. She was a woman I met in a local nightclub not quite 20 years ago. She was a dancer in the New York club scene in the early 90s. For a variety of reasons she left NYC and now lives in a hill town in western MA. Katherine is ...quite a character, but I always had very good chemistry with her as a subject for photography. I took two sets of photos with her in 2006. The first of which was about 3 days after I got my first DSLR (the never very good EOS 30D) and the second was with the same camera 3 months later. At that time I had bought a 35mm F/2 and 50mm F/1.4. I also had learned quite a bit about taking photos, but still effectively knew nothing. Starting 2020, I began revisiting and re-editing the shots I took during those two sessions. I still pick away at the remaining unedited ones that I think are worth pursuing, but I'm largely done.
In '06, I ran a bunch of the photos through the Holga and Lomo Photoshop scripts I liked at the time. In retrospect, it's clear I leaned in to lo-fi nature of the results those scripts produced to mask flaws present in the originals.
14 years later, I had different ideas, software and skills for editing photos. Instead of overly dramatic PS scripts, I've been working the use of lookup tables. LUTs are a thing primarily used in video, but with some careful work they can make subtle but impactful changes in still images as well.
This shot always reminded me of the Houses of the Holy album cover.
Taken with the never spectacular EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 USM III.
Her face is a bit blurred in this one, but I like the look of determination.
A rare B&W conversion. This one just works better without color.
Observant viewers will note that while I left behind many of my mid-00s bad habits, I still put a vignette effect on most of these images. I like how it looks on portraits.