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Showing posts sorted by date for query plastic. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Sunday, December 19, 2021

36 Not Out. Oops, He's Been Caught By A Googly

Morning folks - well the reindeers are coming and this years final FB was meant to be a traditional (well if you can call a handful of years traditional) Christmas Round Robin of "this is what I did this year . . blah blah blah." 
But as we all know the taste in the world isn't for "blah blah" any more, so without further ado we find ourselves cast adrift into a Dickensian world, of empty grates, fingerless gloves and "HUMBUG!".

Oh and there's NO Photography in it either.

Y'see, in this lovely, grey, arse-end of the year, I have found myself caught out. 

Back in 1985, after graduating, applying for bloody millions of jobs and being told on more than on occasion that I was "far too qualified for Scotland" (! - true answer to job application) and had to move to London for any chance of work etc etc.
"Blah blah."
I found myself faced with the prospect of penury.
However in a rather timeous manner (in those Thatcherian, "on yer bike" times) I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for a job by a bloke in a baked bean-stained Virgin Aberdeen tee-shirt and torn pixie boots; he looked a bit down-at-heel (literally) but had a demeanour, knowledge and humour that I found utterly charming. 
His name was Dougie Anderson (R. I. P.). 
He was the Scottish Regional Manager for Virgin Retail and there was something about the cut of my jib he liked, so he employed me.
Like a kid being given the keys to the sweet shop, I was excited because I was going to work in a Record Shop!

The only thing was, it wasn't what I really wanted to do.
Whether there was something in the water at Duncan Of Jordanstone, I don't know, but I graduated knowing that what I really wanted to do was 'fine art' printing. 
Not graphics (my Degree) no. 
Indeed the majority of my Degree show was landscape photography, not graphic design, much to the chagrin of my lecturers 
I'll blame Joe McKenzie for lighting a fire which still still burns bright over 40 years later.
However in line with Thatcherian Britain at the time, I was a poor ex-student with no financial backup or contacts; to become a printer would definitely have involved me getting on my bike and moving to London *** (see below).
It was a vicious circle with no way out.

So I was effectively stuck here, drowning if truth be told, until some bloke who looked a fair bit like Nigel Tufnel put out his hand and pulled me free . . . and so began 36 years of work in my other passion, MUSIC.
To-wit, Music Retail.


Virgin Dundee Circa 1987.
© DC Thompson.


That's me at the back, far left, rifling through the racks . . the one with the hair, and to the right at the far back you can see the door to my kingdom . . . the stockroom.

I think even in those hirsute days I was too hairy for public consumption, so like a troll in its lair, the stockroom it was.
But before we even got there, I shrink-wrapped pretty much the entire shop stock on a spare floor (where the concessions were) in the Glasgow Megastore. I travelled to Aberdeen for what seemed like ages, to learn stock control, filing, more wrapping, cataloguing etc.
When we moved into the Wellgate in Dundee I travelled in the back of a van from Glasgow, alongside some of my compadres, with stock, more stock, security tags and what must have been nearly a ton-and-a-bit of shrink-wrap machine. 
Try getting one of those up two flights of stairs with tight corners!
Once esconced, I estimate that I probably shrink-wrapped the best part of a million pieces of vinyl in my time there.
Having been brought up with the sanctity of handling records - y'know the drill: the open palm support, the gentle twist to the B-side, the careful cleaning with every single play - you quickly lose your awe at handling so much. 
Proprietry goes out of the window.

It was a real mill - roughly 35 boxes from suppliers A DAY.
Lugging THREE 100 size boxes of vinyl at a time (the most I could carry) up two flights of stairs - yes that's approximately 300 pieces of nice n'cheap old school vinyl with each journey up.
Then opening each box, checking the quantities on the advice note were correct, breaking it down into price points, and then writing that up on a SUP (never knew what that meant) sheet, before security tagging, price stickering and putting aside for shrink-wrapping.
When you had enough LPs sitting you got going:
Bend, pick up LP, slide it onto plattern between a sheet of 2-ply PVC wrap; pull forward with your right hand; bring down heated L-shaped 'cutter' to pinch off the PVC; use left hand to move LP onto rollers.
The rollers took the bag of plastic and sound into a heated tunnel (that didn't look too dissimilar to an airport security device) and out it came, shrink-wrap shrunk, to fall into a box, ready for collection and transport out onto the shop floor.
The PVC released really nasty fumes, and I operated like this for months until Virgin stumped up and got proper ventilation. 
This was a large electrostatic fan - the air moving through two charged grids and the floaty bits of loose plastic (from the L-shaped frame's heated cutting wires) collecting on the grids. 
It was a great system, except that said burning PVC had to pass by my head (and mouth and nostrils) before reaching the vents.
When we cleaned the vents, a thick grey sludge accumulated in the sink - it was the dickens to clean off.

All I can say is that I had a really fine lung-capacity when I started, and now I can't really puff for Puffins.

I eventually got an assistant (Hi Earl!) and between us we shifted tons and tons of 'product' in what sometimes approached 90 degrees of dry, smelly heat, in a small windowless room.
Earl eventually left to become a commando - I'll bet his basic training was on a par with working in a Virgin stockroom!

It was highly tough (OK, not like digging graves or shunting dustbins) work, but it was FUN. It stimulated the senses, both in sound, sight (all those classic 12" square covers!) and smell - all that burning acrid plastic. 
It kept you fitter than a butcher's dog, because the work was constant and heavy. It destroyed skin tone, concreted lungs, helped RSI, and was both physically and mentally exhausting,  but at the end of the day it got the ackers into the money-making machine that was Virgin Records, so that was all that mattered eh!
Sir Richard should think about his ex-employees when he is gadding about in space - if I am anything to go by, a lot of his ex-stockroom folk are either dead or pretty buggered health-wise.

But back to the FUN - in those halcyon days, you could buy a brand new chart LP for £4.99. 
Nowadays it's £19.99+. 
Back catalogue, the real grist to the mill, started at £3.49 for premium titles like Led Zeppelin, and so on and then worked down from there. 
The average 12" single was a strangely expensive £1.99.
7"'ers were around a pound. 
Cassettes were similarly priced to LPs. 
The new-fangled Compact Disc ran to around £10+ - they were expensive

Seeing as I have made my life's living off of selling them, I'll maybe write about them more.
They were initially the ground of the:
 
"Hey baby, wanna come back and listen to my new CD player" 

working man!

That's true, oh you tucked-in jumper, white-socked smoothies with your beefy pay-packets!
God bless you.
We stocked on opening approximately 350 CDs - that was just about it for UK production, but as their popularity quickly disseminated out into general use, manufacturers got on board pretty fast, and a tidal wave of both UK, European and the delightfully environmentally unfriendly American anti-pilfering long box came onboard. 
It still astounds me that in 1987, people were paying £20+ for Japanese imports of Pink Floyd albums on CD, because EMI over here hadn't really cottoned on yet.

Weird how the world changes when music becomes devalued by online retail and then streaming becomes the norm and people ditch CDs like they're anathema.
For all that the humble silver disc is slagged off as being hopeless these days, you know, these wonderful little 5"ers are still valid. 
Aside from the fact they've put a roof over my head and expanded my knowledge of the wonderful world of recorded music and catalogue, they're so fecking easy to deal with.

I find the 'vinyl revolution' very interesting - one drunken stumble with your favourite premium £35 copy of 'Are You Experienced' and you're stuffed. 
I know because I did it in 1974 with my copy of 'Mott' - I wasn't drunk, but it slipped, bounced off the edge of my Dansette and forever (even today) - I still hear that click during 'The Ballad of Mott the Hoople (26th March 1972, Zürich)'.

