More Film Fun

 

Morning folks.

Well, another post about film and I'm not even a hipster.

Nor am I using the truly ghastly Ilford colour film either - a film that reminds me of the free stuff you'd get every time you got your holiday pics developed at Snappy Snaps (et al).

Nope, this bad boy was fecking expensive, but lovely nonetheless, Kodak TMX 100 - and FRESH too, which is unusual for me as I have been using expired film for the age of a pig.

Since the Alaris takeover and the ridiculous pricing structure, Kodak film seems to be pretty much ignored in the UK simply because it is heavily over-priced and way beyond most people's means, however with the burgeoning Ilford pricing structure, and, I'm sorry (even though they've been really lovely about it) the mottle issues, I've bitten the bullet and bought some Kodak.

The mottle thing from Ilford, although apparently resolved, has settled in my head like a nagging worry. It has happened to me with relatively fresh film as well as some old stuff, but indeed not all old stuff or even stuff from the same batch! It's a bit like Russian Roulette and doesn't seem to be influenced by storage either. I keep thinking what if I walk all this way, or have this adventure and take some photographs that are unrepeatable and I get home and the mottle is there. It's not a healthy frame of mind, but that's the way it is at the moment, hence my buying of Kodak.

Anyway, the above photograph was indeed a wonderful surprise, but also I kind of/sort of knew what was there.

I was using the Hasselblad SWC/M on a day where the camera was being battered to pieces by incredibly high winds. 

(A little aside to this is that a few weeks back my Arca B1 ballhead locked [and it is one of the unlockable ones too] - I was utterly furious . . so I looked around and ended up with a Kirk BH-1 [secondhand, but the retailer had forgotten to put a 1 in front of the price, so ridiculously cheap]. The difference is like night and day - the Kirk is smooth, precise and locks down with the lightest of locking pressure - it is brilliant American engineering and a delight to use.)

Anyway, the thing with the SW is you know to an extent what you should be getting, but it isn't entirely always written in stone, simply because the VF is kind of weirdly distorted and also you're zone focusing. The key thing with the camera though (even using it in the landscape) is getting the bubble level perfect. Once the camera is level you can be confident that everything else will fall into place. The lack of distortion in the Biogon is something else, as is the coating. 

I've always said light magic happens in that camera and it is true.

As you can see from the above, the sun was totally in the frame, but hey-ho, the composition was what I wanted, so I let rip. Weirdly (and I am, I freely admit it) I was using a 0.9ND and Deep Red filter in combination with each other which has resulted in good cloud and wave structure; some nice contrast where the receding waves are pulling back off of wet pebbles and a taming of direct sunlight. I knew it would do that 'cos I've done it before.

The exposure was 4 seconds at f22 and was entirely guessed by me.

Using a ND filter mixed with water is just about the most ghastly thing in modern photography. 

It is a mockery of John Blakemore's pioneering work and laughs at the ghost of Wynn Bullock - I hate it, but I use it.

What I am trying to do with it, is illustrate the passage of time, hence I'd really rather use it when there's plenty of wind so you can see what is happening to the land (and the sea).

As I said at the start, the film was TMX 100 and I rated it at EI 80 simply because I've found it to require a bit more exposure than box speed.

To make things hard for myself, I entered the world of unknown development times/scanners' development times. 

As has been my way recently, developer was Fomadon R09 at dilution 1+75. 

I did my usual agitation regime to 13 minutes and then let the film stand until 14 minutes and 30 seconds. It's worked out about right. The negatives have a nice look and are easy to print.

The scan above is from a tiny 4.25" image on 5x7" Ilford Portfolio, printed at Grade 3; developer was Bellini Ornano Bromorapid 980. It hasn't scanned particularly well, however the print itself is a lovely little jewel and I intend to print it a good deal larger - there's so much detail under the moving waves.

And that's it.

Film is fun and especially so when you are moved to rush into the darkroom and print something.

To me, photography doesn't get much better.

Take care, be good and remember to be nice to someone.

H xx

Nice Surprises With Film

Morning folks - I hope everyone is well and not too depressed by my previous posts . . it is just stuff you have to think about. 

Anyway, without further ado, it is back to normality (or whatever it is called these days).

This post is a just about a couple of images that surprised me as soon as I took the negatives out of the tank.

And that to me is the magic of film.

Slightly Contrast Tweaked Due To Nagging
From PITA Reader!

At the time of their taking I had an idea that they might be alright.

But you know when you get that nagging feeling?

Anyway, I knew I had something with the first one (above).

It looked good in the viewfinder and generally I find that if that is satisfactory, hopefully it is the case that my equipment (and skills in the processing departments) can take care of the rest.

 
It was taken during a visit to a very tall building indeed and I was just snapping away, taking a couple of 'record' pictures of the scene. Reflections off the windows were everywhere and despite the awe-inspiring vista, everything was quite washed-out.

But then I moved slightly and there it was. 

I waited until the bloke on the far right had started to look out of the window and I (accidentally) succeeded in capturing him looking a bit pensive and also what looks  (to me) like a bit of a beating up going on to the left of him.

Like I say, I knew I had something, but had to wait a while till I could develop it. 

The resulting image took me by surprise as I unravelled the wet and still unwashed film from the reel. It spoke to me in spades. 

Was the guy a mastermind and his henchmen were beating up some hapless nark? 

What was going on? 

I've never had that happen before with film and I probably never will again.

Oh, and what you are seeing is actually a reflection of the goings-on BEHIND ME. 

Suffice to say, I was as chuffed as a big chuffer in a chuffingly chuffed competition.

The camera was my 1958 Canon L2, and the lens was the lovely 35mm f3.5 Nikkor-W from about 1951. The film was HP5 and it was developed (actually over-developed) in Pyrocat.

 

Yes I didn't think you could overdevelop in PHD either; in reality you can't, simply because the tanning continues in the highlights until it is exhausted, however you sort of can to the extent that a negative can become nearly unprintable due to density.

This is what happened with the above - it's thicker than Grannie's Soup; the sort of situation my dear old Dad would have said:

"You could stand a spoon in it".

Why? 

Well, ahem, your, cough, cough, experienced photographer cough, cough, was using his small light meter in an incorrect manner (OK, it had been a long day). 

Not only was the film rated at EI 200, but I was also over-exposing by another 2 stops . . and then . .  . I went daft and developed it to my usual Pyrocat-HD times.

