RFF Postcard Project, anyone?

[krötenblender]

Here is mine:

Sorry, all links, no uploads, yet, since the upload-function of RFF says, that my 95kb-image exceeds my quota over 800kb. Well...

The first one was the image I chose for the postcard which is one of two images which belong together. I was asked from most people, if I put the balloons on or did something else to the scene. I made them on different days and none of them is staged or manipulated. They show just, what I found, when I was out taking pictures. Just luck.

Both were taken with an M9 and at least the Bike was a VC Nokton 35mm, not sure about the other one. But since the VC 35mm is my most used lens (until I can afford the Summilux... ), it was probably also that lens here.

What else? Raw to Jpg in Lightroom, nothing else.


Big Version (1600): http://www.mempool.net/galleries/misc/PostcardBike.jpg


http://www.mempool.net/galleries/misc/Balloon.jpg

Thanks to Rob again for the project. I have received 33 cards until now. Still miss the feeling of getting home and finding postcards.

[seakayaker1]

A couple of comments regarding the second postcard I sent.

I had just recieved the Voigtlander Ultron 28/1.9 ASPH that I had ordered from Stephen at Camerquest on Saturday, April 9th. I attached it to my M9 and went out to take some photographs and one destination that day was Volunteer Park. I was not aware that there would be bike races going on all day and it was a nice treat since the park was full of people and lots of activity. I really enjoy the photographs that have been taken with the Ultron. In the photo selected, I enjoy both the sharpness and blur displayed in the image. This particular race was a Masters 40 minute race and the photo was taken as the riders crossed the finish line at top speed at the 32:08 mark of the race. The building in the background is the Seattle Asian Museum.



M9 with Voigtlander Ultron ASPH 28mm f1.9 -- ISO 400 -- f8 -- 1/45


. . . . . I have not received a postcard in the past 5 days and still hope there a few more making there way to my mail box. Thirty-two and holding for the monent . . . . . .

Love the posted photos and comments!

[Brad Bireley]

I took my photograph while sitting at our booth waiting for our food to be served. I looked at my wife's tea mug & thought...hmmm....this would make a great photograph. So I grabbed my Olympus XA out of my pocket that was loaded with Agfa Optima 400 (my favorite color print film). Here are a few links about Fezz's Diner.

Did anyone noticed I spelled Agfa wrong on my card?

http://www.mountainhomemag.com/issue...ShopAround.pdf

http://www.hollyeats.com/FezzsDiner.htm

http://www.coudymenus.com/fezzsdiner.html

Blue Tea

[randolph45]

Originally Posted by Brad Bireley

I took my photograph while sitting at our booth waiting for our food to be served. I looked at my wife's tea mug & thought...hmmm....this would make a great photograph. So I grabbed my Olympus XA out of my pocket that was loaded with Agfa Optima 400 (my favorite color print film). Here are a few links about Fezz's Diner.

Did anyone noticed I spelled Agfa wrong on my card?

http://www.mountainhomemag.com/issue...ShopAround.pdf

http://www.hollyeats.com/FezzsDiner.htm

http://www.coudymenus.com/fezzsdiner.html

Blue Tea

Spelling is not my strong suit or any thing else for that matter

And also no cards today

[dave lackey]

Originally Posted by Brad Bireley

I took my photograph while sitting at our booth waiting for our food to be served. I looked at my wife's tea mug & thought...hmmm....this would make a great photograph. So I grabbed my Olympus XA out of my pocket that was loaded with Agfa Optima 400 (my favorite color print film). Here are a few links about Fezz's Diner.

Did anyone noticed I spelled Agfa wrong on my card?

http://www.mountainhomemag.com/issue...ShopAround.pdf

http://www.hollyeats.com/FezzsDiner.htm

http://www.coudymenus.com/fezzsdiner.html

Blue Tea

That certainly turned out to be a superb post card!

[Brad Bireley]

Originally Posted by dave lackey

That certainly turned out to be a superb post card!

Thanks Dave.

[Jimbot]

Finally, finally, my postcards have arrived this morning. All will leave here by airmail this afternoon.
Thank you all for your patience.
Jim

[ampguy]

very nice photo Brad. I like how the cup matches some chairs, and the table others.

