Pull The Ud(der) One

Morning folks - hope you are all well. 
Today's rather unusually entitled post has probably been percolating in my mind for at least 50 years, ever since I read Roger Price's book 'Droodles'. 

I've mentioned it before on FB and I still find it funny and in particular the Droodle "An Old Cow Hand". 

I suppose it says something about me, but don't you agree that such things read at a very formative age can go on to have a profound influence on your life?

I spent a huge amount of my formative years reading 'proper' Sci-Fi, and a lot of that post-Apocalyptic stuff; a healthy respect for J G Ballard, John Wyndham and Edmund Cooper coloured my world, along with a love of where Ray Bradbury placed humans in a future that was (at the time) undreamt of. 

Ray's futures might have been partially in space or some semi-distant time-frame, but it was where humans were and what they did within that place that was the important thing. 

Ursula Le Guin did a similar thing. 

In 'The Lathe of Heaven' published in 1971, she describes a hapless character whose dreams change the 'current' reality and who gets exploited by the psychiatrist who is supposedly 'curing' him. 

It is a mind-blowing book and poses the question that what if we as humans were unwittingly exploited for seemingly good reasons; would the world become more ordered or would chaos reign? 

Damn she hit the nail on the head. 

Does it not feel (to you) that the world we now live in is just some mad f-ed up experiment? 

It does to me - it has almost gone beyond surreal.

Frank Herbert wrote similarly to Le Guin; in 'The Heaven Makers', all human life was influenced by invisible alien machines to create 'entertainment' for alien invaders.

It's a fabulous concept, and if you only know Frank from 'Dune' please do read his smaller novels - they're superb. 

From devouring libraries-worth of SF, probably my favourite book came to me much later in life; indeed, roughly 40 years later. 

Despite its late assimilation, I love it like one of my old faves. 

It is Walter Tevis' 'Mockingbird'. 

To cut a long story short, with a backdrop of love and humanity, we also have a supreme robotic intelligence, in charge of a world where the technology is slowly failing; the robot (Spofforth) knows this, but is, in a wonderfully human twist, bored and actually wants to kill himself, but can't because of his programming. 

It takes the concepts of Azimov's Foundation series and turns them on their head in a way that only a great writer could. 

Tevis similarly juxtaposed the what-ifs in the more famous work 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' in which a higher intelligence becomes stranded on earth, is crippled by the government and ends up seeking solace in drink.

So what has this got to do with photography? 

Well, as I have banged on about many times before, it seems to me that the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum. 
In driving cameras further and further up this one way road to a golden technological future with a goal of seamless user-experience, they've kicked the ball into their own net on the final whistle.

An own goal? 

Ai-powered picture taking? 

Ai-powered picture faking? 

Or, my current pet hate, automatically corrected verticals and horizontals. Have you noticed how nobody nowadays (except a complete idiot [or actually a 'human' photographer]) takes photos with squint verticals and horizons anymore? 

EVERYTHING is perfect.

From swapping 'best take' portraits of your friends onto (sic) Charles Atlas-style torsos to software infills of a landscape that doesn't exist. From motion-stopping settings, to something that can actually fill-in a footballer (sic) that has momentarily been hidden by another player.

I'm sorry, but The Photograph is dead; whilst the software-based image is alive and kicking. 

Indeed 'images' are now so embedded in the psyche that nobody pays any attention to them any more. It's over. 

Cameras are meaningless. 

What was once a profound tool that could change things is now nothing more than a child's cardboard box for playing with.

My friend Alan recently said to me something along the lines of: you're lucky still using film because at the end of the day you have an art object (in the form of a negative and a print). 

I'll raise my hat to him on that. 

In an era where little is tangible, it's nice to be producing things that are tangible (no matter their end).

I'll finish this little bit by saying that I think Winston Churchill had it right:

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

If only the people in charge of our modern world (and believe me no matter how free you think you are, you're not really) had read more dystopian SF when they were young . . . would the world be in an any better place? 

If the 'freaks and hippies' of Edmund Cooper's 'All Fool's Day' had actually survived the 'straight' (1970's terminology . . anyone in a suit) plague that wiped out 'normal' society and had flourished in a Utopian Society rather than falling into gangs of self-seeking chancers (Never Trust A Hippy is what Johnny said), would the world be a better place? or is it the case that no matter what you are, where you're from or how you think, you'd still become a character from Justin Sullivan's prophetic 1989 song about depopulation and the lure of 'The Smoke':  'Green And Grey":

The time I think most clearly, the time I drift away

Is on the bus ride that meanders up these valleys of green and grey

I get to think about what might have been and what may yet come true

And I get to pass a rainy mile thinking of you

And all the while, all the while, I still hear that call

To the land of gold and poison that beckons to us all

Nothing changes here very much, you used to say it never will

The pubs are all full on Friday night and things get started still

We spent hours last week with Billy boy, bleeding, yeah queuing in Casualty

Staring at those posters we used to laugh at,

Never Never Land, palm trees by the sea

Well there was no need for those guys to hurt him so bad

When all they had to do was knock him down

But no one asks too many questions like that anymore, since you left this town

And tomorrow brings another train

Another young brave steals away

But you're the one I remember

From these valleys of green and the grey

You used to talk about winners and losers all the time, as if that was all there was

As if we were not of the same blood family, as if we live by different laws

Do you owe so much less to these rain swept hills than you owe to your good self?