But back to Virgin - gosh I miss that shop (and I never thought I'd hear myself saying that). 
I was lucky enough to work with a fantasticly talented team of people - all of them PUMPED about the music they loved, all knowledgable (y'know, like the geeky assistant in Hi-Fidelity) in ways that probably wouldn't seem normal these days. 
We covered the breadth of music, from Be-bop and Swing (Hi Stuart!) through Punk (Hi Graham!) R&B and Funk (Hi Libby!) Disco (Hi Audrey!) Ghastly Chart Pop (Hi Jan!) ALL back catalogue (Hi Jim!) weird pre-Americana (Hi Brian!) standard stuff (Hi Jill!) through others and back to me and my love for rock, metal, and guitar instrumental music.
We worked bloody hard for Richard Branson and for a smaller Virgin shop (albeit on two floors) we sold a TON of stuff. 
We would rack out say every Iron Maiden 12" single available to that point (approximately 7 or 8 titles - most of them imports at around £6) 25 deep on a Friday and they'd be gone on a Monday. 
Dundee is a music town. 
At the time is was delineated by its tribes, and they mostly all bought music (some nicked it of course but that is another story).
When they excavate Tayside in 20,000 years time I am sure they'll find a layer of Talking Heads 12" singles, with sub-layers of The Mission and The Cult; pockets of Led Zeppelin and Neil Young and Van Morrison; a Smiths magma, Dirty Dancing Soundtrack shale and don't forget the Farley Jackmaster Funk sub-layer . . .

Then in 1988 disaster happened and the Virgin group, in their bid for world domination, sold off 67 smaller shops to Our Price to fund said operation.
Everything changed overnight
Goths sacked for making the place "look too dingy"; colleagues told on a Wednesday that they were starting in a different branch on the other side of the country on the following Monday; myself, banned from serving the public because my hair was long; managers placed under so much pressure that the Voddie bottle in the filing cabinet was de rigueur.
It was a Pogrom
Our Price only wanted their own people in charge and as such made it as difficult as possible for ex-Virgin staff who asked too many questions.
On the whole, to us seasoned vets, Our Price People seemed to know little about music save what they'd seen on Top Of The Pops, and they were consistently placed in charge of people who breathed, slept and ate at the broad table of The Gods that was Modern Music.
The Regional Manager for Scotland and his henchman were like the Batman and Robin of rules. 
They had precious little musical knowledge between them, but knew what to say (sound familiar?) and knew how to enforce the new house rules. 
Having engaged their ire (like the Eye Of Sauron) by standing up for a part-time Saturday girl (who was brilliant at her job but got sacked all the same) the pressure came to bear, and I found myself (after a period of great pressure and angst) in the position of having to resign.
Bastards.
It was difficult.
They call it Constructive Dismissal - being forced into a corner where your only option is to resign.

And then like a hand reaching down into the mire of despond, Rock City came along (Hi Graham!).
You've never heard of them, but they were a secondhand and new shop based in St. Andrews in Scotland in the late 80's/early 90's. 
And they gave me a job. 
I think the proto-KT Tunstall bought some records there.
It was a great little business - furiously busy at times, and then tumble-weed at 11am on a Winter's Tuesday morning. 
I really enjoyed my brief time there; discovered great new/old records; learned the ins and outs of the used vinyl trade; bought stuff; sold stuff; had big laughs with customers; cleared the shop with the then virtually unheard of  Nirvana's 'Negative Creep' and just generally had a good time that kept the wolf from the door.

Then one day I got a phone call:

"Are you Herman Sheephouse?"
"Yes."
"The same Sheephouse that worked for Virgin?"
"'Yes."
"Would you like a job?"

Well it paid more (and more importantly had access to all those luscious guitar import CDs that weren't available in the UK) and so I found myself in the longest stretch of my career.
Hello CDS!

For 31 years I have dealt with customers that are wonderful, weird, annoying, funny. knowledgable, kind, appreciative and generous. All of us linked by that one thing - music.
It has been the bread of my working life.
I have handled and processed boxes of stock from literally around the world.
I have dealt with and sold music to people from the UK through Europe to Turkey and into Asia, Japan, and Australia and New Zealand, and on into Polynesia, making the jump across the Pacific into the whole of the Americas from Alaska and Canada right the way down to Patagonia.
Every phone call has been a discovery, pretty much, from funny regulars through to people who were/are quite frankly cracked. 
We've had loonies, freaks, 'normal' people, passionate music fans, celebrities, musicians, all sorts.
I've fielded questions and sourced the impossibly rare.
It's been a blast actually.

Back at the start in CDS, pre-internet days, it was a brain and a bunch of catalogues that got you there; that and the ability to follow leads and jump, Sherlock-like, on a trail long-gone cold, in search of that elusive catalogue number. 
Wonderfully logical, cats (that's a 'trade' term) were Willie Wonka's Golden Ticket, so long as you could match them up to the correct distributor.
Once all the tumblers clicked into place, you then had to assume the item was actually still in stock - not always the case when dealing with catalogues that were out of date as soon as they were printed. 
This was the days before live computerised stock control too.
But like I said, you got your magnifying glass out and followed the bloodhound!
Navigating the seas of Asian catalogues, replete with Asian characters, transposed Ls and Rs (Yes, Beatres, Lolling Stones etc); through to Russian broadsheets printed on the thinnest paper ever; underground dance culture catalogues that arrived incognito through the post; home-made affairs cobbled up from a typewriter, photocopier and proper old school punk cut and paste; glossy corporate affairs through to the firm favourite single-sheet faxed over.
I saw it all, and reacted appropriately.
Ordered.
Imported.
Paid the MCPS sticker.
Sold the disc.

I was going to write a bit here about how massive online retailers, well one in particular, selling at cost or below cost have pretty much destroyed an industry I loved, but I won't because what I was going to write was so full of piss and vinegar and sheer bile, it frightened me, and was probably all too easily misinterpreted as the rantings of someone who is just about to lose their job (4 days and counting down folks!)
I will say one thing though to you, the buyer and your need to save a couple of quid with the easy lazy click - you're playing into some strange hands and you're dreaming yourselves into the most bizarre Dystopian future that nobody could have imagined.
I'm not criticising though, just pointing a few things out, because they're coming for you too.

So in the future, when you're in a lovely new care home, that was made possible because you released the equity in your house to a super-massive corporation, and you're currently having your drool wiped by a Care-bot, branded by the same, whilst shitting into a nappy branded by the same, you'll be able to watch a lovely drama, starring a holo-actor that used to be someone to do with Star Trek and laugh and point and remember a time when freedom and choice went hand in hand.

Y'see, unfortunately in the process of this worldwide application of megalomania, my beloved Music Industry has been hit and left at the side of the road like a squashed forgotten hedgehog.
In the UK, the small. local record shop? Pretty much gone. 
America - the Mom and Pops; the local emporium of joy and discovery? All gone.
Europe is a wasteland apart from a few small beacons of light - Hi Judith! Hi Ron!
Everywhere you look in the world something massive has taken place, and all because you the customer want the convenience of sitting on your bum and purchasing with the easy click, and more to the point, want to save money - no matter how little in real terms.

Like Isis firing missiles and lobbing grenades at Ancient Babylonian monuments, so a vital, collective culture, has been utterly destroyed.

Record shops were a right of passage. 
They held meaning. 
They were where you went and met people who weren't at all like you and you loved them, or people who were like you and you hated them.
They informed, annoyed, delighted, transported, captured, enthralled. 
In short, they gave meaning to people's lives. 
They brought joy.

