Mike Stacey

Dusk at the Leopold (Pt. 1)

Added 2024-12-20 10:03:42 +0000 UTC

This set of images was shot in an amazing hotel in Antwerp with Aurora and Manya. Manya’s Instagram seems to have disappeared, maybe she’s having a break. Initially I didn’t think these two would work photographically together but they proved me wrong. They had a really cool vibe between them which shows.

Somehow, for some of these images, my ISO was set at 52,000! I never touch the ISO during a shoot (I set is before) as I shoot manually, or as manually as I can when there’s already a light meter in the camera, so I have no idea what happened there. The high ISO obviously gave more noise but I’ve always liked the noise that the Z6 sensor gives and often I do set the ISO higher than I need just to get the effect of that noise, which looks very similar to the grain of one of my favourite film recipes - Delta 3200 shot at ISO 1600 and pulled in processing. The disadvantage of noise, whether introduced via the sensor, or via a film scanner, is always shadow noise which tends to accumulate and clump together to form visible darker patches. One of the shots here took some work to try and tidy that up.

I have a definite favourite in this set, guess which one?

Which one’s your fave?

Part 2 coming...