Showing posts with label Rolleinar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rolleinar. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Black Hit Of Space

Mornin' Varmints - well, what a snooze that was!
Ar yes m'dearios. Me and Mog finished off 16 stone o' Turkey leftovers on Boxing Day, settled ourselves down for some well-earned shuteye and the next thing we knew it was the 4th o' January!
"Well," I said to Mog -"Happy New Year to you, old friend."
"Happy New Year Cap'n," he said back.
That's weird I thought, he couldn't talk before we went to sleep.
I did wonder whether it were something we ate that was affecting me hearing, so I asked him,
"When was ye born me old soak?"
and he said,
"That's no' clear to me Cap'n. I can only remember the sack and the water."
And I thought, that's good enough for me. If it were my ears playing me up, he would have said something like the 24th o' May.
So I believes him.
Imagine that.
A talking cat.
I'm not going to let too many folk know though - there's a ton of people would pay a pretty penny to own one.


***


Been out all night, I needed a bite
I thought I'd put a record on
I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label
And wondered where the light had gone
It had a futuristic cover
Lifted straight from Buck Rogers
The record was so black it had to be a con
The autochanger switched as I filled my sandwich
And futuristic sounds warbled off and on

(The Human League - The Black Hit Of Space)



***


This week I genuinely wasn't going to write anything - call it Post Festive Disorder (PFD) - I didn't get half what I expected done, but I did have a fantastic time, which resulted in me indulging in one of my favourite pastimes ... reading. Lots.
Anyway, I got to Thursday morning this week and a little demon appeared on my shoulder and said 'You know, they're waiting . . .', so I thought Och bugger it and started. So this week's FB will be a little less heavy on the writing being as I've only had a couple of days to get it together - my apologies, but, given my subject matter it seems very pointless to regurgitate potted histories as the world is littered with them . . so here goes.
There's a dirty word still bandied around photographic circles.
It's pretty seedy and in fact, even though (and despite) the fact that it gets mentioned more now that it has been in the past hundred or so years, it's still a bit iffy. 
People get uncomfortable.
They stretch their collars, shuffle their feet and cough.
It is an unmentionable.
However, for myself I will stride into the arena, wearing my frock coat and winged collar, pommandered hair set nice and solid, moustache waxed to perfection and say, to me, there's never been a movement like it.
It was born from passion and enthusiasm and ideas of lofty artisticness way above its station.
It lived briefly like a Mayfly, wings glittering above the fast running waters of life in a dance of beauty, and then committed suicide. 
And when this tradgedy was all but enacted? What happened then? Why, its corpse was buried in a pauper's grave and its memory trampled and left to be picked over by dogs.
Sounds melodramatic eh? Well it sort of was like that.
And to what do I refer?
Brown paper bag ready?
Pictorialism!
Ah the Gods - PICTORIALISM!