To say it is dense is an understatement. 

There's also bromide drag on it and everyfink.

Allied to this, I decided to print it on really, truly ancient paper, which hasn't helped anything. 

The paper is Tetenal Vario and probably about 10,000 years old. 

I had to print it at Grade 5 too to rescue anything.

This being said, I love the image, and OK, an SLR and a polariser would have done it better (maybe even a digicam too), but the Canon is smaller, lighter, more discreet, silent and (more importantly) was there (well, along with me too).

Slightly Contrast Tweaked Due To Nagging
From PITA Reader!

The next objet-d'art, was the above. 

It's considerably easier to print than the first one and in truth is a far more considered image; being more reflective of film skills learned over a very long period of time indeed. 

In other words (yet again) I am chuffed with it even though precision was thrown to the wind. 

You probably could achieve it digitally somehow, or if not just describe it to The Bots, however that's not where I'm at maaaan.

This was all about me, time, weather and the interaction of photons and silver. 

It actually exists as a physical object in this world.

But first some background!

I recently discovered that my faithful old Gossen Lunasix 3S light meter had been having a bit of a wobbler, and was reading in both the upper and lower ranges. 

I've relied on that meter for over 20 years - it is a wonderful thing, but for it to be dishing up possibly bogus readings I had to check it out.

A friend of mine had mentioned he had a Pentax Spotmeter. 

Fair enough I thought - probably one of the ancient needle variety. 

Well this turned out not to be the case - it's the last version, and I excitedly asked if I could borrow it to cross-reference it against the Gossen.

It's a hell of a machine - fast, accurate and easy to use. 

I would say its only foible is that in low light situations it is impossoble to see the metering circle in the viewfinder; but I got around that by putting my hand in front of it, and taking it from there. 

A white business card would do exactly the same trick in a very dark forest f'rinstance.

Anyway, suitably armed I decided to sally forth into the great outdoors. 

It was an incredibly windy day up here in t'North and I wanted to capture pictures of spray on the River Tay with a Hasselblad 250mm Sonnar. 

The 250mm is a lens as sharp wide open as it is stopped down - it was the same lens that took the famous Earth shot from the Moon and I have found Zeiss' claims about it to be very true. 

All-in-all, a very under-rated lens . . . though extremely hard to use in a picture-making manner.

Sadly my spray pictures turned out to be a complete pile of turnips, however the above was not. 

It's a row of cherry trees that are nearby - I've often wanted to photograph them, but they have proved elusive, however, that morning there they were in the viewfinder looking all lovely with the wind blasting and the perspective compressed out of them. 

LOVELY! I thought.

I was however dealing with quite unphotogenic circumstances:

An extremely strong buffeting wind (not easy to deal with in a camera set-up that is over a foot long)

and

Really bright sunshine (with no lens hood and the sun virtually head-on)

So I rubbed my chin, thought about it a bit, had a rummage, and put a 0.9 ND filter on the lens. 

The film by the way was TMX 400 that had expired in January of 2012, so I rated it at EI 200 just to get some oompa.

 

Allied to this I had decided I wanted to develop the film in Fomadon R09 at 1+75 . . for which I could find no relevant developing times. 

Talk about making it hard for myself. 

1+75 is actually a decent way of using Fomadon - it gives really nice, crisp results. 

Certainly grain can be quite heavy, but hey, IT'S A PHOTOGRAPH! 

Fuggedabootit. 

It just makes it easier to focus when you enlarge it!

So there I was, getting sort of tossed about like a small toy in a wind-chamber, trying to take a photograph.

Suitably protecting the camera (in situations like that fold the focusing hood down too . . . though obviously focus first y'twit.) I metered the central dark portion in the distance and set the reading to Zone III (two stops underexposed); locked up the mirror, pressed the cable release and waited.

The exposure was 35 seconds at f45.

I had no idea whether the camera was getting moved or not - it didn't look like it, but experience has told me that is not always the case.

Although you've done everything you can to make sure your photograph will turn out OK, in situations like that there's simply no guarantee.

However, fortune favours the brave as they say, and indeed, the resulting negative wot emerged out of the tank made me go "WOW!"

That is the magic of film to me.

Apart from the time and effort that goes into each and every film I expose, process and print, it is the almost child-like surprise I get when I first take the film out of the wash water that makes me keep going back for more. 

There's a suspension of reality and a surfeit of anticipation. 

I won't quote Forrest Gump, but you'll know the phrase I mean if I say:

"Choclets". . . 

It is true though - even with the correct skills and years of experience, I think the same phrase can be applied to the craft of film photography.

And that's it - briefer than that pair of shrunken, mustard-yellow Y-Fronts your Mum used to insist you wear.

Till next time, keep breathing, keep looking and don't forget to buy some film (and paper).

H xx

Stuff(ed) Responses

Morning folks - well as promised here's the comments to the previous post wot you kan reed 'ere.

In Memorium

I didn't get many at all, but then it hasn't been much more than a week. 

Blogs are funny things - sometimes comments can arrive years later.

Anyway, those that did provided some very interesting thoughts - my grateful thanks to all contributors:

Calgary Bob has left a new comment on your post 'What Do We Do With All This Stuff?':

Hi Herman

You've broached a subject that, for many, is quite uncomfortable, or worrisome, or hard to enter into. The stuff we collect as you go through life can be collections that occur just over time or can have significant meaning to you now or maybe forever. For example, your LOTR set (I had the same set too - finally too hard to keep together and it went into recycling). For me, it was just a book I wanted to read, bought myself, and read it a number of times. I have another copy and so I don't need both. But for you - it was a gift that had a whole stack of memories attached to it. That book is worth a whole lot more than just a classic read - it is like a magic amulet that you have around your neck, maybe hidden under that old shirt. There comes a time when you start looking at all the stuff - will I ever read it again; will I look at these again; do I really need four hammers? That kind of examination and clean out can be therapeutic. And this is not a rushed thing - it is a way to open up your history and take a stroll into the past. As you know, I believe that we have a next life to go to, and all people we have known will be welcoming me there - there will be no need to hang onto memories here because I won't need them - I'm sure my mother and father will remind me!! So I think what you can do is start culling stuff that you know right now will not be necessary to move forward, but hang onto the things that have meaning. Right now as I type this, over on the book case behind me, are pictures of the people I've lost. I like to see them there, because after some time I may not quite picture them in my mind's eye. But your art photographs? They sum up who you are - collect the best ones and keep them in a beautiful portfolio - they will be a family keepsake and others left on this plane will cherish them.