And it's nearly all gone, courtesy of that easy click. 
And gee, you get that CD delivered, in a day or less. 
You don't go and rake. 
You don't go and ask to listen, or grab an opinion from another customer. 
You don't head home, wondering whether you've bought the right thing. 
You don't get that transition whereby you can't really tell if you like it or not, but you've bought it so you might as well give it a go. 
And that wonderful, slow, transition from strange taste to nectar, whereby your new purchase becomes the most important thing in your whole life
No, you send it back - done - not my taste man.
No wonder we're in a cultural maelstrom of shit and brilliance, that's more blended with shit than it is with brilliance.
Cultural discovery and curiosity have been poleaxed.

"Like this? You'll love this!"

As the Algorythms (yeah that is misspelled - so what!) judge your 'thing' and chance is largely by-passed, you are only fed stuff you like
Your whole DNA of taste is laid bare and open to what something thinks you'll like.
How fucking boring.
I've done this for long enough to know that I don't even know what I do and don't like.
That's the beauty of being a human.

You could take the super-highway to your destination and get there in double quick time, or you could go via the backways and maybe, just maybe, you'd find somewhere you liked even more.
I know which I prefer.

And that's what world-dominating online retail has done. 
I lay the blame firmly at someone well-known's feet.
Well I would except he is in space.
Saving mankind.
With an old guy.

And that as they say is that.
My work is now in the process of 'winding down'.
The future is cancelled and certainly more uncertain than I have ever known it.

To coin a phrase that weirdly and coincidentally I found pencilled on the wall of our house when redecorating a couple of years back (it is literally 3 yards away from me as I type this, buried for the future under wallpaper):


A Dickensian Requiem


"2 paid off, December (??) 1883."

God only knows what losing your job in 1883 must have been like.
My thoughts are entirely with the spirits in this, because to me it has felt like a death in the family.
And I'll draw a line under it there.

On the positive side, and to quote a meme that is entirely my own:

"Time is the most precious thing you don't own."

I'll see how things pan out - I have time to dedicate to photography and all the million things I've always meant to do, but have never had the time for.
I bless the day I met my wife - without her, things would be considerably darker.
I feel positive in the weirdest way.

So until the Solstice turns and the nights start drawing out again, this has been an unusual one and as always thank you for reading.
As you've no doubt realised there's no photography. 
Normal service will resume in the New Year - Winter is here - what better time to break out the 5x4!

To you and yours and to your attitude to the world in general, be kind to people.
Mankind needs to act now for the greater good of mankind.
I wish that the era of egotism and greed were coming to an end, but sadly I can't see that. 
As long as you keep buying and believing in these really very socially awkward people and their dominion over data and technology, then they'll continue to stamp their weirdness on our future.
Culture will start to feed on itself, instead of growing.
The future is branded and wants every last penny.

It's not the world my parent's fought for in WWII.

Nor is it the golden Space Age that my contemporaries and I foresaw back in the 60's and 70's.

It's something considerably darker; more akin to the Film Version of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.
And I really don't like that.

So on an end note, be good, take care and even if one of you starts thinking about how the world we're going to hand to our grandchildren is going to pan out, we can make it turn now.
For good.
We have to.

Be good and take care.
Merry Christmas

Herman XXX



*** Good buddy and long time FB commentator Bruce Robbins has told me that I was exactly the sort of guy that could have ended up in the photography department at DC Thompsons. Who knew!

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

Split

(Started in August 2021, and please beware, because it is probably controversial, daft, thick, thought-provoking [?], polemic, opinionated, wrong, true, interesting and dull all at once. It is also a long read, so be prepared with provisions and a rescue team just in case)

Morning folks - hope you are all a rootin' and a tootin'!
This post is an interesting one, because as I start typing I have no idea where I am going, and no idea what (if any) conclusion or usefulness will come out of it; however as is often the case, I find the keyboard to be as valuable as a psychiatrist's couch, so please bear with me whilst I set the slurry lorry on flick and get spattering all that lovely watery cowy goodness out the back whilst pootering along this particular field.

Putt, Putt Putt . . .
Splat, Splat, Splat . . .


© Phil Rogers Dundee,Leica M2,35mm f3.5 Summaron
Battling Glare, Darkness, Spotlights, 
Full Aperture And A Handheld One Second Exposure, 
The M2/Summaron  Combo Delivers The Goods . . . 
Weirdly.
Proudly Unchimped.


Me and t'missus settled down to watch something we'd recorded off BBC 4 a while back:
Rankine's Photography Challenge. 
I was excited; it isn't often photography is featured on TV, so this was somewhat of an event. 
I munched my Lidl's Digestive and sipped my cup of really rather strong coffee and was genuinely waiting to be wowed. 
Cooo!
Here were the candidates, all fresh faced and toting really not inconsiderably expensive cameras. 
There was a young lad describing how he'd sleep in carparks in order to catch a sunrise; an older bloke with PTSD who said that wildlife photography had saved his life.
I noticed there were others; a healthy mix of all genders, very woke and PC, but to be honest by this stage I'd mentally switched off. 
Why?
Well amongst the pontificating of:

"That's The ONE!" 

"I'd be proud of that!!"

"Get down on the ground and shoot it from there!!!"
 
"Coo, you don't get many of those to the pound!"

(Made that last one up actually) something in me had begun to feel really rather sick. 

There were about a billion shutter activations in the first fifteen minutes. 
Studio flashes like miniature atomic space battles
People 'chimping' left right and centre.
Kids putting themselves in shutterly inappropriate positions - the way people mishandle handguns in films (you know, loose wrist, pointed sideways) - camera as an extension of forearm.
It was snappy, overloaded and packed to the gunwhales with jaunty camera angles and semi-shouty presentation to make it look interesting, and sadly, like two Cokes plus a kilo of candy-floss plus several spins on The Sickener, this fairground ride made me feel the way I always feel at fairs:

Queasy with a capital Q.

So I turned to the missus and said:

'Can we watch something else?'

And that was a shame, it really was, because these people were buzzing with photography
They were truly enthused.
To coin a certain Mancunian phrase from decades ago, they were:

Mad For It.

I wished them well, bade them good luck and with a heavy heart and a sick bucket, switched to something else.

The "something else" was a program which is still in my head.
It was a BBC documentary about Lee Miller
What an extraordinary life, however it was her contact prints from the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald which left a mark. Though not shown closely, what she said in the frames taken with her Rolleiflex said oceans more than a million digital spray jobs. 
And then, the fact that said experience made her pack away all her negatives and prints and not talk about it for years, speaks volumes about how much of herself she put into taking those photographs.
And also how much those photographs took out of her.
You can find out more about her here.

The following night, just because, we watched a documentary about Ansel
To say the guy was driven, would be a slight. 
These days you'd probably say he had OCD.
It came as no surprise that the huge channeling of human spirit, energy and sheer effort that went into the taking of every negative and the making of every print, came about as a result of methodical obsession
I believe this could only ever have been achieved with film and paper. 
He would never have been able to internally and externally transition the piece from "score to orchestra"' (negative to print) with some photoshop moves and an inkjet printer. 
Absolutely no way José.
To watch him dodging and burning was like watching the poetry of great dance or, dare I say it, football. 
It was transfixing, assured and magical all at once. 
A master class in craft skills and second nature.
It was definitely not the nurdling around of a mouse and cursor and ordering some 1's and 0's to: 
"Do THAT!"
It was not some old geezer checking his screen after every shot.

I thought about it and was so stunned by the apparent dissolve between these masters and what passes for photography in this digital age that I had to investigate further.

It will come as no surprise that You Tube is a tremendous source of old photographic documentaries.
Name the crafts-person (gotta be PC y'know) from a bygone age and you'll probably find something about them on there in some form.
From the classic Parkie-style interview, to decent overviews. 
And it is weird because you'll see the overlaps too - great photographers who have gone over to the Light (room) side like it means little to them.
Yet I truly feel something has been lost, and in that loss lies a blackhole that is at the centre of current photography:

The photographer as printmaker.