Banner For The Photo-Secession


The greatest, most profound and beautiful photographic movement there ever was.
Lambasted, criticised, cynicised, ignored, Pictorialism stands large in the history of photography as a beautiful jewel.
Strangely I would say these days that is it arguably more important than Ansel Adams and Group f64. How's that for radicalism.
All of your realist movements of the 60's? As nothing.
All the shite that passes for 'art' photogaphy these days? Total bollocks.
You see, somehow, it has transcended its lowly grave and ascended to the heights.
Pictorialism, [which I am sure would be to the surprise of Mr.Alfred Steiglitz (its driver and mentor)] has become something other. As a movement I feel that there has never been another as profound or influential.
You see friends today, Pictorialism is all around us.
It's in films, on television, on posters and in magazines.
It influences and drives like never before, partly I believe because it saw the way naturalistically.
Think about it, and the world isn't really hard-edged at all. Centrally to your eyes it is, but the periphery? Blurred. And that blurriness and softening of image in the majority of Pictorialist photographs is incredibly naturalistic.
I think it is almost why the images speak so well.
Yes a lot of it was done to mimic 'painterly' techniques, but when photographers are already dealing with absolute realism, why not try and show it in a way that could be considered more 'arty'.
The Pictorialists were working with uncoated lenses, and there is a tendency nowadays to believe that lenses from that time (late 19th early 20th Century) were somehow not very good and soft.
This is a misconception.
Most of the greatest leaps in lens design happened in those times.
Ancient lenses can be softer, however they can also be as crisp as you like. There are incredibly wide variations in them, however Pictorialists, semi-eschewed the standard ones in favour of 'portrait' lenses (so called because they were able to soften an image to make it look softer. It was never good as a working photographer to have your customer's blemished skin shining out of a photograph) which when turned to landscape and still life and figurely photographs rendered things deliciously soft.
Pictorial pictures mostly exhibit a beautiful depth too, which somehow, to my mind, sends them over the edge from being a photograph. They are so very natural looking, possibly because my eyesight isn't what it was, but maybe that naturalness is apparent because of their lack of definition. Its the reason I suppose why all hard-edged CGI images in films look somehow so wrong, and why ordinary non-super-imposed filmwork looks so right.
Soft images are laughed at today, they are.
They are seen as being 'Romantic' in a brutal world, but to this I say what is wrong with Romanticism?
God knows the world is difficult enough - if a photograph can touch your soul because it is soft and ethereal looking then all the better.
Of course I am tarring every Pictorialist there ever was with the 'romantic soft image' brush - it was in reality a little like this, but then on the other hand you have Steiglitz's 'The Steerage' - as modern as you like. And of course, the nail in the coffin, Paul Strand's disturbing and harsh and beautiful 'Blind Woman - New York 1916', published in 'Camera Work' the journal of the Pictorialists and as loud as any death knell you could wish to hear.
I could go over this forever, however it is digressing from Pictorialism.
I won't write a potted history of it - pointless - there's loads of stuff on the web.
What I will say is that it repays studying. In spades.
From Clarence White to Paul Strand, from Annie Brigman to Edward Steichen and Frederick Evans - names that have greatness hewn into them.
To be honest I could have chosen twenty images to illustrate this, however I will just go with one which I believe to be the greatest . . but then that's just me.
Clarence White's 'The Orchard 1905' could have been top (it is an image laced with meaning drawn deep from Christian spirituality, and for all its carefree appearence, it is as set-up as a photograph could be) however it isn't.




Clarence White - The Orchard, 1905




To my mind the finest thing ever published in Camera Work, and that is a tall order, is something so old it is modern. It is so poetic, it is a script waiting to happen. Like all great photographs, it tells a story, and can also inspire a story in your head.
Are you sitting down?
Probably my favourite photograph ever is by a man called Mr.George Henry Seeley.
It is called 'The Firefly'. 




George Henry Seeley - The Firefly, 1907




It was made in 1907.
I love this photograph.
It is about as perfect as a photograph can get.
Yes it is soft focus. Oh God isn't it beautiful?
Compositionally, I don't think you could do better actually.
The curve of the bowl leads your eye in.
The woman (his sister I believe) is beautiful in a timeless way.
She could be from now.
She could be from the Dark Ages.
She has the headpiece as a prop, but again, date it . .
And there, she is holding a firefly, its tiny light like a jewel in her hand. The flare from the uncoated lens aids the whole feel of melancholia and age. It exudes carefulness in its composition, but also an instantaneousness, like she has run up to the camera and is saying 'See, brother, see what I have found!'
It is also as modern a photograph as you could ever want to find. I think it actually sets the bar. 
Can you imagine photographs like this in Vogue? I can.
If you are at all interested in looking at more images, then, if you can find it, the Taschen publication 'Camera Work - The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917 [ISBN 3-8228-8072-8]' is to be highly recommended.
If you can find the hardback (for less than the price of a car) all the better as the paperbacks have a tendency to split, due to their massive bulk!
Anyway, from beauty it is a trip back to earth, with an image that is no less profoundly moving, but very different.




Paul Strand - Blind Woman, New York 1916



From the last issue of Camera Work
This was really the loud clanging of the death knell. 
Steiglitz I believe realised that the end was nigh - you can't stand in the way of progress - and yet what an image to sign that warrant. 
Curiously, it is as obvious an analogy with regard to the golden, pre-WWI years and the sound of mechanised death from the Front as you could wish.
On one hand, beauty, etherealism and softness, and on the other, grim reality, indignity and the vision of a world changed forever.
In it's brief 14 year life Camera Work gave more to the world than the world gave to it.
For myself I find it as profoundly influential as I always have done.
If you wish to read further, just Google things like 'Camera Work, Photo Secession, Alfred Steiglitz, Pictorialism. The images really will work their way into your psyche. I think they can help to make better photographers of us all.


