One of the greatest of words anyway!

My own internal alt-az mount is borked at the moment. I need to look up, down and around. My head is full of flu…

Altazimuth Pavillion

There are three broad aspects of film photography (for me). The first is common to all. Taking the photograph and all that entails. Being there. Visualisation, exposure, composition. Recognising the moment. Etc etc. Or just pointing and shooting. Whatever.

I have found that the wonderful thing about the next stage, ie developing my film, is not just the continuing control over the final image. I am finding that the process of developing film brings me unexpected peace of mind. Unexpected because of the anxiety and mystery that initially shrouded the process. It seemed to be a very difficult, complicated and risky thing to do. So many options reinforced a fear of failure and provoked a flight reaction.

One thing that changed all of this when I returned to film photography was the length of time it took the labs to process my exposed films and a distinct feeling of dissatisfaction when I finally viewed the results. If I did it all myself I would at least know it was me that was bolloxing the images, not the labs. And most importantly, I could do it quicker, instantly if necessary. That last point is very important for me. I want something and I usually want it now. I don’t do waiting very well, especially if aesthetic judgement is at stake. My anticipation levels are sadly hardwired to the cultural norm, ie instant gratification. Also, I want to see the results as soon as possible after the event so I can make an assessment of what is right and what is wrong, rather than what was right and what was wrong.

Now I look forward to the process and can’t wait to get back and develop the films. I look forward to the preparation. Laying out the tank, reels, Winchester bottles of chemicals and the other paraphernalia. Making a (by now hopefully informed) decision on which developer, what amount of agitation and how long to develop. Measuring and mixing the chemicals. Setting the timers. Warming/cooling the developer to 20C.

And so it goes. The sound of the film winding onto the stainless-steel spirals is such a pleasurable one, perhaps one of my favourite sounds. The film hisses as I load it onto the reel, giving aural feedback that it is seating in the spiral correctly. It is an aesthetic step-beyond the clunky plastic reels I started with and gives me some satisfaction not least because stainless-steel reels are generally regarded as harder to load. When I first started, my hands sweated and trembled in the dark bag, even though I had practiced for hours with an exposed film in front of the TV (with my eyes shut, natch – so much for TV) and knew I could do it in the dark. Now I look forward to it.

And the great moment arrives after the final wash when I hang the negs to dry (on a clothesline over the bath). There is an immediate inspection of the film rebate to check the letters and numbers are dark crisp and clear and then a quick inspection of the tonal range. Then I shut the door of the bathroom and wait for the negs to dry… waiting, yep. Can’t hurry this bit with my setup.

And of course sometimes what comes out the other end is absolute crap, which is disappointing. But not always, and only rarely has something gone horribly wrong because of the development process. It is such an opportunity to learn, learn and learn more.

The nearest analogy I can make is to the way I cook. Hell, even some of the terms are the same. The developer is called ‘the soup’. There are countless ‘recipes’.

I LOVE cooking but I haven’t looked at a recipe book for years and years. Cooking is such a creative process and our larder is often so near empty or full of random ingredients that the creative and experimental aspect is paramount. Usually with tasty results because I have been cooking like this for so long I am 100% confident. But I never stop learning and nor was I always so confident. I had to learn. Cooking is all about finding combinations you like – ingredients, flavours, textures, colours etc – much like getting a film from the visualised image to the print. There are so many options during the intermediate stages that can affect the result, good and bad depending on your personal taste.

The last stage, scanning, post-production and/or printing can wait for a later post…

And so to the final product.

Nearly right…

Why have such a supremely interesting open space and fill it with litter-bins and crap ‘street furniture’? One of those guys looks like he is dropping into the litter-bin, or rising out of it. I was even aware of it at the point of shooting. Next time I’ll try with the CV 21/4 for a wider angle and take the photo from the other side of the bins…

Old favourite

Of course, one of the things about cooking is that I continually return to old favourites. These are the arches between the covered footpaths in the Old Royal Naval College (I’m sure these covered paths have a proper architectural name). Bonus here is that I captured the couple holding hands. However, that wasn’t an accident. I’ve taken enough photos through these arches to know that human interest is needed so I just waited for the couple to get to the right place. It works for me anyway.

