Blow Up

I took the photo because I like taking photos on the street.. it is a great way of spending time, you might not be getting keepers very often, but when you do it's like peeking at God at play.

Here, I was getting through the passageway and saw the light, the mural and that woman coming. I will not pretend that I rationalized the resulting picture in advance, that I knew it'll look like she's rushing in her own speech bubble only to encounter the two grenadeheads a second later. By the time the shutter was pressed though I knew it is a keeper.

The shot was taken in April 2006 in Bergen, Norway. The roll was processed a few months later. The camera was Kiev-4A rangefinder with Helios-103 1.8/53 mounted and an auxillary turret finder installed. I used the latter because it allows to peek outside frame area, now replaced with more convenient 1:1 Voigtlander Kontur. The film was Fortepan 400 pushed one stop in Rodinal 1+50. Exposure was 1/250 f/11: I wanted sharpness throughout the scene and to freeze woman's movement. Fortunately the highlights didn't blew up.

Scanned on Nikon 5000 ED for highlights, in 14 bit depth. The resulting (fairly flat) scan was tweaked with curves.