The FED camera was named for Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinskiy, the founder of the Soviet state security agency “Cheka” which later became the KGB.  The FED 1 was first built in Kharkov, Ukraine in 1934.  Their design is based upon German Leica cameras.  The FED 5B was built from 1977 through the mid-1990s.  They are no longer made today.

The camera operates on manual–there are controls for aperture and shutter speed. We bought Kodak 400 ISO film.  We played around with our Canon 5D mkII to help us with the settings (since we’d never used a film camera on manual before).  We were shocked with the results!! Below you see a candid shot of Nikita taken on the 5D (top) and the FED 5B (bottom).  Both are straight out of the camera:

I love the film tint of the FED 5B and the soft focus it has.  Here’s another example from Thanksgiving dinner:

This time the FED 5B is on the top while the Canon 5D mkII is on the bottom.  The digital camera is sharper, but there’s something very appealing to the film look.

The next day, we had fun going to the park to take some family pics with the camera–its low-light as well as bright-light capabilities are great!!

Jennifer and Nikita

Even Sasha got in on the action!

(all pics straight out of the camera!)

There’s something about the place you grow up that is both precious and nerve-wracking.  It is freeing to be in a place you feel so comfortable, but strange to fall back into old habits.  Helena, Montana is my hometown and I love it. We don’t get over there as often as we should–it’s only a 10-hour drive from Seattle, but driving so far you gotta stay a while and with school and weddings, we don’t have big blocks of free time.  For Christmas this year we headed over the mountains for a week in a winter wonderland.

The whole state is covered in crystalline snow–crisp, cold and beautiful. We had a great time exploring downtown Helena, visiting all the landmarks and capturing the winter wonderland!

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Happy Holidays from Zinchuk Films!

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Sometimes my two worlds collide in a beautiful way.

A few days ago I was teaching visual rhetoric to my students.  I was asking them to take the tools of rhetorical analysis we had been working with all quarter and apply them to still images.  As I was developing my lesson plan, I realized just how much the questions I was asking my students applied to my own work as a filmmaker, photographer, and artist.  The concepts of framing, denoted and connoted meaning, audience. . .they are all considerations we make instantaneously as creative artists without thinking of it.

But what if we really thought about it?

I really had to step back and consider how I create films and still images.  In the whirlwind of a wedding, how much time do we actually take to frame an image for meaning rather than just beauty?  How much time do I take to get my tripod set up at just the right angle to capture meaning in both the foreground and background.  We like to walk a wedding before the big day: visit the ceremony and reception venue to visualize where we will set our cameras and how we will choreograph our behind the scenes movement while the action rolls.  But in the moment it is hard to always be aware and not get caught up in the action.

The basic tenets of rhetorical analysis became just so crystal clear when I applied them to visuals:

1) Situation: What motivates the photographer to capture this image? What motivates the filmmaker to press record?

2) Purpose: What is the photographer/filmmaker trying to show in this image?

3) Claim: What argument the artist is trying to make in this visual?

4) Audience: Who is the intended audience for this image? What can we tell about the audience from the image?

There is so much creativity in the work we do, but this creativity is most powerful when it tells a story.  The cameras we use have great rhetorical power: we have the ability to change zoom lengths to capture a moment close up or far away.  The manual controls allow us to highlight parts of a scene by changing the depth of focus.  In film, we blend real speech, music, and moving images to tell a story.  When we embrace the rhetorical power in our work and use it to tell our couples’ stories, then we are creating a truly memorable film that will last for generations.

Take a moment to consider the gorgeous Paris photos I posted at the top of this post. The first photo is the Eiffel Tower from a Parisian alley. The second is a very impressive view of the Eiffel Tower standing over the city.  Each angle has layered into its differing perspectives different motivations & different goals.  In each picture, The arguments being made by the photographer as an artist, Paris as a city, and the Eiffel Tower as a symbol are wildly different.  And we can see different audiences responding differently to the images separately and together.  In short, the perspective we choose, the way we frame and crop an image, the way we edit. . . each of those minute decisions affect the rhetorical voice of that visual.

And so I challenge myself to slow down when I shoot and consciously ask myself:

• What is the situation that brings my camera up, my index finger to the shutter?
• What is my purpose in framing an image: with a tight zoom or wide to capture everything?
• In the blur of the wedding day, sometimes it is difficult to consider the claim I am making as a filmmaker and artist: what part of this couple’s story am I trying to tell?
• And in the case of paid shoots, my audience is of ultimate importance. We are telling the story of one couple’s wedding day back to them, to their families and friends, and to the world.

As a scholar, I consider these elements in my work, but as an artist, how do we consider these elements as we create?

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No video quite yet–Alex is in the “editing cave” churning out some big edits. As soon as we finish up those projects, we’ll return to wedding trailers. It’ll be great to get some summer sun and inspiration when the cold weather hits. Until then, enjoy their love story. Maybe it’ll give some good ideas of how to spend what just might be a snowy weekend

We finally had a chance to hang out with Adiane, Avram and their new addition back in August. It’s so funny how two parents can have such different children: their daughter is an adventurer; so full of energy . . . while their baby boy is the calmest, sweetest boy I’ve met.  A huge contratulations to Adiane and Avram on their new addition! It is our great pleasure to be friends with such wonderful parents and such fun, sweet children. Much happiness and love to you all!
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We have one last wedding to wrap up our summer season and then we will finally slow down a bit. We can finally put our equipment away and begin the work behind our computers to share some amazing images and film with you, our friends and supporters!

Coming over the next few weeks: a summer wedding in Seattle/Snohomish, a gorgeous Russian wedding, some stunning images from Hawaii, an adorable family, and bit by bit, some additional wedding trailers AND a new look for our business!

Until them, a few images from paradise:

We finally got to test it out for a promotional film we did recently for Seattle wedding photographers Vlad & Irina of Voir Photography. We started early on a Monday after a long Sunday wedding, but the shoot was full of energy.  All we knew when we showed up was that Vlad and Irina and their assistants, Solomiya and Pavlo, would be shooting two couples in after-wedding sessions. We knew they wanted shots of them hard at work and of their beautiful couples. Oh, and a timelapse of them getting set-up. Thanks to their careful planning (and a lot of great props) this film turned out to be a ton of fun!

As for our Super-8mm camera? This shoot proves that “it’s not a toy.” It actually gave us some pretty awesome footage that perfectly fit Voir Photography’s vintage style.

Take a couple minutes to check out Voir Photography’s work:

(for viewing on mobile devices, click here)

Thanks to Voir Photography for getting a couple shots of Alex hard at work (don’t worry, I was there shooting somewhere too).

Just for the record (if it wasn’t clear from this film), Vlad and Irina are AMAZING photographers. If you’re interested in checking out their work, I encourage you to make an appointment and check out their prints and albums. Just stunning!
For more of Sam and Norma’s “drown the dress” session, visit Voir Photography’s blog.
For more from Alex and Tania’s “after the wedding” session, visit Voir Photography’s blog.

To tide ya’ll over in the interim, I just had to post a few of Milana and Aaron’s wedding pictures, taken by the talented Seattle Wedding Photographer Michael Movsyesov. He is amazingly talented and super easy to work with!

He even caught us hard at work!

So visit his blog, stop by his facebook page, and follow him on twitter.  He is going places!!