Bruce Robbins has left a new comment on your post 'What Do We Do With All This Stuff?':

I love atmosphere in a landscape if it’s borne of light, composition and expressive printing - not if it’s a load of mystical bollocks (MB). MB is like unsubstantiated bollocks (UB) but with a spiritual twist. Clarence H White? Of its time I suppose but it’s all set up so I see it as more like film set press photos. Clarence: “Now you stand there and tilt your head to the right. Hold the glass orb a little higher. That’s it.” There’s more posing going on than at the Cannes Film Festival. If that’s spiritual then David Bailey was the Dalai Lama.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post 'What Do We Do With All This Stuff?':

Hi,

I'm with Bruce on this, the only difference is I have made 6 books already by publish on demand, mostly themed "best of" books and two of family photos going back halfway to forever.

I used Blurb, not perfect but a lot better than nothing. I figure a decent looking book will be valued more than a bunch of boxes of disorganised prints. I've already at 65 started giving them out and the kids love them.

Of course it does mean you've got to scan heaps, worth it though.

Highly recommended.

All the best, Mark

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post 'What Do We Do With All This Stuff?':

I don't have a clue too, though I feel that leaving it as a problem for someone else to solve is somewhat selfish. After I've read something similar here:

https://betterbeaters.blogspot.com/2024/07/who-exactly-are-we-keeping-our-cars-for.html 

I have started to think about this matter too.

I would think perhaps 99% of the photos (digital or physical) hold little meaning and can be discarded, but a precious few would serve as good memories. As for gear, get rid of them while you're able.

Julian has left a new comment on your post 'What Do We Do With All This Stuff?':

This is one of those Sheephouse epistles that really hits home. As you [Herman] know, I not only have my personal photographic detritus but that of my father. I guess I can rest somewhat easy in that his life's major photographic project, Robert Lenkiewicz, has been published in book form and therefore will rest somewhat in the annals for the foreseeable. Likewise sundry academic papers and learned contributions to books and on the web - see his piece on Fay Godwin here:

  https://www.djclark.com/godwin/critic.htm

He was a collector of other people's detritus in the form old albums and glass negatives. When it became necessary to clear his house the time available was limited, the room this end was limited and the space on the van was limited. It was down to pot luck as to what I could bring back. I have no doubt that I left behind some gems and saved some crud, but what can you do?

As a very good printer, his delight seems to have been to print from old glass negatives. The [funny] thing is that I now have boxes of archival quality images, some of which may be family and therefore worthy of interest, some may be just random... I have no way of knowing.

The lesson is better labelling and do it now. I believe it was all in his head and that he was very much not expecting to be yanked off this mortal coil as soon he was.

My experience with the sort of relatives that one encounters through genealogy websites is that even though I might have something from someone more closely related to them than me, they are very happy to have the occasional scan but would rather not to take on the burden of responsibility for the physical reality photographs and diaries.

In the end, my opinion is, this bit where we are, life, is for the living. When we are no longer alive, it's nothing to do with us. We may wish, we may hope, we may leave behind words. In the end, the living will do what they will. Make it easy for them and they might just ensure the survival of some of it.

 

And that's it - if I get any more I'll publish them as comments to this rather than anything else!

Till next time.

Keep taking the pills.

H xx

What Do We Do With All This Stuff?

 Across the evening sky

All the birds are leaving

But how can they know

It's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire

I will still be dreaming

I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore

Your fickle friends are leaving

Ah, but then you know

It's time for them to go

But I will still be here

I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone

While my love is near me

I know it will be so

Until it's time to go

So come the storms of winter

And then the birds in spring again

I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?

And who knows where the time goes?

Morning folks - hope you've got your black jumpsuit on, because today's post is concerned with death and what to do about all the detritus you will inevitably leave behind! 

Oh yes, it's a right old morbid smörgåsbord of early morning thinking, confusion, inevitability and good old:

"Feck Me . . I am how old??!! . .  but I was ONLY 17 a few years back . . . "

I find it weirdly satisfying in some way that Sandy Denny (writer and singer of the lyrics at the start) had a grandparent who was a Dundonian . . anyway, that's grist for another mill, though I have to say lyrically, with relations and friends embattled by the rigours of life, that song rings to me like a bell on a clear morning.

Taking A Trip In A Caravan
(The sort of image that will never survive. Never printed, just scanned.
Found in the nether-regions of my computer.)
Olympus Trip/Caravan/Autumn/Agfacolor.

So, my post today concerns photographs and how the hell do you handle them in the event of someone dropping off their perch.  

Unfortunately, having re-read it umpteen times, it is largely devoid of advice or ideas and is more a random collection of thoughts about clog poppin'.

"Say wha??"

Well, you can't avoid it, it is going to happen. 

You might hide in the corner clutching your head, but somewhere down the line the Grim Reaper is going to camp out in your garden and demand some sort of restitution. 

So what do you do?

That's a hard one, because actually I am not sure you can do anything, except prepare as much as you can and then that's it. 

The hardware is fine, there's no problems with that - in fact you could really deal with all that stuff in one word . . and no it's not necessarily Ebay, so, got your Ikea meatball meal deal ready?:

Döstädning!

Go on have a laugh at my expense why dontcha.

Ee's off 'is trolly!

The concept is a simple one - you divulge yourself of stuff that might be really useful to someone else down the line (in age). 

After all as you get older, stuff becomes a burden - this could be a solution and might make you feel good too. You don't really need 15 Paterson tanks and 8 Kodak Beehives (just in case) do you? That old Meopta enlarger you upgraded from in 1996 and that takes up about two large suitcases worth of space . . surely there's someone out there that could use it as a learning tool. Of course, I know you'll say, well they'll just sell it anyway, to which I would say, fine, let them try and pack it properly!

It's a thought.

I didn't come up with the concept, but I quite like it. In an ideal world, where people weren't trying to squeeze every last penny out of everything, then it could almost be considered utopian. 

But that's about getting rid of useful stuff - what about those archival boxes you have filled with your entire photographic output? 

I have a friend who has everything - from a first film made on a parent's camera, right the way through to now with 12 mega-terabyte drives (for storage and backup). 