Another old favourite… benches

These just appeal to me for some reason. One of them is facing in the opposite direction. Who moved it and what were they doing? Would have been better if somebody was sitting on the bench facing the other way though..

Ingredients

Bessa-T, CV 28/1.9 Ultron. Fomapan 100. APH09 (Rodinal) 1+40, 7 minute, 10 seconds initial agitation, 2 gentle inversions every 30 seconds.

I’m beginning to notice something about the Fomapan. Either it is a dust magnet or the QC is crap. This only seems to happen with Fomapan, so I’m drawing my own conclusions. Very cheap it might be, but I can do without reconstructive post work.

Some sun! Hey, a real bonus, and getting lower in the sky as can be seen by the shadows. Mainly shot between f/8 and f/16.

Head full of cold

A mad puppy climbing all over me as I try and write this. Keyboard jealousy attention seeking…

I wanted to try an alternative dev for Tri-X at box speed. APH09 (Rodinal) 1+40, 15 secs initial agitation, 2 inversions at 4 minutes and 8 minutes, empty tank at 12 minutes. I wasn’t too bothered about the subject matter so just shot off a roll on the Greenwich Peninsular overlooking Canary Dwarf.

Somebody leave a crucifix here?

Initial thoughts are that it could have done longer in the soup, perhaps another 2 inversions at 12 minutes and emptying the tank at 15 minutes. There is a slight lack of contrast, and the CV 28/1.9 is not the contrastiest lens either. Nice and sharp though. There is a touch of flare too, top right. The sun was getting low and I thought it would be worse.

Thought I’d include this because no longer has St Valentines Day gone than the pink shit on the supermarket shelves is replaced by easter shit… or maybe it was there before and I just blank the whole commercial horror. Couldn’t help noticing it today though, eggs everywhere, and being the spiritual kind of person I am this image made me think of a discarded crucifix… easter natch

Vote Spine

Nice and grimy. I like the divisions and the textures.

Tyres

The tide was out and the sky was lowering. I wish I had a red, or at least a yellow filter for this to make the sky really brutal.

I’ll definately try this dev again, just a bit longer in the soup.

Statement of the bleeding obvious or what…

Lets debunk a couple of things quickly:

<curmudgeon In one day 15 cms of snow achieved what Hitler and the nazis failed to do in the second world war – bring London to a halt. Outrage! />

<analyst We need to know what what the failures were that prevented people from getting to work. />

Just one word. Bollox. Londoners woke up on Monday morning to a fairy-tale winter-wonderland and from personal observation most were embracing not being able to go to work. Those sitting at home grinding their teeth because they couldn’t get in need their heads examined and perhaps ask themselves why they could not participate in one exceptional day.

I understand about loss of pay etc but even people who had lost pay were phoning Radio London in the evening saying that it was worth it. This is Central London. Last time this happened was about 20 years ago. One day lost productivity in 20 years because of snow…?

Get over it.

Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian puts it eloquently:

“For a day at least, Londoners returned to a forgotten innocence. Yesterday the headlines howled about how £2bn would be lost yesterday thanks to public transport disruption. Two words: So. What. We’re in the middle of a credit crunch and £2bn is the sort of money a hedge-fund trader might find in the lining of his Armani suit. Yesterday we stopped measuring our lives in coffee spoons, overdrafts and balance of payments deficits. It felt good.”

Also, much as I loathe Boris Johnson he was amusing in a very British way: “This is not the wrong kind of snow, just the wrong amount of snow”. You have to suffer our shite London transport system to see the nuances of that one.

Phoning sick?

Wonderland:

Greenwich Park is lovely at the worst of times. Today, cloaked in newly fallen snow it was truly beautiful. Not in some crappy Victorian throwback to a false Dickensian winter ideal but in a very modern vibrant way. People were having such fun and not being backward about it. It was noisy and busy, and most of the noise was shrieking laughter and squealing, children and adults.

