Nostalgia

The Lone Needle, originally uploaded by = Rebirth.

Can you be nostalgic about a place you left less than a year ago? Or feel intimately familiar with a location in which you've never set foot? It's weird, but it feels like I've been up on this popular vantage point above the Taipei basin countless times when I haven't. I get the feeling that I somehow recognize those two people, gazing out towards the Taipei101 building, admiring the thin mist as it envelops the city in a strangely photogenic mugginess.

False memories aside, I like how =Rebirth has created this faux cross-processed effect with the high contrast and bluish color cast. Cross processing is a technique done with film, where you process slide (positive) film in chemicals meant for negative film, or vice versa. The results vary depending on the film, and can range from looking completely monochrome green or red, to having a bluish super saturated look. One thing that helps exacerbate these wonky effects is "pushing" the film, meaning you expose an 100iso roll of film as if it were 400iso, then telling your lab tech to develop the film as if it were 400iso film (which would be 2 stops).

Alternatively, you could shoot a scene on your digital camera and go to work in your post processing software of choice. Definitely not the easiest route to take. =Rebirth has done a phenomenal job with this shot. Aside from his xpro treatment, I love the composition, and all the details he's somehow preserved in both the figures, buildings, and clouds. Plus, it must be said that finding such a beautifully gradated sky is harder than many might think. Thankfully, =Rebirth was on hand to catch it on this day. I wonder where I was. Probably shut indoors, playing guitar hero when I should have been out shooting.