But backup for what? 

Are his children going to keep all of those drives? 

And how do they share it around? 

What happens if they were to slim it down to say one and it fails?

And what about the physical stuff   - a lifetime of negatives and prints? Are they really going to look through every single photo their father has taken? 

It is a massive burden acquiring stuff, but it is an even more massiver burden acquiring custody of someone else's stuff. 

So what do you do?

Pretty much without exception, most families are exactly the same - we've got PHYSICAL photographs (yes I know there are exceptions based upon monetary and sociological factors - please bear in mind I am generalising based upon my own experience.) 

And it's not just a handful of photographs, no, that would be too easy; it is TONS of them and not only that, but tons of them picturing the most ephemeral and trite things as well. 

Boxes (or if you were sensible paper envelopes) filled to the brim with multiple out of focus snaps of birthdays and scenic snaps and a delphinium that your Gran had - the list is as endless as it is incomprehensible why someone took a picture of a squashed cup-cake anyway.

 

Added to this, I don't think anyone anywhere has gone:

 

I know we should really curate these because somewhere down the line someone is going to have to go through this.

Though actually that's not quite true - my wife and I kind of did back in the day - the best were stuck in albums, and the remainders and corresponding negatives shoved back into their envelopes and put away somewhere. 

But the thing is, they have never gone anywhere and ultimately, they remain as a MASSIVE headache for our progeny, or the next door neighbours when they're wondering what the smell is. 

Our (carefully curated remember) albums now occupy a whole large shelf, that will either have to be taken on board, or . . . 

 

My own personal photographic output occupies six CXD archival boxes . . . and that is just the negatives! 

When you factor in the print boxes/old paper boxes stuffed with prints, I start to wonder, is my family really going to want to go through all this when they possibly have a whole house to clear? 

Or is it more likely the case that they're going to cherry pick.

And the rest? . . . well who knows . . .

When I put it like that it is kind of depressing isn't it? 

You start to think, actually is there any point in this?

When my Mother died, my sister and her kids cleared the house. 

Living 400-odd miles away and working full time I was unable to help, so consequently, anything from my early life that my Mother still had (it wasn't much, but it was something) got chucked or given away.

There was nothing particularly valuable, it was just sentimental junk. 

But that's not the point.

Some things you have with you for years; for instance my copy of Lord Of The Rings was given to me at Christmas, in 1974, and I have read it around 28 times. 

It has fallen apart, but now has an ignominious chunk of Japanese framing tape obscuring the lovely spine . . . yet I refuse to give it up in favour of the other very nice editions we have in the house, simply because it is mine and stained with my patina; and, to an extent it is imbued with me.

You could probably call it sentimental junk, but strangely sentimental junk counts for a great deal in the human condition.

But the question is: WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO IT?

In an ideal world, we'd reach the end of our lives in some sort of psuedo-hippy white room, with little or no possessions (the key thinking being that they are things that tie your soul to the earth) before we are whisked off on The Cosmik VW Space-Combi to Nirvana. 

I sort of get that, so chuck the hotdogs on the Bar-B now. 

But although we're the stuff of stars, we're also made from the heavy layers of earth and rock and water beneath us; we're as tied to the planet as one could possibly be. 

Sure, all thoughts of the soul lifting free and soaring off to some cosmic plane . . well, who knows? 

Yet as humans here we are, farting, eating, breeding, contemplating . . and, for want of a better phrase, gaining earthly chains.

Jings, you don't half acquire them don't you?! 

In the past few years I've encountered people's hoards, the likes of which the ancients would have considered treasure troves . . but in our modern world of plenty, it is just STUFF.

And it is the autopsical handling of stuff that is the most difficult. 

I was recently talking to a neighbour and she said something along the lines of:

"Why worry about it? It won't be your problem. Enjoy it now and let it become someone else's problem."

I can get that.

But I can also get that someone, somewhere will have to deal with it.

It's no surprise that house clearances are so popular - the lure of a Leica IIIg in a box of old towels; a Maserati quietly rusting in a garage . . .

When the time comes and someone has to clean up the remnants of your life, their temptation will be to quickly scout through everything looking for valuables, and the rest . . well the rest will probably just get chucked.

And sadly, for us as photographers, that probably means all our efforts in the form of negatives and prints and hard drives. 

Don't worry about the tools . . someone will want the tools; but the form, the architecture of creation; your creative urges writ large . . well, sadly, unless you were well known, then I doubt anyone will give a shit.

So what does one do with thousands of negatives; hundreds of prints; 12 terabytes of digitalness?

I actually don't know.

Are they of any worth? 

Only to you my friend, only to you.

Even the great auction houses in the home of serious photography (America) won't take negatives. 

They only want vintage prints, and even then I doubt they want the work prints, oh no. 

The scrap copy of Moonrise over Hernandez with the giant coffee stain on it . . probably in a pile somewhere . . but a signed edition? well that is a different story. 

And a different story in that we're talking about one of the masters. 

Old Joe Soap from Wigan or Ohio, or Sienna or Dubrovnik, or Cobh or  Beattock . . well fuggedaboutit.

This was hammered home to me recently due to a family thing, whereby I had cause to riffle through a part of my family hoard of snaps that weren't in my house.

There were hundreds of prints all loosely gathered in plastic bags and boxes, flying free from their old printers' envelopes and not a negative in sight. 

The shoe boxes I had organised them into some 30 years back with the help of my Mum's memory were nowhere to be seen.

And this was kind of important, because after all, snaps going back 40+ years. . . who remembers who these people were? 

That person with the standard lamp shade on their head? 

The dog in the cardigan? 

A small girl playing at a kitten's tea party in a sunny room somewhere.

The boy/man floating dead in a canal?

Who are they and why are there photographs of them?

Our stabs at immortality in the form of documenting the fleetingness of life through photography (sic) are worth nothing if nobody knows who/what/where/when/you/we/they/are/were and why.

When I put it like that, I kind of wonder is there actually any point in a photograph?

When all you have left is a random image of 'somewhere' or 'someone' and nobody knows where it was or who it was, or even what they were doing . . why document it in the first place?

I need to go and have a big think now, because in the typing of all this, I have asked myself a series of questions I am not comfortable with.

Several weeks and gallons of tea later . . . 

Approximately 1949.

