Today is a no photograph day. My wife's mother had been getting more and more infirm over recent months and passed away yesterday morning. It wasn't unexpected - the care home in which she resided phoned us at the weekend and told us it was time to allow family visitations (the first for a couple of months). Only my wife went from our side of the family and had to be masked and suited up before entering the home. The home doesn't have any COVID-19 cases, so it was more a case of protection to prevent the virus coming in rather than protecting visitors from it. It's been a tough few days - it's only a two-hour round trip but there were a lot of them at all times of the day the night. Given the restrictions, the service and burial took place this morning - there was no delay. Only immediate family were allowed - but I was still nervous, so I stayed outside in the open air as much as possible and kept my distance from other mourners. 'Nanny' as we all called her turned 89 years old in January of this year. She had a long life but a hard one - her husband was invalided through a work accident so there was never much money coming in. He passed away at the age of 50, back in 1981, so she had a lot of years on her own. Ten years after losing her husband, she lost a daughter to cancer. I only knew her in later years but was a very dignified lady and was always supportive. She was much loved and will be sorely missed.
Mary (Maureen) Budd, 1931-2020.
Thursday, 28 May 2020
Monday, 25 May 2020
Do your own head!
We're firmly stuck in Still Life mode for the foreseeable, I fear, so let's see where that takes us, eh? As you know, I've been setting up a couple of tabletop 'scenarios' recently - this one with the briefcase and telephone and one with the garage paraphernalia, of which this is the latest offering:
As I may have said already, I'm beginning to enjoy the tabletop photography. I don't think I'll ever get into Macro, but I can see myself getting down to 1:1 without too much trouble. Ha - there I go bandying about phrases like 1:1 as if I've always known what that means. The rather embarrassing truth is, I've had to read up on what these ratios mean (obviously at one point I knew what they mean, I'd just forgotten. Yes, that must be it...). So if you're ahead of my curve, skip to the next paragraph. 1:1 means the subject that you are hoping to capture is the same size in real life as on the film/sensor frame. So, if you are shooting 120 film, for example, which I happen to know is approximately 6cm x 6cm, 1:1 would mean a 6cm tall (or wide) object (or scene) would fill the frame. If your object is 3cm long and fills the frame that means you are shooting at 2:1. If it's 12cm long, then you're at 1:2. I think that's how it works, anyway... What does it matter, I hear you ask? Well, that's not an altogether stupid question and the answer is I think it helps to understand the physical scenario you are faced with and then try to relate that to the tools you have at your disposal. Most lenses, for example, are not optimised for close-up work but are fine for anything from 10:1 to infinity. Of course you've got your specialised macro lenses, bellows and even plain old extension tubes to get you closer to your subject. At 1:1 and beyond you can run into problems of lighting the scene, since mostly your camera/lens will be very close to your subject. Depth of field is also likely to be very shallow...millimetre shallow even, and that's where bellows on a tripod/rail setup can come in useful. There are other options if you haven't got specialised gear - for example, with the appropriate adaptor you can reverse-mount your standard 50mm lens and get really close to your subject. Or you could take your enlarging lens and mount that to your camera, which again will get you really close (assuming you can focus).
But mostly these big challenges start at 1:1 and closer and like I say, for the moment I'm not intending to go there. The table-top setup above, for example, is roughly 40cm wide and deep, so on 6x6 film that's somewhere between 7:1 and 6:1.
I should maybe say a little about the table in the scene above, or rather the things on the table. The magazine dates from 1979, when the brother was getting into fiddling with cars. The receipt is a tad earlier, 1970, and details some bits&pieces my dad had bought for his Triumph motorbike (the one he had before he got married, sold to pay for the wedding and then bought it back a couple of years later - that one). The empty packet of Woodbine belonged to my grandfather, who kept it in his fishing bag to hold lead shot used for weight). The other tools and boxes I found in my mum's shed (good old mum). I used the 'Blad with 60mm CB lens and had a softar filter on the front, hence the rather pronounced blur at the edges of the scene. Natural light from a window on the right lit the scene. Exposure was in the 1 to 2 second bracket.
A quick note about the Kenthene paper, which came in the job lot from the local school art department clear-out last year. As the name suggests, it's a Kentmere RC paper, but fixed grade 3. So, similar to the Barclay paper I've been using recently. I tried bleaching and toning it in the normal ferricyanide-bromide bleach but nothing happened. Then I remembered I had some cupric sulphate bleach on the shelf (mixed for another project some time ago) which is a different formulation and to my immense satisfaction that worked - hence the light sepia tone on the print above. It's a shame I can't get the Barclay paper to bleach in it too, but I'll keep working on that.
