Fenland Project

What is it about old signs? well they make great black and white images for a start and doesn't the Polaroid 103 Automatic Land Camera handle it well.
With little time available to spend in the darkroom the buzz I get from peeling apart a new instant black and white print is enormous.
Both these photos were taken outside the home of a vintasge car collector in Somersham near Huntingdon/

Psycho Santa

Polaroid, 103 Automatic Land Camera "Packtastic" - the joy of instant photography.

Fenland Project

Been getting heavily into Instant film since the summer time.
This image was made using a 1970s Polaroid SX70 Camera using film from the Impossible Project. This will form part of an ongoing series of instant studies of the fens.

Bought an Agfa "GevaBox" Camera in the Charity shop recently.

I have to say it's one of the best £5 spends I have made. The camera was on sale in the 1950s, it takes 120 medium format film giving 8 6X9 negatives on a roll of film.

The Gevabox has 2 shutterspeeds and two aperture settings plus a B for "bulb" setting allowing the shutter to remain open for longer. This image of the showroom dummies was hand held on the B setting intentionally blurring the result.

Been using my new Polaroid 420 Land Camera over the last few weeks. The camera uses Fuji 100c colour and 3000b black and white, peel apart film. Focusing is via a rangefinder and you can attach a modern electronic flash via the camera's pc socket.
The photograph of the blue trainers was taken using a close up lens held in front of the camera's lens and guessing the distance, didn't guess correctly as the image is out of focus.....I think that adds to the effect though especially now that it is mounted onto watercolour paper.
1. Trim the photo's edges
2. Place in a glass tray and pour over nearly boiling water and watch the emulsion "lift" off
3. Transfer to cold water
4. mix pva glue and water 50:50 and brush on to the water colour paper and brush the lifted emulsion onto the new surface.

Not black and white but still traditional.....

Been getting into Instant Film. You may have thought instant film was dead and buried with Polaroid but no, "The Impossible Project" has reinvented instant film in colour and black and white.
Results are unpredictable but it's really exciting.

Bought a 600 instant camera and a Polaroid 420 Land Camera that takes pack film made by Fuji.

This image is made with Impossible 600 Silver Shade, the image is placed in hot water and eventually the emulsion floadts off! - carefully transfer it to a tray of cold water and lay it onto some watercolour paper.http://the-impossible-project.com/

The English Abroad

Wow can't believe it's been a YEAR since I last updated the blog....here's my New Year resolution..."I will post 1 new image every Month till next September"

So, starting Sept 11 here's an image from a couple of years ago, one of a number I made during a family holiday in Brittany. How typical is that....The English Abroad.

So, it's been an interesting year so far, not much time for darkroom work as proper work has been getting in the way, time to readress the balance methinks.

Summertime at Sherringham

And so I return to a recurring theme, that of British Seaside towns. Not in winter this time but actually around the August Bank Holiday 2008 I think. In any case we had braved the elements, left our West Runton campsite and headed for the coast. Once again armed with my 35rc loaded with Delta 400 I watched as the wind whipped the ice cream flags and sun seekers huddled for shelterfrom the rain. Then, out came the sun and an opportunity to bag a shot.



In the darkroom, negative in the Meopta Magnifax enlarger, Ilford Multigrade paper on the easel and 10 minutes later with some magical hand waving under the enlarger light source a picture emerges from the developer. How can anyone get satisfaction from a digital camera and a computer file.

Long live the negative is what I say....unconvinced then vist FADU.co.uk.

"Signs #1" - Shoreham by Sea 2010

I remain fascinated by the English Seaside, it is for many British photographers who like to photograph "found" objects, street scenes and people's eccentricities the equivalent of a City like New York. Victorian faded architecture fights for space amongst garish lights, tea stalls and amusement arcades. In the winter it just gets better.
Looking back through my negatives at the images I continually get drawn towards seasides and signs. In this picture both are combined.
 I waited for a while for a cyclist to pass to complete the picture. On reflection I think it works just as well without a person, in someways the absence of a human being makes the Prohibition Sign more strange and almost surreal.
I've moved back to using Resin Coated Paper in my darkroom 1) for cost, it's cheaper and 2) for speed when I don't have a lot of time on my hands to spend in the darkroom.
Ilford Delta 400 was loaded in my little Olympus 35RC rated at 200 with a yellow filter.

Sorry for the delay in posting.

On reflection - Quimper, Brittany 2009

Whilst walking around the very pleasant Breton town of Quimper during last year's camping holiday I stumbles across this (Harley I think) biks parked against an old wall adorned with posters. It caught my eye so I took a closer look, the mirrors were reflecting the rather grand buildings in the sunshine behind me.
The contrast between the tree elements - wall, bike and reflection is what I like about this image.
Made with a 28mm wide angle lens on my old Olympus OM1.
Not your everyday holiday snap.

It was American Photographer Walker Evans, amongst others who had a preoccupation with painted signs, photographing them as early as 1928. Signs in isolation- see Luna Park, New York c1929 - and signs juxtaposed with well observed incidents usually involving people - see Truck and Sign, New York, 1930.

Even before I became aware of American Photographers like Walker Evans and Robert Frank I have always been drawn to photographing signs and this one just leapt out at me earlier this year when the circus visited our campsite in Brittany.

We were camping in Brittany during the Summer, the weather wasn't great but the campsite backed on to the sea/river confluence and offered endlesss opportunities to make photographs.