This recent find hasn't scanned well because of the glazing of the photograph.

The print is a contact print.

Approximately Mid-1940's
Another extraordinary find.
I think the lighting is terrific.

So I guess the point of a photograph, is to bring into existence a moment of time that is relevant to you, the photographer (and anyone with you involved in said moment of time).

And that is it (well actually that is partly it.) 

When you depart this plane, that moment of time kind of ceases to have any relevance, because everything that was ever behind it is gone. 

If you are survived by others in the photograph, then the relevance is still there until they too face the inevitable and shuffle off into The Cosmic Corner. 

At that point the photograph carries on existing, but only as evidence of a slice of time with a little relevance. 

Like the above two gems (unseen by me until a month ago) it becomes a 'historical' artefact. 

However when you look at photos like that, you can see that the life of a photograph isn't quite as dead-end as it might at first appear to be.

But I think that all depends on the subject matter - apart from family photos, this 'historical' relevance might become more important if the photograph is what is now colloquially known as 'street' (or indeed any documentation of the fleetingness of 'modernity'.) 

A friend from the Forum (Hi Neil!) has a wonderful collection of snaps from around Dundee in the late 1970's early '80's and they are true historical documents of a City undergoing change and that has largely vanished.

In cases such as that, I think the photograph can live on.

But can it live on when it is (as a huge amount of hobbyist photography appears to be these days) ANOTHER picture of some flowers with massive amounts of bokeh, or ANOTHER woodland, or ANOTHER abandoned building, SOMEWHERE?

I have to say (and I mean no disrespect) that the ease of digital photography in being able to produce, say, fifteen images when just ONE would have sufficed, has resulted in an explosion of truly terrible photography. 

Yeah I know, you're saying:

"My Dad used to take loads of horrific pictures of us with his Instamatic" 

however in my opinion, it is just too damn easy to make something look 'acceptable' and there is now so much of it (please, check Flickr [look for your favourite lens f'rintance] . . some very good stuff on there, but also a hell of a lot of bilge) that often it is impossible to lift one image out of the morass, because that morass is now so huge, and, dare I say it, so professional looking!

It is almost like trying to fish a floating sweety wrapper that you lost out of the Pacific Gyre.

And, it is all Petabytes of data, just lying around on servers, doing little, and rarely looked at.

My friend can take 300 images in a couple of hours - I doubt (as a film photographer) that I take 300 images in 6 months.

It is stuff, stuff and even more stuff, with little thought to the future, or indeed the environmental impact of such energy usage concerned with storing stuff that nobody will look at!

But back to the meat and potatoes . . can a photograph truly survive in a post-maker environment?

As regular readers will know I love good landscape photography, so here's some thinking about that.

I might say that some of the skill of the truly great landscape photographers is such that their eye and personal deep feeling for landscape somehow imbues the image with something other than it just being a picture of a scene. 

(Please note this is entirely different for what passes for most landscape photography today.)

I'd like to call it (loosely) ATMOSPHERE. (Friend Bruce might call it UB [Unsubstantiated Bollocks].)

It can exist in a photograph. 

That's not bullshit, I tend to regard that as fact.

And somehow that twilight dust present at the taking of the photograph, sifts its way down through the years after the image was recorded; the photographer's feelings and emotional interaction with the landscape and what they did with the resulting cosmic mess (that is a negative) carries on in a physical form (the print).

So much so that maybe someone, somewhere down the line will look at that print and say:

"Oh!"

and that image will transcend time and come to mean something to another viewer in another place. 

That is the happy outcome. 

In decades to come, Michael Kenna's or Paul Caponigro's prints, won't just be consigned to the skip of eternity - no way hosepipe.

And what about the records of moments in time? 

Well they already have cojones in spades, simply by dint of the fact that they are a recording of a (perhaps important) thing that sprang into being and ended, but someone was there to capture it.

You'll know them by their triumphs and tragedies, yet they live on.

Donald McCullin's photographs will survive any bombardment.

And it's funny, I can still look at a photograph by Clarence H. White and be moved to tears. I've no idea why. Spirituality was important to him, and each photograph, though seemingly 'dull' on the surface carries with it a weight of soul. 

His soul. 

These are images made over 100 years ago, yet they can still speak. It's weird isn't it?

So I suppose what I am trying to say, is that there is a point to a photograph (phew.)

The above pictures of my parents as young(er) people helped me visualise (along with copious letters) their world. In truth these paper-thin slices of silver gelatin and time moved me to tears.

Somehow they've survived for nearly 80 years without any great care.

To me they have a point.

But is there any point to the mountains of snaps and the general day-to-day picture taking that we (well I can only really talk about me) generally do? 

I will often go out and waste and hour or two with my camera taking pictures of the same things I have taken pictures of before. 

I do it, because I enjoy the process AND because sometimes I'll develop a film and go "Aha!"

And whilst the Ahas won't win me any awards, they're a reflection of my creativity and creative urges.

But they don't half add up to a pile of pointless stuff that someone else will have to deal with.

My friend Bruce says he'd rather just have a greatest hits left rather than a whole archive.

Books is his big answer, but he has still to make one (not chiding Bruce, btw . . . ) 

For years I have railed against this, but in reality, his approach is probably pretty sane. 

It's something the kids can look at and admire, rather than having to trawl through 20,000+ negatives and go:

"Jeez Dad didn't half take some crappy pictures! What the Feck are we going to do with all this?"

Ah you see, because behind all our endeavours is also the fact that leaving a mountain of stuff behind also means we're loading guilt and angst onto our descendants, who have to decide what to do with it:

"Have you got room for all this?" 

"Nope, me neither . . . "

In all my years of writing this blog, I think these are the hardest questions I have ever posed:

WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS STUFF? 

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO WINNOW A LIFETIME OF IMAGE MAKING? 

SHOULD WE EVEN CARE AND JUST LEAVE IT TO CHANCE? 

I really don't know, but I'd love to know your thoughts, because really I think I have only just scratched the surface.

Anyway, the question is out there now. 

No doubt (as I've found with some of my articles) some enterprising bod will nick the idea to get some clicks and it will become more of a general question.

And I hope that when you come in to have your card marked, you have some damn good ideas, because frankly I haven't got a clue.

So, answers on a postcard please to:

H. Sheephouse

Sheephouse Towers

Fleeceville

Sheepcestershire

BB1 BB2

If I get a decent response, I'll publish them as a separate post, say in a few weeks time . . . .