***


As usual with FB, I thought I had better do some shameless shoe-horning in of photography - so here's my pathetic attempt at emulating a Pictorialist style, with a Twin Lens Reflex!





The Woman In The Boughs




I actually am rather fond of this photograph, for a start it is my wife, so that is the best place to start.
It was made with my beloved Rolleiflex T and I was using a Rolleinar close-up set, with the focus somewhere between 10 feet and 30 feet, so totally out of focus.
Not a lot of people know that with the Rolleinars on a Rollei you can have a very subtly variable soft focus lens - at infinity things get more definition, but in the close range they are wonderfully soft, as you are using the natural lack of depth of focus you get with close-focus devices. I daresay any close-up lens used on a camera for a use that isn't a close-up would work, but the Rolleinars are something else optically.
Film was FP4 at EI 80 developed in Barry Thornton's 2 bath. The print was made on Grade 2 Ilford Galerie (my favourite paper) and it was archivally processed and then toned in Agfa Viradon for that vintage look.
We'd watched the film  'Possession' not long before that and the name of the photograph just sprang into my mind, inspired by that film.
Anyway, nuff z nuff. That's me, over and oot.
As usual, take care, God bless, and thanks for reading.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Tooty Tooty Toot . . It's Hip To Be Square (Part One)

Greetings ship-mates!
It's a Saturday morning, the sun isn't shining and your ol' Cap'n Sheephouse has decided that it's time to renew the caulking on the decks.
The comfy familiarity of that piece of deck you always walk across? Begone with it. Gouge out that tarred rope and set to work. It needs to be renewed and different by the end of the day.
See, the world's a changin' faster than a spring tide and before you know it (if you're not careful) you'll be washed away.
Change is everything - follow that new current till it leads you to a promised land.

***

I have no idea what the above was about at all, but sometimes your fingers work in mysterious ways and maybe, just maybe, this has led on to an article that is about stepping outside of conformity. Whatever it is, sometimes the Cap'n lashes out with the cat o'nine-tails and you have to follow.
Anyway, the title of today's Weekend FogBlog alludes to a certain Mr. Alex Turnips of Sheephousecestershire, who in the strangest move I have ever seen from a teenager believes himself to be the soul-mate of a certain Mr. Huey Lewis. Who? you ask, mouth aghast, toast and bacon raining down upon your lap. You know,  . . . Huey Lewis And The News. That band from the 80's that liked golf and suits. Yes . . them!
I swear to you, Alex sees himself pulling up at the Old Course wearing a suit and a Pringle jumper and making a number of hole-in-ones whist an adoring audience looks on. This is very strange for someone of such tender years, because in a time of his life where it was set in stone (almost) that he should be raising a middle finger to conformity, he has done a particularly clever thing . . .
Look around you.
Youth these days, I feel sad for them actually, because on the surface they seem to have it all on a plate. Really. We have made sure that they have everything their hearts desire and they live (to a large extent, and I know that this is a bit of a generalisation) pretty untaxing lives.
They can communicate constantly without hogging the one household method of communication (which used to be the phone in the hall . . ) and escape for hours to worlds that someone has created for them by gaming, so that they don't even have to use their brains to create worlds from a printed page.
A lot of them seem to be ferried everywhere - no more standing at a bus stop getting soaked and arriving at your destination smelling like a musty ferret.
The privations I remember from my youth are no longer there - and it wasn't as if I lived a youth full of privations. On the surface it looks like they have it all.
That is entirely my generation's fault though, because we have taken away a certain very necessary thing from them: the need to struggle.
Think about it - there are no pricks to kick against, because they've all been covered up with soft spongy stuff to protect them. Instead of feeling a need to rebel against conformity we've made the world a safer (and less conformist) place for them! You can pretty much be your own person from an incredibly early age before you even know your self.
God knows though, if I were a youth of today, I'd feel I had to rebel against something - just take a look at that wall of hopeless defeat we've put up in front of them and then tell me they have it easy.
Despite this the riots of last year were nothing to do with knocking down that wall or even knocking on any doors that mattered. No dear reader, we've made such a bosh of it that when an opportunity came to try and change things, most of them saw it as nothing more than an opportunity to make a mess of innocent people's lives and get more stuff. How mucked up is that?
You can't even rebel through music anymore simply because it has all been done - my [punk] generation made sure of that. Yet thankfully you do still see lads and lasses of a certain age pursuing this path, because if they didn't what else would appall their doting parents?
Music is a BIG subject, but I feel I can write about it because that is how I have earned a living for the past 30 years.
From the rebellious youths point of view there are a million permutations: Death metal, Grime, Dub-Step, Toot, Rap, Math-Doom-Sludge, anything appended by 'hyphen core', you name it, think of a heady mix of the most unlikely things and it will have been done. Add in a goodly amount of swearing and voila! there's a ready youthful audience.
The likes of a band like Slipknot (who have had a shelf-life well beyond what I would have expected of them) still have an audience of youths who feel that in this bunch of middle-aged men they have a ready outlet for the uprising of hormones and glumness.  Yet there's nothing wrong with it.
This is where Mr. Turnips stroke of genius has come in, because when all around him is Uzi-toting, mother-hugging, death-grunting, black-studded, de-tuned, machine-made, faceless plastic* he has donned the uniform of a middle-aged man (metaphorically of course).
Huey Lewis and the News might well have sung 'It's Hip To Be Square' but blimey could they have realised how dreadfully old they sound(ed) - even at the time. Nowadays who the hell listens to them apart from an audience remembering the glory days of leg warmers and ra-ra skirts?
Is Mr. Turnips liking of them an incredibly subtle form of rebellion where something that seemed old to me in my 20's now sounds even older at the age of 50?
Forget rebelling against the music your parents liked, this is rebelling by liking the music your parents didn't like . . .
It is a contra-reverso-back-to-tomorrowland.
More fiendish than a googly.
More devilish than backspin on a ping pong ball.
In a word he has rebelled.
Am I appalled?
Yes.
Will I let him wear a Pringle jumper . . . er . . .
I do admire his stance though . . .