Bill Brandt (BBC Master Photographers) was a revelation to me. 
I only really knew Bill from a handful of photographs, but in this programme there were countless great images - so stylistic and austere, yet better than anything I have seen produced in 'modern' times.
To paraphrase a conversation in the programme:

Interviewer: "Mr. Brandt, you always do your own printing don't you?"
BB: "Oh yes."
Interviewer: "It is very important to do one's own printing?"
BB: "Yes, definitely, very important, yes . . . because I change pictures completely in the darkroom . . . most of the work is done in the darkroom . . . "


© Bill Brandt Estate


André Kertész? The poet who wasn't technical enough for the American Photography Scene (apparently).
Whilst enamoured with polaroids (technically geeky I suppose) at the end of his life, he produced numerous beautiful images which were all the more perfect for their imperfections. 
I couldn't imagine him chimping at his Canon's screen - he knew exactly what the photograph he had taken would look like. How's that for confidence and skill? 
The post-digital world of perfect, everything in focus from 3" to infinity and then HDR'd to the hilt, would I think have left him cold.
Look at this.


© André Kertész Estate



It truly is exquisite in colour, composition and form. 
A simple sculpture and mirror in his apartment and a piece of Polaroid film.
OK, the smelly wet stage of printmaking was taken away (although remember the 'orrible caustic stuff you use to get with Polaroids . . hmmm) but it is still a print and besides, he'd earned his stripes for decades.
The colours on the Polaroid are ageing in a way like the patina on a piece of Bronze Age metalwork - it is beautiful.

Delving deeper and randomly, I came across a documentary about the British photojournalist Tim Page.
A young man, leaves home at 17; travelling he picks up a camera and gets somehow caught up in Vietnam! 
It is an old BBC Arena called "Tim Page - Mentioned In Despatches"
Unlike other war photographers I have seen, who have dealt with the aftermath in more stoic ways, Tim (in the documentary) seemed to be that same young man fresh from combat, frozen in time, back in civi-street, recovering from debilitating war injuries, trying hard to find something to hold onto to keep him from drowning in the downright ordinariness of 'normal' life. 
He finds some solace in photographing an RAF camp filled with Vietnamese Boat People - there he truly looks at home. 
In his local Charrington pub, quaffing a pint of Charrington's Best Bitter (or so it looked) and smoking a fag, he looked pensive, evaluative; to be frank, out of sorts as they say.
In the documentary he replies to a question (in a Q&A session) about carrying a gun, and explains, that he never really did because guns are heavy, especially when you are carrying 4 cameras, 6 lenses and 50 rolls of film.
50 rolls - 12 or 1800 images as if your life depended on it. 
Finite. 
They had better count.


© Tim Page
© Tim Page


And man did they count. 
Look at the above - one image that sums up the human cost of war. No corpses, but the young man's demenour says more than anything I have ever seen.
If it were digital, there'd be screeds of images, the scene would have been sprayed, broadcast live to a news feed, looked at once and probably forgotten.
And yet here, Tim's skill and eye have rendered the cost, visible on one perfect frame of film; one perfect print.
That's photography. 
He took pictures like he was never sure whether he'd be coming back; fearless. 
Negatives, slides.
I found his images incredibly hard to look at, and yet, to paraphrase him:

". . . there is a lot of Asian softness in them."

You should watch it.
His website is here.

I could go on about the documentaries, but I won't - you owe it to yourself to find them.
It isn't hard.
The above is the merest skirting of the subject though - get looking and thinking.

Dipping on further and looking at my small collection of books, I came to the conclusion that it is the finite quality of traditional photography which defines it

You take a picture, process it, print it, file it. 
It is a one-off artefact - even manipulated via multiple negatives (a la, say, Julius Shulman's astonishingly beautiful architectural photographs) and all the work done in a darkroom to bring it to completion.
If you have never encoutered Shulman and you love black and white (and buildings) you owe it to yourself to seek them out - they're really fantastic.


© Julius Shulman Estate


This was apparently a composite of three negatives, nevertheless it is wonderful. 
The skill involved at all stages to get to the final print is breathtakingly complex.
The printer's skill has not been outsourced to a computer.

The print becomes the full stop on the image. 

The image defines the moment.

Yet I don't think it's really like that anymore.
You might well disagree with me, but to my mind it really isn't.

Have a break - have a Kit Kat.


Aaah, that's better!

I understand there are many concerned and committed photographers out there taking important pictures and I have nothing but respect for them, but the digital rendering is to my mind just convenience. 
It is the 'norm'. 
Everybody else is doing it so why don't we?
You possibly even have little choice with editors and picture people on your back wanting something yesterday.
You can whizz that important image around the world in nano-seconds. 
There is no waiting whilst you send your films back to an ever-awake processing department.
There is no wait whilst you close the door on your darkroom and sweat.
The screen has become the pseudo-print, but rather than that print being put aside in a pile, or brandished in a breathless run to show someone, your image is now a collection of part-remembered photons in your mind's eye. 
Scrolled by contemporaries . . .
In the words of Alex Harvey:

"N. E. X. T. . . Neeeeexxxt!"

And it isn't just to do with how your precious image is stored and presented either; film and digital, obviously they are both utterly different, but to tie things in with my original ride on The Sickener from the top of this 'ere page, it's the sheer ease with which everything can be done.

There used to be an expression 'kicking against the pricks' - whilst the usual interpretation is about authority, I have always thought of it as something that ties in with art. 
Art is struggle.
Photography used to be a struggle.

To my mind though, in ALL creative pursuits, struggle can be beneficial

You strive to do better.

I remember once walking for miles, taking many (so I believed) fine photographs, only for said photographs to be rendered null and void by expired developer. 
It is a thing you only do once. 
It informed me. 
It made me a more careful craftsman.

With digital, you no longer have that. 
You check every single bloody image
Make sure it is perfect on the spot. Just watch the news!
You delete those that you don't like and yet, to quote Tim Page:

"Every day is an assignment. Every picture you shoot, even be it an idle snap; I'm using the word snap, in a sorta very loose context.       
The snap is gonna be valuable."

Snaps are gone with digital - eradicated by the monkey-move and the editorial thumb.

You could argue that the plethora of idle phone pointing that goes on, is the snap.
Well yes, I can see how you come to that, except they're not really, simply because they only exist on a screen. 
They will never  be gripped and looked at again; beery, smoky, greasy fingers will no longer leave their mark. Spitty crumbs of laughter will not mar their perfection.
(As an aside I'll draw your attention to The Anonymous Project - a laudable collection of old slides - their like will never be seen again.)
In my family, we still sometimes drag out prints and snaps from decades ago and laugh and talk and reminisce - it is a wonderful, unexpected and oft overlooked aspect of being a (semi-modern) human.
Who would have thought, when photography was first being developed and people had prints made for relatives, as keep-sakes, records of their lives, that those simple (yet vastly complex) pieces of time would come to define their lives?
Identity was established; some kind of social grace was incurred - all dolled up in your Sunday Best, and thence on to the snap, the wonderful delineation of humankind in all its incredible variety.





Look at at the above - a chance physical find whilst doing some tidying. 
That's me in a photo-booth 40 years ago! 
A close relative to Kertész' polaroids, technology wise. 
It exists in the world. 
It isn't a collection of data lost on some hard-drive, or more likely, deleted as no longer relevant.


Can you see where I am going?
Far from furthering an art-form I love; far from moving it forward, I feel that creatively and archaeologically, digital has pretty much killed 'photography' (as I know it) stone dead.
Cuddle up with that phone and scroll through all those pictures - oh can I see that one with the rubber chicken? 
Oh shit, where the heck is it? 
Och God I can't be arsed . . . . 