Comments can be read on this 'ere link 'ere.

As always thanks for reading.

H xx

Instagram Jam?

I'll preface this with . . if you 'liked' me on Instagram and if I 'liked' you on Instagram, then generally I liked what I saw - the stuff below this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, it's just a general observation. So without further ado, I'll don my waders and get stirring . . . . 

Morning folks - a strange title for a strange series of thoughts distilled over a smallish period of time, so if you fancy a ponder and beard scratch, read on.

If however you think: 

"Wtf, fcecking ignorant, reactionary old bastard . . "

then please feel free to go your own way.

The Doubt Of The Instagram Feed . . .
Do They Really 'Like' Me?

The above is an example of the sort of stuff I was scrabbling around to find and put on my Instagram feed. 

It's not the sort of photo I'd really do anything with normally . . . . 

As a member of the DCA's Photo Forum, I was encouraged at the end of last year to register myself for Facebook and Instagram; we (as a collective) were using them for comms and self-promotion and it was generally regarded as a 'good thing'. 

I've shied away from 'social media' for as long as it has existed, simply because (and despite it being at times a power for good) it reminded me of those horrible cliques you got at school, whereby only the beautiful people hung around with only the beautiful people. 

Everyone else seemed (at times) to be regarded as something brown stuck to the sole of a shoe - I was certainly in the latter category.

However the Forum isn't really like that, being eclectic and egalitarian, so, Grooooovy! I thought and signed up.

And therein lies the tale. 

Facebook. With all my doubt and mistrust in play, I created my account. 

It is used only for the Forum and a couple of friends, but I'm not fond of it. 

I doubt many of you will remember Mark Lamarr's rants from Buzzcocks ("I'd say I wasn't fond of it, but I'd rather have habanero chillis rubbed into my eyeballs"), but that's been my feeling.

Instagram though was another matter. 

In fact, it became so horribly addictive that I found myself posting nearly 130 of my images (with nicely quippy notes explaining the whys and wherefores) in a time period of roughly 6 months.

"Oh," (you'll be thinking) "that's nothing - SnozzB29D* posted 3.2 TRILLION images in his 28 day tour of New York's Garbage facilities . . . you're a wimp man!" 

Well yes, maybe, but when you're operating with film, both using, processing AND printing it, then things take a little longer. 

But there I was like a hamster in a wheel, whizzing around desperately finding my 'best images'; hurriedly leaping into the darkroom to produce something/anything that I could scan and 'add to my feed' and impress my audience with my photographic and darkroom skillz. 

Sure I only had 36 followers, but who was to say that maybe, one morning, I'd switch on my computer and discover that I'd 'gone viral' and was being followed by 26 million people. 

Oh the adoration and kudos! 

Maybe Ilford Photo would spot me and I'd get free film and invited to do an interview!! . . . this could be the start of something BIG. 

At last, heading towards the skip end of my life, I would have my small dreams of being able to take landscape photographs for a living realised.

Everyone would love ME!!

Ah, y'see, when you put it like that it is extraordinarily seductive and addictive isn't it?

 

It's no surprise to me that nearly THE WHOLE WORLD of practicing photographers has an Instagram feed.

And why not . . you too could be famous!

But with that urge, comes THE NIGGLE.

Probably you have a 'feed', and you've maybe got a whole bunch of eager hangers-on awaiting the cast-away crumbs of wisdom, insight and downright hubris from your table whilst you enjoy a tasty morsel or five with Ansel and Eugene and Minor etc etc etc. 

YOU ARE UP THERE WITH THE GODS.

In other words, people 'like' you.

And, if your Mum brought you up properly, you should 'like' them in return. 

The trouble is, say you ONLY have under 100 followers and they're all fairly active creative people, and they all are actively posting, then you possibly have to react to approximately 100-ish posts of stuff you might not 'like' but almost feel that you have to, simply to be polite. 

So say you have OVER 100 followers - do you become a rude bastard and ignore the greater majority of people's 'feeds' simply because it is overwhelming and takes up a huge amount of valuable creative time? 

Remember a lot of these people are creative too.

They have feelings (sob).

Even with my paltry amount I found NOT reacting was making me feel GUILTY.

As far as I can see, Instagram is mostly run on a "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours" level of politely 'liking' other people's stuff. 

There's little room for NOT reacting in a positive manner.

And (hypothetically) being raised properly, does the fact that you're effectively ignoring people who seem to 'like' what you are doing, mean that (rather like a heavy-handed religious education) you are slowly becoming en-mired in a profoundly deep tract of GUILT.

And this set me thinking.

If I was feeling like this, was there any point in pursuing it any further?

And as that distilled (in the way that my thought processes seem to go these days) over a month or so, I came to a conclusion:

If I was just being polite and 'liking' 👍 stuff . . then surely everyone else was doing the same thing. 

And if that was the case, then the whole house of cards comes down, because either you're reacting whether you want to or not (out of guilt) or you could be considered to be being rude because you're not reacting.

What a fucking turmoil! 

Critical faculties be damned!

Someone could say:

 

"Oh, I really 'like' that!"

 

and be thinking in their head:

What a pile of horseshit (but I suppose I had better 'like' them back because they 'liked' that picture of the donkey with a hat on that I took last month). 

And of course, the nature of the beast is that it works in a counter-direction, as in you really did like the donkey picture . . but this new stuff that they're posting?:

"Do I really have to 'like' this steaming pile of Dingo droppings?"

or

"My God, this is the most turgid, pointless pile of Cat vomit, I have ever seen!"

But you click or tap that heart anyway!

I know the above comments will have won me no friends, but at the end of the day, I am just observing and thinking and pleading for a bit of honesty. 

If you don't like it, SAY IT! 

You don't have to be nasty about it, but please, stop reacting with 'likes' to everything.

I'm sure poster and postee would get on better with critical faculties engaged.

There is a little aside to this - say you have relatives who are posting pictures of their lives, then 'liking' is an acceptable activity; but to base your photographic output on other peoples polite judgement . . . well . . . 

And so, the more I thought about this the more I thought nobody is criticising any of the photos I am posting. 

OK some of them were alright, but some of them weren't, and the thing was, nobody told me otherwise. Whilst being polite is generally a good thing, blanket 'liking' really isn't (to my mind).