***

But what, you might ask, has this taxi ride through the tides and mores of early life got to do with photography? Well, before I jumped in the driving seat and headed off across country with the wrong tyres on, I intended to write about the square photograph. 
And no, it isn't a picture of Mr. Lewis. 
No, I am talking about 6x6 cm, 2 ¼", or 2¼ Square, whatever you want to call it. 
The square photographic format had been around since before Franke and Heidecke came out with the groundbreaking Rolleiflex in 1929, and it's importance was further reinforced by numerous copies and then post-WWII by a certain Mr.Victor Hasselblad, but it is weird, because logically and visually a square photograph shouldn't work
Think about it, the world is a rectangular place. 
You watch rectangular TV pictures, which (apart from the world around them) is yer average human's primary source of visual stimulation; you look at mostly rectangular paintings; books are just rectangles on their sides, the computer screen you are reading this on is a rectangle; ok if you're smart-phoning this, then that's a rectangle on its end too . . . and that iPad you're hiding behind that cushion? Yep . . . do you get where I am going?
Why the hell would you want to look at a square photograph?
And yet, when it is done correctly, it is the seemingly most natural of formats.
This problem has been succinctly discussed by Mr.Aaron Siskind:

"We as photographers have basically so little to work with in a picture. There's a given space, which we repeat over and over again. It presents a problem because I may want to change the space without changing the dimensions of the space. I had this problem with the meaning of the divers in relation to the kind of space surrounding them. The picture had to be square because I was working with the Rolleiflex. No two square pictures are square in the same way. Some are heavy at the bottom, and so they extend beyond the square. Some become horizontal depending on how you weight the space with blacks, whites and intermediate tones. In the case of the divers, I wanted no clouds, only white (or grey) in the space enveloping the figures; seemingly endless space."


                                 

                                 

                                 

                                 



"No two square pictures are square in the same way."


There is genius and a deep understanding of the format in that sentence.
His photographs are just incredible images if you think about it; they balance so well and Mr.Siskind has sequenced them so that visually they make a balanced narrative. In a word, they are a master's sequence.
So folks, it can be done. It is really quite an achievement to make what, on the surface, seems like a fairly limited square view of our wonderful world, produce images so incredibly dynamic. And especially so when you realise that he was using a Rolleiflex with its fixed standard lens. No telephotos, no motor-drives, no digital spraying . . .

***

Bear with me reader, because we are nearly there . . 
Half the thing with square photographs is that your eye has to be attuned to the format - in other words you have to be like Mr.Huey Lewis, you have to think 'It's Hip To Be Square'.
Ignore what your brain is telling you about the fact it isn't a rectangle and concentrate. If you're using a Twin Lens Reflex, then you had better concentrate even harder, because that view of the world isn't just square . . .it is a tad dim and back-to-front!