But then maybe that is just me. 
A rank amateur living on the East coast of a very small country - what do I know? 
I'll bet most people disagree with me. 
But I look around (a lot); I trust my eyes and my observation of quality and bog-standard snappery from ages past, and I see little now that surprises or impresses or pleases me.
What a feckin' B.O.F. eh!

And then there was a pause during which yer author rubbed his chin and thunked.

Re-reading the above a month or two later, I decided I was being too polemical, too pontificating and too downright opionionated, so I decided to put some distance between me and 'it' and see how I felt a while later.

So, a month or so later:

I feel that what I wrote makes me sound like an arse.
What right have I to pass judgement on one of the world's most popular hobbies?
How can I stand here and say that truth is no longer what it used to be? 
You could argue that photographically truth was never what it was.
I can totally see where you are coming from. 
And yet, I can't quite put the way I am feeling about the current state of photography into words. 
Maybe it has always been thus. 
Millions of images, with maybe one in hundreds of thousands that makes you go:

'OH!'

There currently seems to be no end to the massed ranks of clamour; of images made for pleasure, purpose, or mostly, so it seems, just because you can
The digital image knows no boundaries, and I don't mean in the creative sense, I mean it in the sense that it is an ever-expanding frontier of data assembled into pictures. 
There is no physical limit simply because you don't really need to think like that anymore. 
You are not going into a combat situation with 50 rolls of film. 
You are not limited by the physical length of a roll.
The sky is the limit, and even then  . . .

Even the most careful digi-photographers I know complain endlessly about the sheer amount of stuff they have. 
It is archived and filed and amassed on hard drives or clouds, and it sits there by the myriad, consuming energy in a pointless waste of storage, because nothing will ever happen to photo #15 of the 300 you took of your children playing ball. 
You really won't make that nice picture of a daisy (in macro-mode) into a nice picture for your partner. 
IT IS FACT - YOU SIMPLY WON'T.

They say that traditional photography was environmentally unfriendly in its use of chemicals and resources, but I conject that digital photography is far more unfriendly simply in its power usage. 
Not only that but the traditional photograph impacts environment relatively quickly: a release of noxious chemicals, the results filed away and delved into occasionally; but that is it, the results are yours. Of course you have to factor in the silver mining and plastic production, but counter that with rare earth metals in every camera battery, the plastics in every SD card. 
And you've got to think about the trillions of digital images stored on servers; all drawing energy for their storage whether viewed or not, usually not. 
Some are printed, but they're still stored on physically ultimately fragile devices like hard drives or flash media or SD cards - future landfill.
Of course on the other hand they could also (unwisely) only be stored on cloud storage, where they are entirely at the behest (unpaid, or peppercorn-rent guests as it were) of digital flop-houses. 
An uncertain future! For should owners of said digital flop-houses maybe start charging considerably more, because of power costs, because of hunger for more dosh, for whatever reason, what then happens to a visual history of the latter half of the twentieth, early part of the twenty-first century? 

Yep: 

"Oh that old picture, nah, not going to pay for that." 

"I've got another 30 of the kids, forget about that one." 

Look how truly fragile this digital world really is.

I know we could sit and argue this till the cows come home - maybe you should come around sometime and we could head to the pub.
All of the above reads like it was written by someone who at a certain time of life has become thoroughly entrenched in their thinking and has no wish to look over the parapet. 
Strangely, I wouldn't blame you for thinking so, but also, I wouldn't count myself as one of those.
I am open to argument, but I also know what I like and what I think, and if you are from 'the other side' as it were, my salutations to you - I am not taking a pop, just providing a different slant on what you'll see elsewhere. Hopefully it will make you think about the physical/un-physical fragility of the modern world.

To be honest, my bias towards so-called 'traditional' photography is as firmly entrenched as an old wellie in a huge pool of cow shit. 

You might be able to extract me, but it would be incredibly messy for both of us

Best let entrenched boots lie, eh?





To round things off, the above is a perfect example of why, like Tim Page says, the snap matters.
This was a 'snap' with a Hasselblad SWC/M.
The light was sort of like that - heavy cloud cover and a brief bit of liquid sunshine hitting the path making the stones really stand out. 
I did print the sides down slightly (in a poor fashion) but on the whole it was pretty much like that.
It has sat as a scrap in my darkroom for a year or so. I never ditched it, just used it for setting print borders.
Now I come to look at it properly, I like it.
Had it been digital I would probably have deleted it at the time.
Not saying, just saying . . . .

As I finish, I'd like to say that really, I know none of you, however if you are a printmaker, I tip my tifter to you - you're keeping something vital alive, and if you don't run a darkroom but get other people to make prints from your negatives, I tip my hat to you too, because you're producing something physical.

If you're a squirter (sorry - that's my own nomenclature) well at least you are printing, but as far as I am concerned, it really isn't the same. The skill set is vastly different. 
This being said it doesn't NOT make you a photographer, it's just a shame that the world of modern photography has been skewed away from something that was always its beating heart - THE DARKROOM.

If all you ever view is screens, think again - it is worth the effort to try and change that. Buy a modern Polaroid camera and go and have fun - it will transform the way you feel about making images, and the Polaroids will probably outlast you as well - something for future times. A present from the past.

That's it - thank you for reading once again.
Take care, be safe and watch out for the normal people.







Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Get Stuffed

Morning folks - well it's that time again. 
Time to sit and groan as another mince pie is force-fed into your open, dribbling gob.

Oh yes, It's Ker-ist-mas!

I've had the sprouts on a gentle simmer since October and we're all fully prepared for a day of debauchery. 
Don't you think it's amazing that so much effort and thought is put into just one day and at the end of it, everyone goes:

 "uuuuuurgh, Uncle Tony's stomach has just split, get the hoover will you . . . . urgh . . . well, was that it?"

I do. 

Let's face it, post about 15 years old it looses its appeal don'tcha think? Well, actually, that doesn't seem to be the case with most people and if you are one of them, Wassail!
I do enjoy it though (really!) but, rather like Halloween (and especially what that has become) to me it just seems to be a thing that has utterly lost all meaning. 
I'd love to strip away all commercial aspects of Christmas and see what would happen. 
I do wonder whether people would actually bother

But then again, here I am, with a tooter and a Santa hat on my head, awaiting that magical tinkling of bells and the thunder of hooves . . .

Anyway, enough pontificating, you're here for negatives AND positives, so let's get on with it.

There's a lot of reading below, so consider yourself warned. 
It's sort of fun though.

In the words of the marvellous Franco Battiatio in his song Strani Giorni:

"I had fallen into reverie
I dreamed a vague outline
The whisky flowed
Sending me into the past
Action! (roll the cameras)
Here comes a lightning tour of my life!
The two in the corner didn't say a word. "


JANUARY


I started the year off with a Rollei in one hand and a map in the other and got into a new regime with my precious Fridays off. 
I got t'missus to drop me in the vicinity of my work and then headed down through Broughty Ferry and along the Dundee docks waterfront and thence home. 
It is quite a walk - roughly 6 miles.
I liked it so much I did it a number of times.

In a stupidly enjoyable photographic way it was great though - tootling along taking pictures of all sorts of stuff, minding your own business and getting really cold in the process.


Dundee, Phil Rogers, Hasselblad, Ilford SFX, 150mm Sonnar
Dundee/Bauhaus


It might surprise you, but the above was unfiltered SFX. 
Camera was a 500C/M with 150mm Sonnar . . . 
And no tripod!


