Colin Dullaghan's photos with the keyword: grain

As a gift to my sister, I promised to photograph her son. Of the ten shots on the roll from that day, this was my favorite. A lot of credit, though, should really go to Grayson's grandma, who elicited this smile as she crouched just to my left. Baby photography is hard! Technical notes: Wanting to use natural light, I loaded a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 in the Mamiya RB67. For a narrow depth of field and flattering effect, I used a 180mm lens. Even with the fast film, I had trouble shooting above 1/30th of a second in the window light. (Another surprise was a side effect of the low-light setting: His pupils were almost completely dilated! I'm not sure why I didn't anticipate that. In a couple of the pictures, the whites of his eyes weren't visible at all, leading my wife to observe, "Um, he kind of looks like a puppet.") The biggest thing I learned from this, though, was that Ilford 3200 should really be shot at ISO 800, or so, unless you're using a special developer. I used my usual 1+100 Rodinal, and got thin negatives with tons of grain. Ah well, I kind of like the effect -- or, at least, I've convinced myself that I do. At any rate, unless I get that special developer, I now know of no way to shoot portraits in room light with an RB67. Which is kind of disappointing. The camera's so versatile, I've always told myself that there's nothing it can't do besides fit in your pocket!

I'm sure there's quite a story behind the wall across from Roberts Camera, off Meridian St in the Wholesale District of Indianapolis. Now it adjoins a parking garage, but I suspect it didn't always.

Eventually, we did end up finding a way to look out over the traffic on Illinois Street, in one of the unlocked ballrooms in the hotel built on the bridge. I felt like I'd come through on a fatherly promise.

It's not a dome, and it's definitely not the Hoosier Dome, but to me the place where the Colts play will always retain the name it had when I was her age.

We took a skywalk over Capitol Avenue, into the Indiana Convention Center, at which point Veda noticed that there didn't seem to be any way down to the lower level. "There's always a way," I told her as we searched for stairs or an elevator. "You just have to keep looking."

The hotel we explored just happened to adjoin the headquarters of the county police -- some of whom were likely on the other side of this mirrored glass, wondering what we might be up to.

When you're four, all adventures involve an accomplice. In this case, it was her stuffed bunny. Well, and me.

At the Royal Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis's Union Station, you can stay the night in a hotel room made out of an old train car. Someday, I promised her, we will.

The owner of a local scrap-exchange crafts place very kindly set aside for me some donated Kodak Vericolor, which expired in July of 1996. I figured I'd try it in my Holga, on an extremely bright and sunny day, but even still -- the negatives came back from the lab with scarcely anything visible. But, happily enough, thorough careful scanning, heavy processing and a conversion to black and white, I was eventually able to get something kind of neat-looking.

Shot on extremely expired Kodak Vericolor in a snowstorm, this was one of the only images that even close to came out. But I like how the heavy grain adds to the frigid, dreamy feel of the scene.