[ampguy]

Dan, your 2nd card is a very interesting photo. Don't know if I would have recognized those "ghosts" if you didn't mention they were bikes. That's a sharp background for 1/45th. I wonder if a vertical or different type of shutter would have given a different type of image for the bikers?

[dave lackey]

I like everybody's cards! Kudos to all of you!

[Jimbot]

Here is my card. Summer in Australia.

[dboxer]

50/1.4 Summilux Leica M6 Classic, expired Fuji Superia 100 import film.

I think I took this photo in August 2011. We were on our way to Ramone's friends' house and had a few minutes to throw rocks into Lake Washington. I had just picked up the Leica and lens and was eager to try it out. This was from the first roll through. I was satisfied with the results!

Ramone is really the reason I shoot film at all, anymore. While my wife was pregnant with him, I remembered fondly how my parents were always taking pictures of my siblings and I, using their shared Nikon F camera with 50/1.8 lens. There are boxes and albums full of snapshots. My dad had a short stint of home develop and printing in our basement. I sat in on a few printing sessions and he showed me the ropes.

Got sidetracked a bit there, but I basically wanted to have piles and boxes of fun old photos to sift through when he's all grown. I hope he will enjoy it as much as I enjoy taking the photos. He's usually pretty tolerant of my lens always pointed at him.

Now, I only use digital for work documentation (non-photo related work) and garbage cell phone pics. I would love an M8 or M9 to play with, but the film is a big attraction for me. I'm slowly accumulating stuff to develop my film at home. I've been using Capitol Hill 60 Minute Photo with mostly good results.

I chose the photo for the postcard project because it's one of my favorite photos from 2011. It is probably a bit personal a subject for a typical postcard, but I took a different approach to the project. And I just love how that lens rendered the image. I did amp up the colors a little in Photoshop, but mostly just to recover some saturation lost due to the expired film. I really did not like how Vistaprint cropped the image. No matter how much I f'ed with the image size, I never got the crop just right. Oh well.

Perhaps by next year, I'll have the ability to print my own, though I'd be happy just to develop my own film. At least that way, I know who to blame for messed up negs.

I, too was concerned about the cost of the project, but in all it wasn't that bad, and I got to hand address the cards and write out each one. My hand was a little sore when finished, but I enjoy the act of writing as I have little need to on a day to day basis.

It has been so fun finding new postcards in the mail every few days. My reception of the various cards perfectly matches that of Dan's (we're both Seattleites). It will be sad when there are no more on the way.

Matus' card had me thinking "Large Format? Hmm... " and Eric hipsterdufus' postcard was a very nicely done double exposure. I thought the effect was just right. It was interesting to see the seeming balance of color to B+W photos. Thank you all for the lovely cards, many of them with friendly notes, and every last one of those fine photographs.

Thank you Rob for your enthusiasm and the work you did to help coordinate the project. Is this something that others have done over the years here at RFF? If anyone is considering participating on the next round, it is highly recommended.

[rbiemer]

As far as I can recall, this is the first--and hopefully not the last!--RFF postcard project.
I started out by hand addressing and hand writing a brief message on my cards. After the first 5 or 6, I changed to printing the message but continued to hand write the addresses.
A couple of years back, I found a website that for about $9 or $10 would turn one's handwriting into a font to use on your computer.See here:
http://www.fontifier.com/index.html
I could not quite match the printed color to the color of ink I used to address the cards but it was tolerably close.
This is a truly fun project and I am as eager to check my mail while the last few come in as I was while I was getting two or three a day!
Warm regards to all!
Rob

[blw]

First, I'd like to concur with everyone else here. This was a fantastic project! Jimbot, I eagerly await your postcard. The same goes for anyone else who still hasn't sent theirs yet.



Here's an iPhone snap of my postcard. This was taken with a Yashica GSN with a shoe-mounted flash and some unknown b&w film.

I took the photo one night back in 2010. Jesse and James had come to town from the other end of the state and we had an impromptu work session on the skateboard ramp in my garage. We got a lot done, but it was still far from finished. As the beers flowed, I did what I usually do and got out a camera. I almost shot the entire roll that night. I had several other shots I liked for this project, but ultimately decided on this one because I felt like it reflected my "style" best of all. I love photos with people in them (although it seems near impossible for me to shoot strangers on the street) and I love a combination of stopped motion and motion blur. Ironically, I'm now tearing out the ramp so that I can set the garage up as a darkroom.