Most of it made fairly dull photographs, but I suppose at the end of the day, just what is the point of this stuff we all do?
Are we aiming for world recognition (very unlikely) or are we doing it as a form of catharsis against the madness of modern life? 
I don't know about you, but I find the sense of order in the acts of seeing, composing, measuring, adjusting and then finally taking (not making) a photograph, profoundly comforting . . .
It's a bit like eating 15 Creme Eggs in one session . . .
Well not really, but you know what I mean.
Or do you?


FEBRUARY


Never properly Winter-cold up here, February was more of the same; long walks, poor photos, random finds and fun!


Nikon F, Pre-Ai 24mm Nikkor, Phil Rogers
Hurt


The above was taken with my 1971 Nikon F and an old 24mm pre-Ai lens.
I should really have rescued Johnny from his fate.
This was a bin at the side of a hotel.
Lovely.


I was still doing the riverside discovery process, and (strangely, to these end-of-the-year eyes) mentioning something that seemed to be starting to get some prominence in the press - Coronavirus.
Oh and the Doomsday Clock had gone to 100 Seconds To Midnight at the end of January.
Shite
That is the closest it has ever been.
Concerned? Me too.
You can see the timeline here
In the words of my Mother:

"You've made a bloody mess of that!"


MARCH


I got it out of its controlled storage and took the M2 for long walks and had fun. 
I was swapping between the Canon 28mm f3.5 and the Canon 50mm f1.8. 
You could buy these lenses for peanuts years back, but their reputation has slowly increased, especially given the stupid prices of Leitz lenses from the same period. 
Though try and find a 28mm Canon these days . . . 
I like them though.
However, dare I say it, I've had similar results from the old redoubtable Russian Jupiters. 
Ah you didn't know about my Soviet background did you?
Привет, товарищ
Blame a brother with a Zenit E Sniper.
Russian optics are largely regarded as jokes, but there's a fantastic quality to them if you find the right one.


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,Ilford HP5+,Leica M2
Pyscadelic Pub


Pub shots are always largely hopeless. 
The finest I ever saw was taken by Malcolm Thompson (RIP) of a chap smoking in the Phoenix (in Dundee). 
This isn't anywhere near the same league (though it is the same pub) but it seemed like a good idea at the time. 
Leica M2 and Canon 28mm. Ilford Delta 400 at EI ?1200?. 
All exposures guessed.


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,Ilford HP5+,Leica M2
Seabraes Bridge


Same Film and lens. 
This is Seabraes Bridge - if you've read FB for a while you'll know I have been photographing it in a certain way for years - well, since it was built actually. 
Curiously, recently, I have started to see official Dundee Council publications featuring the bridge, with exactly the same treatment; that is, letting the reflections (which are many and superb) speak for themselves, so that planes of focus are played with . . . 
Hey, maybe someone from their Art Department is reading this . . and if it is you, HELLO!


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Sinar F, Seabraes
Waiting For The Inevitable


Here's one I took earlier - about 3 years earlier actually.
Well before the bridge was constructed.
And also before this chap was ripped off his footings by a storm . . . 
To be left as a disassociated set of eyes in the grass, with . . . 
DOGS CRAPPING ALL OVER HIM.
Camera was my Sinar F. 
The lens was probably a 150mm Symmar-S
Think I was using some sort of compensating developer - what a drag.


After using the M2, fun though it was, it hit me hard that I really AM NOT a 35mm user at all.
Who'd a thunk it!
Seeds were sown. 
Sell the Leica? 
Get it all tootled up and then sell it?
It IS a lovely camera, but really, how much do I use it? 
I actually much prefer the old Nikon F.
I was in not one, not two, but at least five minds . . . 
However, by the end of the year, some stern talking with The Online Darkroom's Bruce has led me to decide to hang onto it and use it - if I sold it and changed my mind I'd never be able to afford another.

Did a stock take and discovered I had a massive stock of film:
20x SFX 120
10 x HP5 120
10 x FP4 120
10 x Delta 400 35mm
+ a couple of boxes of expired 5x4" film (and no inspiration ** - more of this later)

By the 13th of March I was detailing the clearing of supermarket shelves by human locii.
And then lockdown happened.
I wrote: 

"Cold War Paranoia is stalking the land!" 

. . . who knew where everything was going?
And on the 25th, working from home started.


APRIL


After a period of re-adjustment (I don't know about you, but it didn't take long) we all sort of settled into the new regime of working from home.
Gads though, it was hard at times, but me and t'missus dutifully manned our desks - me in here, and she in the a temporary office space in the living room. 
Cup of tea love? 
Magic!

I processed all the colour film I owned (some of it exposed 25 years ago).
The Tetenal kit was about 10 years old too.



Git Out Of Dat Barf - I Need It For Me Film!


It was a proper amateur job, involving washing basins, a bath and hot water, but you know what, much to my surprise the results were absolutely fine.


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Nikon F3,Kodak Gold
Who Are You And Why Are You Photographing Me?


Get a roll of Kodak Gold.
Leave it for about 12 years in non-friendly places, like warm rooms etc etc.
Pick up. 
Go "Urgh, wot's this?" 
Stick in camera. 
Take photos. 
Process.
Sheephouse SnappySnaps, we always get your film to you (in the end).
Camera was a Nikon F3, with an old non-Ai 24mm lens.


At the end of the month I took the Hasselblad for a walk around some of the city's old mill areas and was quite happy with the results.
But I've not printed any of those shots, so here's one (of different subject matter!) I took earlier (just to fill up the space and look pretty).


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,Ilford HP5+,Ilford MGRC,Hasselblad 500 C/M,Hasselblad SWC/M,Hasselblad 150mm CF Sonnar,Hasselblad 60mm Distagon,
Haunted House Along A Haunted Lane


One of my little lane shots. 
We're littered with them in Dundee - lanes that is not shots. 
This was early morning and I think the 60mm Distagon - the slight glare and early morning haze makes the house look haunted to me - if you know what I mean.


There was a positive from Lockdown. 
We got to know our local area better than before. 
It was amazing how many lanes we went up and came down. 
To be honest, we're very lucky we don't live in a 30-storey tower block in some urban connurbation, rammed with other blocks. 
This small City on the Eastern edge of Scotland does have its advantages.


MAY


May was an incredibly beautiful month - the weather was clement, the skies were bluer (because of the lack of smog particles); birds were tweeting their hearts out. 
Me and t'missus settled ourselves into being a support unit for each other, ageing parents and a son who was missing his social life. I think the whole pandemic has, in a strange way, made familial groups closer.
Time seemed to be a blessing to be used with less urgency.
It was in a way heaven.

I wasn't even thinking about photographs as I needed to catch up and did a spot of printing over a couple of weekends. 
However at the very end of the month, the urge overwhelmed me (well, actually after the worst night's sleep of my life) and I got up really early and detailed a 1960's car park. 
It was quick shoot, but enormous fun.


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,Ilford HP5+,Ilford MGRC,Hasselblad 500 C/M,Hasselblad SWC/M,Hasselblad 150mm CF Sonnar,Hasselblad 60mm Distagon,
Car Park


I do so love the light in this carpark. 
I like the concrete brutalism too.


I was so excited by the car park shots that two days later I was out again with a roll of SFX, a home-made infrared filter and the Rollei T.
I was chuffed with the results. 
My old Rollei T (nearly as old as me) still surprises me - weirdly it seems to be one of the lesser-regarded Rolleis. 
You see Rolleicord Vbs selling for more! 
No idea why.
The Tessar is just a single-coated continuation of the original Rollei line before they replaced everything with Planars and Xenotars.