This is a poor photograph, but basically you are looking down into the viewing area of a Rolleiflex . . that's the Cap'n's 'Indoor Shed' you can see . . .and it is back to front.


Adjusting yourself to the format you are using is obviously as basic as releasing the shutter, but there is something about the rectangular formats that fits the eye more naturally than the square. I think a lot of people find it easier to compose for a rectangle, and as I said before, I think this could well be to do with the fact that visually the world is slanted that way.
But this is about squares.
You have to think square, and that is a difficult way to think.
Personally I made many square photographs for quite a number of years and very few of them any good. It was only when I moved over to rectangular photographs (with the gift of a Nikon F from a friend) and then returned to making square ones, did I feel that I could make the format work for me.




                                   




I feel that I achieved a balance within the square with this photograph, and even though it is a single image I feel it has a narrative flow.** 
Remember the saying: "One picture is worth a thousand words"? 
Well, with regard to my humble effort I think that there is a story to be told with it or a story to be interpreted from it. The decision is yours, and thank you for your time.
It was made with my Rolleiflex T and I was using a #1 Rolleinar in a way it wasn't designed to be used.
The exposure was 1/30th of a second at F16. I placed the foliage on Zone VI ad have printed down from there.
The film was (sniff) Ilford FP4+ at EI 50 and it was developed in Kodak HC110, Dilution H for 20 mins.
I used fairly normal agitation for the first 5 mins; intermittent until 10 mins and then I left it to stand until 20 minutes.

***

I realise this has been a long haul this week, so thank you for your time.
Believe it or not, Part 2 of 'Tooty Tooty Toot . . It's Hip To Be Square' is next week, but I think I shall make it more . . how shall we say . . Zen.
Stay Square mein fronds. Over and out.



* I could have easily slipped into lip-smackin' thirst quenchin' . . Pepsi
** I don't necessarily think that you need a sequence of photographs to have a photographic narrative. It is popular today to have a huge run of images and say that you have a narrative going. I'll counter this by saying that any single one of Sebastian Salgado's images (I am particularly thinking of Workers) would make a narrative in its own right. 

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Up Close & Personal

Listen. What's that sound? It's like a cross between a lonely sea monster (thank you Mr. Ray Bradbury) and a fog horn, way out beyond the reef, where the dark ocean starts to shelve away to night. Yes, its the sound of another FogBlog!
On that salubrious note, I will greet one and all a jolly good morning.
Today's post deals with an oft overlooked (and much beloved by me) accessory for ye olde Rolleiflex, namely the Rolleinar. These close-up lenses were made in 3 different magnifications namely #1, #2 and #3. As close-up lenses they excel - you've never seen anything as sharp, you've never seen 'bokeh' as nice. They are extraordinarily good, and parallax corrected too. The people behind the design of the Rolleiflex really thought everything through - everything fits and everything works so well, you rarely have to think much about accessories at all.
However despite their abilities as close-up lenses, one day I discovered another use for them. Messing around, I focused in really close on something and then changed my view so that what I was seeing was something from nearer infinity, and bingo, I discovered that by racking the focus in and out on subject matter that wasn't a close-up, you had a wonderful, variable soft focus lens.
I love Clarence White's photographs, and I also have a massive respect for anything from the Photo Secession, and I found that by using the Rolleinars in this way I could achieve a faux Pictorialist effect. I think it works, if you like what you see, feel free to comment.




This photograph was taken in some woods on the edge of a caravan site we were staying at at Crocketford in Dumfriesshire; the weather had been the usual mix of shower-dodging and things were getting really stormy quite early. What I think about this photograph is that it can either be threatening or friendly.  You could get a feeling of threat from it (as in nothing is as clear as it seems; what is that shadow lurking up ahead? etc etc) but to me it is more friendly and hopefully touching on some of that Pictorialist Romanticism whilst being a tad ethereal at the same time.
Who'd have thought some densely planted Pine and Birch could have been so transformed by light.
Camera was my old Rolleiflex T, with a Rolleinar #1 fitted. Film was TMX 100 developed in Barry Thornton's 2-bath developer. It was a cinch to print on Grade 2 paper, and I printed it slightly lighter as the original lighting was a bit too oppressive.
In the words of Joe Satriani: I like it.