So, faced with that, I thought: 

"Feck It. No More!"

And stopped. 

The initial run-off was a bit strange (such is the power of addiction) but I soon calmed down and realised the whole thing had been (for me) a complete waste of time.

However (being part-writer) I was rather pleased with the notes I had added to accompany every photograph, so I thought why not make a small downloadable PDF to attach to the side of this Blog . . . it might be interesting, or else could be printed onto some lovely soft toilet paper.

And then I tried to archive MY photographs and MY content and could I? 

Easily?? 

Nope. 

There's a massive workaround (which is far too dull to detail, but that even a chimp with a stick could work out eventually) but even then there's no guarantee that you'll be able to do it properly.

The nature of the beast is that certain photographs have no text at all, whereas others have the whole shebang - it is very hit and miss . . . and more importantly incredibly annoying, that something so universally used does not provide a way of easily being able to archive what is your own copyrighted imagery and text. 

It is pretty disgraceful if you think about it.

Anyway, Instagram, I AM DONE.

 

There is a bit more to this though.

Let me ask you a question, as a photographer to a photographer - why are you bunging all this information, all these ideas, all your personal viewpoints on picture taking, all your creative potential (triumphs and pitfalls) onto a place whereby someone can just look at it and in the wink of an eye be gone somewhere else . . . 

Your photographs are now just a part of the VISUAL CHAFF and energy-hogging data that is clogging up the world.

Surely what you are doing means something more to you than that?

I'm not being precious about this, but it is true.

Personally, I can often find picture taking AND MAKING a total slog; it is maybe the same for you, but it still has meaning for us. 

It's often hard work, but that doesn't dilute its relevance in your life 

So why cast your creativity into a whirlwind of inconsequentiality?

Why are you (yes, YOU) bothered about what other people think about what you are photographing? That's an interesting one - and the only reason I can think (and this is because in hindsight I was as guilty as anyone else of it) is narcissism. 

You/We crave that attention. 

On the surface it might seem that say Ilford could see your feed and pronounce you as the second coming . . . 

But that isn't going to happen, because there's an absolute tidal wave of imagery out there, and no way of whinnowing the wheat from the chaff. 

Millions of people take photographs.

Billions of images of all sorts of nonsensical shite are posted online every day

24/7, 365.

The thing (picture taking and making) which was once (I was going to say elitist, but it wasn't because of its popularity) an occasional activity (for the majority of the world's population) is now like breathing. 

People photograph themselves farting, dying, knitting, hitting themselves; they landscape and portrait left, right and centre; you name 'it' (and every known variation of 'it') and there's imagery up there. 

You have not a hope in hell of anyone coming along and saying: 

"Oooooh, that's GOOD!"

and passing you the candy cane of good fortune. 

Eyes and brains are jaded, simply because of the onslaught. 

So, Instagram as a way of 'getting yourself out there' is about as pointless as eating a handful of gravel.

Oh, but I have to keep my followers informed of what I am doing.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

If I am being honest I doubt anyone cares about your stuff.

Sure they can 'like' it, but is that (as I now see it) just a subconscious ploy to get you to 'like' them back; inflate those delusions of grandeur and subdue that good ol' guilt? 

As far as I can see, the whole thing is like the old statement:

You can't polish a turd . . . but you can roll it in glitter.

Data about you and your whiles and wherefores as a singular human being is being crunched and has been crunched - who knows to what end. 

At the moment it is to feed advertising, but that could (quite easily) drop away to something all the more sinister. 

(I know . . . I read far too much SF when I was young).

Anyway, no matter what I think . . . Instagram? I have dropped out man.

Finito.

It is really strange how the world has changed in the time I've been writing this Blog. 

Blogging has gone from a 'modern', quite neat form of self-publishing (scratching that narcissistic itch again) to becoming a dim and dusty corner of the internet, that people don't really give a shit about anymore. 

Actually, you can apply that to a lot of things that are happening in the world right now - the musician and journalist Rick Beato addresses such things every now and then with regard to music and it is quite frightening what is going on. 

And the same thing has happened with Photoshop too - the ability to Ai-generate that which was not there - is a picture worth a thousand words, or the other way around? 

Either way, watch out - you'll soon have no need of your eyes or brain.

It's like the spark to improve oneself has gone out of the world and we're all headed down a one-way street to nowhere. 

Brains are outsourced to phones. 

The merest (adult) child's tantrum can be amplified to the point of bloodshed. 

People die horribly every day but the tide of imagery is such that we're losing the ability to be concerned or empathetic, or even trust what we are seeing. 

In truth things are in quite a state. 

Mr. Berners-Lee opened Pandora's Box.

Anyway, enuffzenuff. 

Hopefully I have made you think. 

Or if I haven't that's fine too. 

You and me might be the same, but we're as different as Apples and Squids.

For me it is simply a case of now being able to see The Wood.

TTFN

H xx

MF's Not Dead

Morning folks - I have to admit that I have been quite tearful recently. 

And why's that? you might ask, and I'll tell you . . .

Muuuuum!! It was that Bruce from The Online Darkroom. Muuuuummmmm!

Ilford FP4+ At Work

But first let me explain myself - I was recently incredibly lucky to be allowed, properly allowed, inside a derelict building. 

No mincing about making sure the rozers haven't seen you . . . oh no, someone actually opened the door! The place was Dundee's Maryfield Tram Depot and for nearly all of its life from 1901 to 1956 it was just that - a massive hangar in which to store trams. 

When the trams were decommissioned it saw life as a property for corporation buses and then reached an ignominious end in the hands of Scottish Water.

It has been empty/derelict for roughly 20 years and was in a state of potential collapse before it caught the eye of Dundee Transport Museum. 

Hopefully, with a TON of cash in the form of funding, and most importantly vision from its board, this wonderful (and large) old building will be brought back to life as just that - a museum that reflects the story of the cities transport systems. 

I can't wait. 

I have to say I do have an affinity with lovely old places (like the depot) that have been treated really badly. 

I dunno, I always feel that there's something of the spirit of the place hanging around in darker corners and eaves and so on, waiting for someone who actually gives a damn to come along and rub their chin and say:

"Well . . . . maybe . . . "

Anyway, a bunch of us from the DCA Photography Forum got a chance to go. 