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford SFX, RolleiT
Another Haunted Lane


Set the controls for the heart of darkness.
EI 12 and don't forget your tripod. 
Oh and it's a Rollei so don't forget to move your focus mark forward to f5.6 to adjust for the difference in IR focus.
Good ol' SFX.
I likened it to "HP5+ In A Spangly Mankini" and I still stand by that statement.


To me, .the greatest thing from this enforced period of isolation was Birdsong. 
I don't know what it was like where you live, but having a traffic-free audio landscape populated by birds singing their hearts out, was pure bliss.


JUNE


Ah, flaming June . . . 

It was a lovely month apart from my left eyeball exploding.

Despite this (which sapped any motivation I might have had) I found a great deal on a slightly battered Hasselblad Pro-shade and a 100mm Lee infrared filter.

I tried to do some printing too on Ilford MGRC (expired) and looked out some old prints, among which was this:


© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Wista DX,90mm Super-Angulon
Haunted Bridge
(Can You See The Theme Yet?)


This was a 5x4" contact on (torn, not cut!) old Agfa MCC.
Camera was a Wista DX; lens a Super-Angulon f8; film I think was TMX 100.
I was still developing in dilute Rodinal at the time (no, not me you fool, the film).
There's something eerie about it to my old eyes (apart from the cottage at the left, but then there could be a chainsaw murderer living there, so you never know!)


Dere Street


This is a vintage print - about 10 years old.

It was printed on Adox Vario Classic (now gone too).

Camera was my Rolleiflex T with the 16-on (645) masks inserted.

I still love the light in this and there was something about the trees that really transported me in time.

Romans and Royals all used Dere Street.



Unfortunately, in mid-June, a much anticipated trip to Berlin had to be cancelled - drat and double-drat (oh go one then, and triple-drat!)
I bid farewell to birdsong and time and returned to work at the end of the month.
It was like Lockdown had never happened.


JULY


So what do you do with a Hasselblad, a Pro-shade, a Lee IR filter, a roll of SFX and some time? 
Yes, you go and waste it.
I'll say no more except read the specs of your film and filter.
Well, actually you might be puzzled by that statement. 
Basically, Ilford's SFX isn't a true IR film, just HP5+ in a spangly mankini. 
It only works with a narrow range of filters:

WRATTEN 29 - DEEP RED - EQUIVALENT = B&W 091 

WRATTEN 89B - VERY DEEP RED - EQUIVALENT = HOYA R72 and HELIOPAN RG 695


I spent 2 hours carefully taking all these great photos with the SWC/M and then an hour+ developing them only to find I had lots of shots of my out of focus filter ring.

I was so cheesed-off, that the following week I just went to a lost spot in this city, just so that I could and discovered that homeless people (person?) had been using this lost area of land as a camp.
I detailed it here
I should explore it more.


Phil Rogers, Dundee, Hasselblad SWC/M
Abandoned Latrine


Camera was the SWC/M again. 
The print has scanned well. 
It's bog standard Ilford MGRC developed in the last of my Kodak developer.


Slowly but surely all Kodak stuff is being eradicated from my life.
That is VERY sad, but unfortunately the powers that be price it like they think it's a privilege to use their products. 
For some people (Hello America!) it is like breathing - i.e. a total necessity, oh but the shareholders require a profit . . .
Well. just a thought, how's about this - cut the wholesale price, so that it'll sell at £5 a roll of 120 not nearly £8 and then you'll sell twice or three times as many.
It's simple economics.
Future sorted.

At the end of the month I went and re-trod my own tripod holes around the back of Duncan Of Jordanstone Art College. 
I'd love to get in and teach people film properly
Sadly I don't think the fire is there to get people out with a roll of film and get down and dirty with developing and printing it. 
It seems to be (and semi-verified by a lecturer I spoke to) all 'imaging' . . just re-read that word . . . Gaaaaargh! 
Fecking hell . . . Joe McKenzie's LARGE legacy seems to have been diluted to the point of:
"Wot's the point?"

Anyway, 'nuff sour grapes, I'm not quite a miserable old git yet.
My eyes were playing merry hell with me and it was hard to get motivated, but I somehow did.


Phil Rogers, Dundee, Hasselblad 500C/M,150mm Sonnar
Ghastly Poster


OK, it is hardly inspiring.
Hasselblad 500C/M and 150mm Sonnar
It's printed up lovely though, on some NOS Agfa MCC 5x7"
There was just something truly ghastly about this aged and splatty poster I couldn't resist. 
My Mum would have called it 'Perverse'.


It never ceases to amaze me that you might keep on treading the same old ground, but there's always something to photograph!


AUGUST


Desperate to break the bounds of my eye-depression, I hit the ground running and went to a sacred site (pre-Dawn) and took what I think is my own personal favourite landscape photograph . . . ever . . .
This is it.


Hasselblad SWC/M,Ilford MGRC,Hasselbl© Phil Rogers,Ilford HP5+,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,
Ritual Landscape


The light was incredible and this felt special as I was taking it. 
Weirdly it isn't entirely sharp across the frame, so I can safely assume my gorilla-like grip on the cable release was causing camera shake.
The tripod was a tad unsteady too as I was perched on a couple of rocks in the river.
SWC/M and FP4+


I like to think that the Old Earth Gods of the place were smiling on my supplication for light and atmosphere.
I couldn't believe it when the negatives emerged from the wash.
The negative printed like a dream.
I have to say, despite the fact I am still paying it off (some two years later!) my Hasselblad SWC/M (Florence) was an investment in pure pleasure.


SEPTEMBER


After years of wishing and asking, I finally got my son up a Munro. 
We had a brilliant day despite the near-50mph winds on the tops. 
It was enough of a pleasure for him to ask when we could do it again!


The Road Home


Y'know, a SWC/M makes a surprisingly decent travel camera.
It's light and not too farty-aboot.
We still had about 4 miles to go, but at least it was all downhill.


The end of the month was a holiday next to one of Scotland's great rivers. 


Please Leave Deliveries In Bag


This was a strange one.
Nothing changed with regard to the bag for a whole week.
Not a very good print though - way too contrasty.
SWC/M and HP5+. 
Such is the wideness of the lens that from the tripod's position I could almost touch the gate.


Faery Path


Imagine being perched on a wall that is on average 4-5 feet high and about 2 feet wide, with a river on one side and thorn trees on the other.
In the twilight.
With a tripod.
Camera was Hasselblad 500C/M and 60mm Distagon. 
Film was Ilford FP4+


It was pure bliss and I was able to indulge twilight walks with a lot of camera work. 
The results weren't great, but the further on I get with this thing we call photography, I realise that that probably isn't the point.
'Faery Path' is so called because the first thing my wife said when she saw it was "That looks faery!'

Whilst on holiday, not to be outdone, my right eyeball quietly exploded too.

That's not one, but two PVDs (Posterior Vitreous Detachment) missus - cooooor, you don't get many of those to the pound do yer luv? Eh!

Dundee Museums produced a Joe McKenzie 'Love Letter To Dundee' exhibition. It was bloody marvellous to see the old masters prints in the flesh again. If all this ghastly lockdown stuff stops and things get back to normal, please find some time to see it (if it ever travels).


OCTOBER


My busiest weeks at work ever meant that I couldn't photograph - I was too knackered and had no days off (apart from the weekends . . . snoooooooze). 
It was a personal triumph to have packed the number of things I did, however I did end up with tendonitis.

A hero of mine, Eddie Van Halen died this month.
It was a tragic end to a true innovator and whilst I never liked their music post-Women And Children First, Ed was a great guy. 
What a lot of people didn't get was his endless search for great sound and yet he had it in spades already. 
A man with numerous patents to his name and a constant thirst to do new stuff, he sadly got tracked into the endless parade of Greatest Hits re-treading tours that seems to plague the majority of 'legacy' acts.
It was almost like caging a Lion.
I saw out the month playing my old Peavey Wolfgang Standard (a guitar he designed) to death, further compounding the tendonitis.
Kudos to his son Wolfgang for not jumping on the making as much money as possible in a short space of time bandwagon. 
Sit tight on your Dad's legacy Wolfie - it needs to be treated with respect.