Antipodean madness:

We were out of the house by about 08:30 and by the time we got to Greenwich Park it looked like most of the borough’s population had the same idea. Blackheath Common, which even on a normal day has an extraordinary sense of space and remoteness despite being bordered by busy roads seemed to stretch forever.

By this time both of us had been reduced to a childlike state when faced with the snowfall. Some of us were even behaving like we’d never seen snows before

More from the park:

Around and about:

Quaggy centre

Blackheath Common

Early morning (approx 07:00:

These were views from the window

Colour! WTF? Just to prove some trains were running…

My one regret for the day is that I did not photograph the dogs in Greenwich Park. Two particularly. First, an Airedale with a floor length jacket. All you could see was that long Airedale snout poking out at the front and tail at the back.  Second was a Highland Terrier with a mackintosh and hood. Really bizarre. All of the dogs were having immense fun. White dogs on snow are the best!

The majority of these photos were shot on the Bessa-R with the CV 28/1.9 Ultron using FP4+ rated at ISO 100. Because of the snow, I deliberately overexposed +2 or +3 stops to compensate. Don’t rely on meters in the snow. Developed the film in APH09 (Rodinal) 1+40 for 11 minutes, 10 seconds initial agitation, 2 gentle inversions every 30 seconds subsequently. I’m getting gentler & gentler with the rodinal and I think the results are showing in improved grain and sharpness.

The B&W images from the flat were taken on the Nikon F4S with the Nikkor 35-70/2.8 plus mid yellow filter, using up a roll of Neopan 1600 developed in DD-X 1+4 for 5 mins.

Colour photos are from the Nikon D300, Nikkor 24-70/2.8, ISO 200

Full gallery (note, several pages!)

The results were a bit hit and miss, particularly moving from outside (relatively sunny) to the inside markets (relatively dark) and back. Inside it is quite hard to scale-focus at a large aperture since the depth of field is fairly narrow. I need more practice.

There is also the tension involved. Most people’s reactions were/are ameliorated with a big smile and a thank you.

Except this guy:

He told us he wasn’t a tourist attraction. Kate told him we weren’t tourists…

Window shopping:

Earing:

Really quite enjoyable, but sooooooo cold today. Really arctic. I was wearing fingerless gloves but the camera was at the end of my fingers and exposed. However, there are some people you just wouldn’t photograph…

Self portrait:

Friedlander produced a brilliant book of photographs in 1970 titled “Self Portrait”. Most of the images are intrusions of himself into photographs he took during the 1960′s. Intrusion is probably the correct word, accidental they are not (for the most part).

John Szarkowski, in the afterword to the reprinted edition, writes about the artist and the self portrait, using Albrecht Durer as an example. Durer portrays himself with Christ like saintliness, starkly at odds with the portraits he paints of his patrons (and even they are probably improvements on the reality, he isn’t going to piss them off) and lets face it, probably major spin on Durer’s part.

Friedlander’s self-portraits are more accidental in that respect, since he has often found himself in the frame as a shadow or a reflection that is often a subsidiary element of the photo. However, he hasn’t discarded the photo’s as ‘mistakes’.� Collected together (for me anyway) they add up to more than the sum of any ‘reality’ that conscious portrayal of the self is capable of. As a result they are possibly more of a true self-portrait. Possibly…

Whatever. Photography of self is an interesting concept, particularly if ‘self’ is treated dispassionately as an object. How many of us are capable of that?

Freidlander’s book is highly recommended by me: ‘Self Portrait, Photographs by Lee Friedlander’, Lee Friedlander, Afterword by John Szarkowski, MOMA, New York, 2005. If you have the original, kudos…

Window:

I like the light and falling away to darkness. Where do the steps go…

St Pauls, Deptford:

Pleased with the composition, the crucifix seems like an ancillary lampost leading to/from the church.

The photos were taken on a Bessa-R, CV 28/1.9 Ultron using FP4+ EI 100. Developed in APH09 (Rodinal) for 11 minutes. 10 seconds initial agitation then 2 inversions every 30 seconds