Doug Handel's Minox Stuff
"Even the "subjects" love the Minox"
(All are Minox B shots, 1997+ , and all were scanned from my conventional "paper" B&W prints
at 150 DPI then reduced for the web.)
Questions or Comments : dhandel@doughandel.com
People rarely seem to get "up tight" when I use my Minox. In fact they enjoy the event. Mostly, I think, they don't take it seriously, even when they know it's a professional photographer that's pointing it at them. The moment I pick up any of my "real" cameras, (unless they are professional models or the like) the whole event takes on another mood.
On a summer Boy Scout camp out in Oklahoma, the Minox B helped me avoid the standard "waving at the camera, goofy faced, I'm a teenager" images. After they saw it once, for the next two days, they just didn't care.
An artist, who's name escapes me, taken after we did the "regular shoot" with all the "real" strobes and umbrellas and junk. Believe it or not, that is his version of "happy", he is soooo serious.
The Galleria Shopping Center in Dallas... obviously not enough light to hold the skaters steady so I became "creative", and I panned, sort-of-with the skaters. You really can't miss when you go "creative", especially when you don't have any choice because of the film and light conditions. Yes, on a deal like this panning, I got 4 or 5 other shots of this scene that were pretty "lame."
I did the unthinkable on this Minox shot. I cropped it! (See, it's tall and skinny). As I look at it here, I could have cropped it even more. There is no real magic in using the exact proportion of the Minox negative, so long as you remember, there's precious little image area in 8x11 to start with.
Bottom line here is: some cropping is "cool", but if you crop too much off these tiny negatives, you'll have to enlarge what's left so much that you'll be forced to call all those shots "art".
Back to Doug's Contact sheets.