A side effect of this project meant I had plenty of extra postcards to print on (a box of 100 after all), so I was able to first send Jesse and James a postcard too. Then after I printed all the other postcards, I still had time in the darkroom, so I made contact prints of the roll on 4 cards each and sent those to the guys too.

I'm really inspired by the postcard thing. Once I get the darkroom set up, I'll be able to send prints to all sorts of random friends as postcards. It's very exciting.

[nighstar]

i've recieved three more cards since my last posting here, all of which have just been posted here as photos. grand total is now at 33.

31. Barry
32. Brad
33. Jim

very unique photos, all of them. thank you all for sharing them.

[randolph45]

The pool shot from. OZ arrived. To day. Cool,liked the shape too

[rbiemer]

Originally Posted by Jimbot

Finally, finally, my postcards have arrived this morning. All will leave here by airmail this afternoon.
Thank you all for your patience.
Jim

Jim, I got your card in yesterday's mail ( 23 February). I quite like the photo and the presentation! Thanks.

I am a bit surprised that it was delivered, though. You had missed the last digit of the Zip Code! But the postal system figured it out anyway.

There are still a few to come in--I think I'm expecting about four more.

Again, thanks to everyone for your participation!

If I were to organize this again, I don't think I would change much by way of how I did it. One thing I would absolutely do differently is how I put together the email I sent out with all the snail mail addresses.
I use Gmail and assigned a label to each of your emails that I thought would make sending the email with the addresses out a simple matter. Not quite. I needed to make a "group" in my contacts, then add each of you to that group, and then I could write one email to the group.
If I do this again, I will instead start a draft email with each snail mail address added to the body of the letter and with each email address added to the "send to" as they come in.
Or, I could learn Outlook I guess?

As of now, I am using 5 x 7 photo pages in a loose leaf note book to keep the cards in. 2 to a page and I can see/show off both sides of each card.

Looking forward to seeing some more postcards in this thread, folks!

Warm regards,
Rob

[randolph45]

Ilia's shot from San Francisco arrived today

[Jimbot]

Originally Posted by rbiemer

Jim, I got your card in yesterday's mail ( 23 February). I quite like the photo and the presentation! Thanks.

I am a bit surprised that it was delivered, though. You had missed the last digit of the Zip Code! But the postal system figured it out anyway.


Rob

A full zip code on a card Rob? Where would the challenge be in that?
By the time I sent those cards out I was just slamming addresses and stamps on like a crazy production line.

Since taking that card's photo I have secured a Mamiya 6 with a 75mm lens, so next time round I will be able to get the 6x6 format I love with a true rangefinder camera.

Thanks again for all your effort Rob.

[seakayaker1]

Originally Posted by seakayaker1

Two more arrived today, both beautiful, a color and black and white!

31. Brad ~ Galeton, PA
32. Barry ~ Statesville, NC

Still waiting on . . . . .

Jim ~ Australia
Uwe ~ Germany
Slawomir ~ Poland
James ~ UK
Ilia ~ CA

Love the postcards and this has been a great project!

I received Jim's from Australia at the end of last week, a beautiful color photograph of the Newcastle Ocean Baths and another today from Ilia from California which was a wonderful black and white street photograph in San Francisco.

That leaves my count at 35 post cards received with the potential for three more from:

Uwe ~ Germany
Slawomir ~ Poland
James ~ UK


Has anyone received cards from any of the three RFF members above. There is always the chance that they were just lost in the mail.

Great project and was quite happy to see two more appear over the past couple of days!

[robert blu]

Jim's postcard arrived in Italy a couple of days ago. Great photo and interesting "layout" !
robert

[dct]

After more than 20 days a new postcard again! Thank you, Ilia.

[ampguy]

I also received Jim's excellent image, and creative layout being printed in the middle of a longer sized card. Also Ilia's great image of the streets of SF with bldg. reflections in b/w. Both are very rangerfinder-esque images.

[krötenblender]

I got one from San Francisco today, but don't know who sent it, because the name is below a barcode... With this one, I received 35 cards so far. Maybe the missing ones are lost, but the yield was very good for this project. Some really impressive pictures.

[ilia]

if it vertical and BW and has same avatar on a back side as here it is mine