Is it true that the world has always got to be something

That seems to happen somewhere else?

For God's sake don't you realize that I still hear that call

Do you think you're so brave just to go running to that which beckons to us all?

And tomorrow brings another train

Another young brave steals away

But you're the one I remember

From these valleys of green and the grey

No, not for one second did you look behind you

As you were walking away

Never once did you wish any of us well

Those who had chosen to stay

And if that's what it takes to make it

In the place that you live today

Then I guess you'll never read these letters that I send

From the valleys of the green and the grey

Valleys of green and grey

Anyway, enough of this; from the time of my favourite novels comes a lens in the form of a 1973 20mm UD-Nikkor. it's a gigantic lump of metal and glass which, if mounted to a 1974 Nikon F2 (with DP2 finder) becomes a serious consideration for carry-around camera.

And I suppose it is this perversity to use such outmoded and human-inputted technology that drives me. 

Sure I could go into my local City centre, blaze through 20 billion images and come home, edit them and then print them out in postcard size on a nice little inkjet at half the cost. 

But I don't, and that's because somewhere in me is some sort of wish to stand out a bit. 

It's that perverse 'get-it-right-up-ye!' attitude (which I suppose comes from a youth spent listening to rock, punk and metal) that makes me not want to conform. 

I also really dislike how big corporations become embroiled in ones' life.

If you'd ever met my Mum she'd have told you; when I had hair half-way down my back she'd always say: "why don't you get a nice haircut?" to which I'd roll my eyes and to which she would laugh, knowing that I definitely wouldn't but that she'd just lovingly goaded me. 

One lives in the wake of one's parents, but in a good way. 

My father loved his Brownie 127 and Instamatic, but was always jealous of his friend's Braun. 

Dad's retirement present was a Kodak Carousel and screen. 

If he knew how much I was embroiled in taking and making photographs I think he would be pleased. 

My Mum was an independent soul who once (as a teenager) cycled from London to Wales and back, on a sit-up-and-beg, on her own; that is an achievement.

So blame them for this - independence and cameras . . in a nutshell.

Anyway, enough of me shite - one could argue that photography has always been at the behest of big corporations from Kodak to Nikon, via Ilford and Praktika and Zeiss . . . plus ca change.

So here's some scans of this month's time wasting. 

All 20mm UD-Nikkor, Kentmere 400 film and the chunkiest chunk of super-chunky machine - my Nikon F2 (thank Bob and Lynn and Len and Joyce). 

The prints are on Ilford Portfolio in postcard size and the lens used to print them was a 5cm f2.8 El-Nikkor - it is nearly as old as me and has a proper old Nikon Plug-Lugs (Bash Street Kids) lens cap.

'Tis a lovely thing - were I more pshop-oriented I'd have stuck Plug's face on the lens cap . . but here he is anyway - the likeness is uncanny isn't it?

Anyway, onwards with the postcards - the first one is how they look as postcards (10 x 15cm paper) with a 5mm border and the rest have just been cropped to the image size. 

Straight scans off the prints themselves.

And that, as they say, is that. 

The Kentmere 400 was rated at 200 and was developed in Fomadon R09 at 1+75 for adjacency effects and also because it pays to live a bit dangerously every now and then. 

I could find no time for that dilution so extrapolated from Goldfinger's time of 14 minutes for HP5.  

I did my normal agitation and temperature procedure to the 14 min. mark and then let the whole lot stand to 20 mins; the theory being that the developer exhausts itself on the highlights but continues bringing up shadow detail and from reading around, shadow-detail can be a bit lacking with Kentmere 400. 

The results were some of the easiest negatives I've ever had to print. 

I had to use 2 reels in a larger Paterson tank because the quantities were roughly (yes you can get away with not being microlitre precise) 7ml to 500ml - you don't want to really use anything less than 6 ml of any Rodinal-based developer.

And that as they say is that. 

Done and dusted. 

Dangerous and Daring Trousers nailed to the analogue (sic) mast.

In the words of The Firesign Theatre (whaddyamean you've never heard of them??) "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers".

Over and oot

H xx