I packed the Hasselblad SW; the Gossen Lunasix-S; a tripod and some FP4 and had a bloody great time. 

I got home, eagerly processed the film in Pyrocat-HD and then next day made a contact print and winged a snap of it over to Bruce ('cos we do such things) and awaited his (always) considered, objective and knowledgable opinion . . . . and this is what came winging back and what set me off a-blubbin':

You’re going to hate me, Phil, but I think digital is better suited to photographing the interiors of old buildings than film. There, I’ve said it. I spent a while looking at Neil’s (Neil, being another member of the forum) pictures and your contact sheet and I can’t really see any advantages from film. 

Take the “comparison” pics I’ve attached - and I know yours is just a contact so it’s very unfair. But do you see yourself being able to get as much detail and micro contrast out of that scene? That Leica must be some camera as I don’t think I’d have got results like Neil’s from the D700. Neil obviously knows his way around Photoshop or whatever but I think he stays on the tasteful side of editing. The highlights in his comparison pic are spot on I think, loads of detail but light enough that you get the sense of the contrast between the darkness in the building he’s standing in and the adjacent building. Did he use a bit of HDR right enough? If so, he’s done it well. The texture in that scene is amazing. You can see the unevenness on the surface of every brick.

You’re going to have a job getting something like that out of the FP4 because film is HARD compared to digital. In the recent past I might have dismissed the digital shots as, “Well, yeah, that’s the computer doing all the work.” But just concentrating solely on the images and not thinking about the processes, then digital produces better results in most cases. I think that’s what’s changed for me: I’m now more concerned about the print in my hand rather than how it got there. Yes, there’s all the tradition behind film, Minor White, Ralph Gibson, Ansel, etc, but the reality is that these guys used film because it’s all they had and most would have used digital had it been available to them. You’re presumably using MF for sharpness and a lack of grain but digital does that much better. If you use 35mm for grain and a (comparative) lack of sharpness then you’re playing to film’s strength. Basically, digital does MF better than MF but film does 35mm better than digital.

Here's two of Neil's photographs - he was using a Leica M 240 and 21mm Elmarit.

© Neil Robertson

© Neil Robertson

They're good aren't they, and even rather film-like - especially the second one.

Hmmmm - was The Robbins right?

Two boxes of Man-Size Kleenex and a day later, I was still upset; so much so that I sobbed all the way to the darkroom.

I had to prove something to myself, because I respect Bruce's opinion and his judgements of both image and print making. I also respect Neil's photography - he's been doing it for a very long time and has probably used more cameras than you've had hot dinners! And (amongst other things) he's a really good street photographer too.

Anyway, with gritty determination, I fired up the DeVere 504 with the 100mm Vivitar and made some prints. 

It can be unusual making 8 prints from a film that only has 12 frames on it, but I was happy with all of them; in actuality I could probably have printed 11, but stuck at 8 as it gets really hard to dry that many big prints in my tiny darkroom - especially so when you're using a caravan retractable clothes line as your hanging source!

My current image size is 8 x 8" on 9.5 x 12" Ilford MGRC Pearl - that will continue as long as I have that size paper left, after which economics will dictate that I revert to 10 x 8".

The developer I used was some truly ancient Adox MG (it had been in one of those soft pack things for at least a couple of years); they were then double fixed and selenium toned. 

I'm really happy with them.

They're different to Neil's photos - he bought some really fine inkjet prints of them along to the last meeting and we compared notes. 

As I said before, he'd been using a Leica M 240 with a 21mm Elmarit. 

To my eyes they look different, yet in some ways quite similar - especially my sixth one down (compared to his first photograph); his camera picked out details on the wall that were virtually invisible to me (my meter reading for those shadows was EV 1) - such is the nature of modern photography!

Anyway, here's my prints - all scans of the original silver gelatin jobs.

I still think MF is a very valid format - OK it isn't all bells and whistles and hyper-reality, but it does a very good job of conveying space and light and atmosphere (though how you can judge that I have no idea). 

As with all these things, it is also the process itself that ensures its validity. 

I simply wouldn't bother if I were able to check things immediately and then spend the afternoon dealing with them on a computer; I just love the sheer footeriness and downright challenge that Medium Format photography brings; it's a considered and methodical way of doing things to me, and I will continue to do it for as long as I am able.

The thing I would say about MF is, definitely 'professionally' it's as dead as a dodo - you just have to look at the slew of images in this year's Hasselblad Masters competition to realise that THE name in MF, has little interest in its heritage. 

And yet, I'll pose you this question . . how come, old Hasselblads, Rolleis, Mamiyas, Bronicas and Fujis STILL keep selling? 

They're not exactly cheap these days - in fact if you'd had enough money to buy a bundle of 500C/M bodies back in the heyday (1980's) then you'd be making approximately three times what you paid for them.

Is there really a deep-pocketed army of 'advanced amateurs' keeping this going? Or is it the fact that (like me) people realise that roll film is a wonderful and (dare I say it) therapeutic form of photography, whereby you can enjoy a great deal of the scutter that comes with Large Format, with little of the weight and hassle. 

There's no doubt about it, Large Format photography makes you (well it does me) feel like A Photographer. 

There's something primal from photography's early days that fires up every time you see an upside down and reversed ground glass . . .

But the thing is, when I am out somewhere wild with the Hasselblad and I've chosen my point of view and composed, locked the mirror up, watched the scene and then squeezed the cable release, that quite and precise whirr of the shutter makes me feel the same way.

 

I guess it is the Visual Heritage of Medium Format - from Callahan to McKenna (and all points inbetween). 

So much incredible photography has been made with roll film, how could you really go wrong?

MF makes me feel like I am walking in some pretty important footprints and more to the point, makes me feel responsible for preserving a legacy that shouldn't just be allowed to be side-lined by advances in technology.

There, I've said it, Medium Format photography isn't dead . . it doesn't even smell funny. As long as 120 film continues to be made, there'll be a bunch of nutters (and I would call myself a chief nut) out there, revelling in the freedom of (sic) a roll of film.

Bruce and I are still friends by the way - I just wish he'd use his film cameras more these days, and whilst he is currently having a whale of a time with his ancient D700, an as-ancient Epson and some old software, he is (still in my opinion and he can disagree as much as he likes) a film photographer at heart (as he might say, whatever THAT may mean these days).

As always, thanks for reading . . . keep on thinking!

H xx