Most gays I carried my Olympus 35RC rangefinder camera (see earlier post) loaded with a reasonably fast film - typically Fuji Neopan 400 - but on this occasion I had my 1970 Olympus OM1 with its 135mm prime lens. My Son was in the distance and I spotted this lad looking straight at me (must have looked suspicious). I raised the camera, quickly focused and made the image.

I think this is one of better pics of late, and although it is very much a "grab" shot the composition works really well, the eye is immediately drawn to the boy with his trousers roilled up then the sweeping samd bank moves the eye to my stooping Son in the background. The overall "high key" feel to the image also helps.

Once again, it pays to have a camera with you - someone once said that you can't photograph memories.....

Pinhole - Slide

I continue to play with my Pinhole Camera. You can make a pinhole camera really easily and a quick internet search will show you how. Buscuit tins, shoe boxes, camera film cannisters, pringle tubes can all be made into pinhole cameras.
Mine is made by a company called Zero, they are based in Hong Kong and make lovely wooden cameras with brass knobs. Exposure and composition are the result of a combnation of guesswork and experience.

In Praise of the Old Uns

It was about 15 years ago that I paid £5 for a Zeiss Icon Nettar Folding camera pretty much like this one. Most of the time since then it has sat on my bookshelf acting as a book end. I recently loaded a roll of Fomapan 200 - an imported Eastern Bloc 120 size film and took the camera out to play. Focusing is guess work and exposure is by experience or with the use of a lightmeter.

Once exposed I took the film into the darkroom and developed it in Kodak D76 diluted 1+1 and crossed my fingers. This image I thought had a timeless quality to it, the less that perfect lens on this camera has led to some vignetting at the edges and this just adds to the effect. What do you think?

Beach Fisherman

Wandering along the beach at Great Yarmouth in March with my 35 RC I got chatting to this character sitting huddled against the wind and pretending to fish - "I only took it up because my Wife is always busy with her cross stitch" he told me. "Do you catch anything" I asked.....after a slight pause and a grin he admitted to not a lot, in fact there's not much left to catch these days in the North Sea. "It's peaceful though" he says.

I asked if I could take his picture, he said hes and struck a pose for me.

Another oppotunistic shot made possible by having my camera with me and chatting to an interesting character.

Dance Medals #1

Following on from where I left off , here is another example of a totally unplanned and natural portrait of my Daughter waiting in the wings to go on stage and perform a routine in front of a Judge.
As usual I had my Olympus Trip with me and frankly was not really expecting to be able to record anything as the light levels were so poor and I certainly wouldn't consider flash. I noticed the girls standing by a big, North facing window and hovered over tp them, Georgia is used to being photographed by me so largely ignored me. I pressed the shutter as the image before me "developed", I knew the other girls would be out of focus as the Trip struggled under the poor lighting conditions.
The film developer I used is very good at recording delicate highlights and I am really happy with the resultant image of light falling onto the shoulder.

The more I think about it, 35mm, basic camera with me at all times has to be the way forward as I could never have set up this image.

Planned or Instinctive?

Over the last year or so I have made an effort to carry a camera around with me at all times. This is not such a strange thing these days with just about everybody having access to a camera on their phone or other device whenever they need one. My camera however is a traditional film camera usually an Olympus Trip or Olympus 35rc. The beauty of these cameras, especially the Trip, is their sheer simplicity of use. Exposure is taken care of and the resultant images, made through biting sharp Zuiko 40mm lenses outperform most digital cameras 10X the price of my £40 Trip (the scans here are fairly low res however so that might not always be apparent).

This leads me on to a topic I have been musing over for some time now and that is should my photography continue to be instinctive, influenced by what is in front of me at that moment, unpredictable, hand held (no tripod) and 35mm (small neg) or should I slow down, take out my Yashica Mat 124G with it's 6cmX6cm negative, put the camera on a tripod and aim for utmost technical quality?

Perhaps I could do both as the mood takes me?

The image above was recorded on my refurbished olympus Trip www.tripman.co.uk whilst taking time out from visiting clients in Kent. Herne Bay Seafront in wintertime is much like any other out of season UK seaside destination - slightly down trodden, a bit weather worn and missing the visitors. There is a sense of expectation in the air, a belief that the good times will surely come again as soon as the weather changes. The first thing to catch my eye was the penguin dustbin with a damaged eye, my eye then went to the pier in the background. The penguin seemed to sum up the character of out of season holiday resorts - waiting for the good times and the pier isjust a great subject to photgraph.

If I didn't have my Trip with me the image would not have been recorded.

Toned or Untoned?

I was visiting my Mum in Great Yarmouth late last year and we wandered in to a new Debenhams store that had just opened after many years of not having one.

Part of the "opening day" celebrations comprised of "The Classic Dixieland Trio" www.hotjazz.co.uk and after watching them for a while asked if I could make a few images of them.

Taken with my medium format (neg size 6cm square) Yashica Mat Camera I made two prints in the darkroom. For the first print I bleached the highlights slightly then gave the picture a light warm tone in a chemical toner bath. The second print is a "straight" monochrome image.

You choose your favourite.

Ramsey Rural Museum is tucked away to the North of this small market town on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens. The museum opens at weekends and holidays and is well worth a visit.

This still life study was made with my hand held Bessa R3a Rangefinder and I was particularly drawn to the gentle light on the hats which was difused and coming through a nearby window.

Although it doesn't show up in this scan the highlights have a gentle yellow tone to them as a result of some gentle photographic bleach and home made toner.

Learning to Paint

Not a recent photo, another from last year's Strawberry Fair at Cambridge. Apparently he knows "Banksy".

Olympus 35RC on Ilford Multigrade Resin Coated paper.