Women & Children First


Norman Seeff is the photographer
If that doesn't look like a Zeiss Softar on a 150mm Sonnar, well.
There's a softness yet clarity. 
Look up his work - hell of a photographer.


I also managed to find a (fairly) cheap deep red filter on ebay and had a bash at using Ilford SFX with the Hasselblad in desperately DULL conditions. 
How dull was it? 
Well, suffice to say, it was like the sun hadn't risen.
At all.
Ever.
And wasn't going to ever again.


Hasselblad SWC/M,© Phil Rogers,Dundee,
Monkey Wave


I like this.
Basically it was so dark, I pointed my camera at the sky for the sheer hell of it, opened the shutter and this is what turned up. 
Film was Ilford SFX, camera was the SWC/M


I ended the month on only one film shot and processed - there's lazy for you mister.


NOVEMBER


Ah November! 
A month when the skies greyed-out and sun was never seen . . . or at least that's how it seemed.
I would say this has been the greyest Autumn I can ever remember. Normally there's some let-up, but global warming has meant that waves of storms and cloud come in off the Atlantic with predictable regularity - i.e. ALWAYS at the weekend.
It was sheer torture actually - maybe I'll just become a house photographer like Edward Steichen at the end of his life - this being said, I'm not sure whether you've looked at any of Steichen's last days pictures, but for what on the surface seem to be loads of inconsequential stuff, there is a quiet acceptance of the mores of life fixed deep in them. It seems like he anticipated the end. The colours are wonderfully funereal.

Talking of Steichen, I had forgotten I had this:


Family Of Man


A lucky find in a charity shop for a fiver. 
The binding is sheer quality, considering it was given as a present to someone in 1963.
It moves me to tears every time I read it.
Taschen - a lovely hardback reprint would be perfect please, and thank you.


It is in my opinion one of the finest photographic books ever made, because it isn't just a collection of great images (which it is) it is more than that, it's a statement that came 10 years after the most terrible conflagration. 
It's an appeal to live and let live, to tolerate (to a point); to accept that no one is ever going to agree with you totally, but that's their human right. 
It is something we all need to think about these days - I think my Mum and Dad and indeed yours, would be mightily pissed off at the state we've got everything into.

Whilst looking around, I found this statement by Steichen which I think nails the art of traditional photography on the head:

“I don't think any medium is an art in itself. It is the person who creates a work of art. It's perfectly clear that photography is different from any other medium — but that's only procedurally.

Every other artist begins from scratch, a blank canvas, a piece of paper, and gradually builds up the conception he has. The photographer begins with the finished product. When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

At that point the differences between photography and any other medium stop because the photographer has brought to that instant anything any artist has to bring into action for the creative act.”


He's right isn't he. 
Once you take (not make) that moment in time and fix it into place on film, that is it.

You can of course elevate it further through print making, but for a defined moment; a tiny slice of the river of time, well, the negative is the thing.

It doesn't sound like he regarded print making with such profundity, and yet, to me, the two cannot exist without each other.
In this age of screen viewing, having something physical at the end of an often long (and concentrated) process, well, to go all '60's on you . . . it's where it's at . . (man).

Thinking long and analogously about this, howzaboot the following:

If the negative is say, the page, then the print (or prints [as in all you have ever done]) is the whole book. 
A page on its own can be meaningless, but a whole volume, well . . .

Maybe that's a way of looking at your prints and negatives. 
They are your story. 
All the time you've spent making images. 
Travelling and looking and snapping and processing, and eventually turning those small bits of time turned physical, into something that you can show to someone and say: 

"Look, this is mine  - I made all this!"

I've often wondered what this space-consuming collection of old print boxes, plastic sleeves and (occasionally looked at) bits of paper were there for. And now I think I might have found the answer.
They're me.

However, as my old mate, childhood chum and respected Aunty (whom I never met) Ursula K LeGuin would have said: 

'Endless are the arguments of mages . . . '

Anyway . . . onwards!

I've long been intrigued by some of John Blakemore's time-based photographs and so I thought that using a ND would help me copy him. So, guess what, I bought a (slightly faulty) ND off the same bloke I got the B&W red from.
It's a Tiffen. Beautifully made too - actually the bay 60 thread is smoother than the B&W. Neither however compare to 1960's and 70's Nikon filter rings - they're smoother than a pint of Guiness West Indies Export Porter with a Brylcreem sandwich.

However, as I later discovered when I actually re-read his book (surely someone somewhere should reprint it!) he used a view camera and numerous slight exposures. 
I (being a twat) opted for the sledgehammer and nut option and slapped the filter on, stopped down and stood about whilst dodging the reciprocity failure bullet.
FP4 at EI 12?
You betcha!


Hasselblad SWC/M,© Phil Rogers,Dundee,Ilford FP4+,
Balgay Cemetery


I like the plasticity of this image.
It's not a great print, but it will suffice.
I was perched with tripod on top of a bench to get a better feeling of depth and height.
Exposure was about 10 seconds in bright Winter sun.


And that was November.

DECEMBER


Well that's now isn't it, and if you have got this far, thank you once again. 
You know, I've been blogging since 2012.
It has been a consistent commitment from me and though it has settled into a gentle monthly rhythm, I've enjoyed it. 
I know some of you have been reading since the start and I'd like to say a really big thank you to you for keeping going!
As for anyone else, well, dig deep - there's tons of interesting (a matter of opinion) stuff about cameras and the photographic process - you can access the whole lot at the right hand side in the Search This Blog box . . . it's to the right of this and up near the top of the page.

FB isn't a Pleez-Pleez-Pleez-Miss-Pleez-Miss-Look-At-Wot-I've-Got-Miss-Pleeeeeeeeez-Miss, sort of thing like many blogs, no. Hopefully it is a bit more thought provoking than that.
Writing this has helped me (and in turn maybe helped you) through some photographic thought processes and general good practice (uncommon for me admittedly).

Anyway, to round things off, this month I have come to some conclusions and gone a bit mad.

The main conclusion is this. 
The end is nigh
You get to half your allotted years and it really strikes you.
So with that in mind, what better way to approach things, but with a new vigour and enthusiasm.
It is so easy to get caught in the 'can't be arsed' frame of mind!
YOU SIMPLY CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

So, for next year, or even the rest of this year:

Get Yer Finger Oot.

Get to it.
Take photos.
Make prints.
Blow your pension. 
As a wise man's dead Aunty once said to me:

"There's no pockets in a shroud!"

Too bloody right.

For myself, I've discovered that I have nigh on 90 sheets of expired 5x4" film - most of it is Kodak and died around 2013/2015. 
So I have gone from thinking - I really can't handle a view camera any more, to, right, I am going to crack this bastard and get back on and use the Wista (and Sinar). 

Hopefully this season will see me with enough time to actually do it. 

I've even bought some Adox FX39II because of the shorter times for tray processing. 

Wish me luck.


Phil Rogers, Dundee, Hasselblad SWC/M
Ferkin' Hell . . .When Did That Happen?



Anyway, that's it.
As always, many thanks for reading - I hope there was something of use and/or interesting in this. If it provokes thought . . . good. 
If it provokes laughter . . . even better.

I am off now - hopefully it'll be a good long break with a dark cloth over my head. 
I should have something new for you in January, so till then, stay safe and have a brilliant time.
And remember that if you boil enough sprouts now, you can have them all year round.
TTFN xxx.