This is by far my favorite photo to come out of this story. I shot it after spending most of my day getting various photos of racing and ice yachters with their boats. After finishing those photos, I decided to try to concentrate upon getting just photos that incorporated the grid patterns in the ice created from the three large ice skate-like blades on the boats passing over the thin layer of snow on the ice of Sebago Lake. I had shot ice yacht racing several times before this for other publications, but it was always on bare ice. The grid patterns had a really unique look to them and I wanted to take the time to get a really good photo that highlighted this look.

To help make the grid lines show up better, I decided to underexpose the photos. I underexpose most of my photos by 1/3 to 1/2 stop to start with, and went even further under with most of these photos. I also did this to keep the brightness of the snow down and deepen the color of the sky. I shot about twenty to thirty photos of ice yachts off in the distance, as seen in a couple other photos in the story, and in the background on this one, so that the grid lines would be more prominent in the foreground. While getting this photo I saw the boat in the foreground coming along, then timed it so that I could get it photo while not obscuring the ice yacht in the background. I also did something that I don't do much anymore; let the motordrive rip away for a few frames after the initial shot. Because I was shooting this on film, I didn't know if I got the photo composed the way that I wanted until I got the negatives back..

The final product had a look that I loved. I was able to emphasis the unique grid lines in the snow, get a good blue sky, and because the sun was low enough at this point in the day I was able to get the sunburst without any dead space at the top of the photo. The silhouetted racers and their bright backlit sails alone would have made a good photo, but with the other elements already mentioned, I feel like I got one of those rare photos that area just really cool to stare at. I just wish that I could get the online version of this photo to look as good as the print that I made from this photo. 72 dpi jpeg photos always lose a little bit of detail.

Hunting for the right look and composition and getting in the right spot to make this photo proved to be far less time consuming than bringing it to life. After scanning the photo I found that there were a couple of problems with the actual negative. There were scratches on the film that would not come out with the Digital ICE software that is a part of my scanning program for removing dust and scratches from slides and negatives. Even worse, there were weird streaks and splotches that I attribute to bad processing from my usually dependable lab. The streaks and splotches had a particular color to them that led me to that the bleach fix (blix) had become weak or unstable. If something like this had happened when I used to process my own color film, I would have blixed the film again for about five minutes, and the problem would most likely have been solved. In this case I just had to try to work around it. Fortunately the way that I had wanted to crop the photo removed many of the problem areas and I was able to get rid of the rest of them using Photoshop. I can't help wondering, in this digital camera age when less people are using film, if some labs and film processors are trying to get a little too much mileage out of their film processing chemicals to offset lost business.

On top of this, many of the photos, even though shot on 100 speed film, had a very grainy look to them. Far more grainy than my 200 and 400 speed negatives from other shoots This led to a fury of reading and research on this problem. Some sources attribute this to a problem called grain aliasing, which in a nutshell means that the scanner creates a form of grain called noise. Noise can also be seen in digital cameras when shot at higher ISO ratings i.e. 800, 1600 and 3200 etc. Other sources say that some negative films just don't scan well. I feel that there most be some truth to this because this is not the first time this has happened with low speed film, it just that this time it happened with some photos I really liked. I was able to get rid of some of the noise and grain by using the GEM software in the scanning program for my scanner, but still not quite as much as I would like. I'm going to be trying some newer negative films in the near future, and perhaps a new film scanner. After I do this I'll write a little bit on how they look and how they scan. There will also be stories on why I still use film for stories, while using digital cameras for most deadline related work that I do.

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