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| Do your own head! On Kenthene fixed grade paper with a very light sepia tone |
As I may have said already, I'm beginning to enjoy the tabletop photography. I don't think I'll ever get into Macro, but I can see myself getting down to 1:1 without too much trouble. Ha - there I go bandying about phrases like 1:1 as if I've always known what that means. The rather embarrassing truth is, I've had to read up on what these ratios mean (obviously at one point I knew what they mean, I'd just forgotten. Yes, that must be it...). So if you're ahead of my curve, skip to the next paragraph. 1:1 means the subject that you are hoping to capture is the same size in real life as on the film/sensor frame. So, if you are shooting 120 film, for example, which I happen to know is approximately 6cm x 6cm, 1:1 would mean a 6cm tall (or wide) object (or scene) would fill the frame. If your object is 3cm long and fills the frame that means you are shooting at 2:1. If it's 12cm long, then you're at 1:2. I think that's how it works, anyway... What does it matter, I hear you ask? Well, that's not an altogether stupid question and the answer is I think it helps to understand the physical scenario you are faced with and then try to relate that to the tools you have at your disposal. Most lenses, for example, are not optimised for close-up work but are fine for anything from 10:1 to infinity. Of course you've got your specialised macro lenses, bellows and even plain old extension tubes to get you closer to your subject. At 1:1 and beyond you can run into problems of lighting the scene, since mostly your camera/lens will be very close to your subject. Depth of field is also likely to be very shallow...millimetre shallow even, and that's where bellows on a tripod/rail setup can come in useful. There are other options if you haven't got specialised gear - for example, with the appropriate adaptor you can reverse-mount your standard 50mm lens and get really close to your subject. Or you could take your enlarging lens and mount that to your camera, which again will get you really close (assuming you can focus).
But mostly these big challenges start at 1:1 and closer and like I say, for the moment I'm not intending to go there. The table-top setup above, for example, is roughly 40cm wide and deep, so on 6x6 film that's somewhere between 7:1 and 6:1.
I should maybe say a little about the table in the scene above, or rather the things on the table. The magazine dates from 1979, when the brother was getting into fiddling with cars. The receipt is a tad earlier, 1970, and details some bits&pieces my dad had bought for his Triumph motorbike (the one he had before he got married, sold to pay for the wedding and then bought it back a couple of years later - that one). The empty packet of Woodbine belonged to my grandfather, who kept it in his fishing bag to hold lead shot used for weight). The other tools and boxes I found in my mum's shed (good old mum). I used the 'Blad with 60mm CB lens and had a softar filter on the front, hence the rather pronounced blur at the edges of the scene. Natural light from a window on the right lit the scene. Exposure was in the 1 to 2 second bracket.
A quick note about the Kenthene paper, which came in the job lot from the local school art department clear-out last year. As the name suggests, it's a Kentmere RC paper, but fixed grade 3. So, similar to the Barclay paper I've been using recently. I tried bleaching and toning it in the normal ferricyanide-bromide bleach but nothing happened. Then I remembered I had some cupric sulphate bleach on the shelf (mixed for another project some time ago) which is a different formulation and to my immense satisfaction that worked - hence the light sepia tone on the print above. It's a shame I can't get the Barclay paper to bleach in it too, but I'll keep working on that.
Thursday, 21 May 2020
Still Life - Oil Can
As y'all know, since I'm still kind of housebound, I'm exploring the intimate world of Still Life. Fortunately, thanks to good old mum, I've a ton of stuff to amuse myself with. Like this old oil can, for example:
I acquired some old FP4+ film a while back - no date on it, but from the packaging I would say at least 15 years old. No idea how it was stored, but I doubt very much it was in a fridge. Anyway, in RO9 at 1:25 dilution for 9 minutes and it came out looking as fresh as anything, if a bit harder to flatten.
I had loaded it in the 'Blad and set this oil can up to photograph. It's actually a dark red in colour, so I used a deep red filter to lighten the tone somewhat. Lighting was natural light from a side window (it's all set up in the garage) and I also used a Softar 1 filter. The softar was designed to take away some of the insane sharpness you can get with the Zeiss lenses (yes, I know - the irony of spending a fortune on sharp glass and then using a soft filter) and was particularly welcome for portraits. I was rating the FP4 at 80iso and exposure was around the 1-2 seconds.
I was intrigued how the Softar would work in a Still Life setting - it did the job rather well, I thought. If anything ,the halo of light around the handle is slightly more pronounced in the print than this scan.
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| Oil Can, 2020. Old FP4+ on Barclay fixed grade paper |
I acquired some old FP4+ film a while back - no date on it, but from the packaging I would say at least 15 years old. No idea how it was stored, but I doubt very much it was in a fridge. Anyway, in RO9 at 1:25 dilution for 9 minutes and it came out looking as fresh as anything, if a bit harder to flatten.
I had loaded it in the 'Blad and set this oil can up to photograph. It's actually a dark red in colour, so I used a deep red filter to lighten the tone somewhat. Lighting was natural light from a side window (it's all set up in the garage) and I also used a Softar 1 filter. The softar was designed to take away some of the insane sharpness you can get with the Zeiss lenses (yes, I know - the irony of spending a fortune on sharp glass and then using a soft filter) and was particularly welcome for portraits. I was rating the FP4 at 80iso and exposure was around the 1-2 seconds.
I was intrigued how the Softar would work in a Still Life setting - it did the job rather well, I thought. If anything ,the halo of light around the handle is slightly more pronounced in the print than this scan.
Monday, 18 May 2020
Lights, camera action
I went out around the garden the other day with the camera, as one does from time to time when inspiration is low. It's always different, innit - different levels of light and at the minute leaves are appearing on sticks and stuff. Anyway, I took a few snaps but nothing spectacular. I spotted these fairy lights that my wife had strung over the garden parasol and the sunlight was really making them sparkle:
It looks like it was taken in the studio but it wasn't - I just let the background go to black. As the caption says, I fuzzied it up in the darkroom, just to see how it would turn out. Here's the original, non-fuzzied-up version for comparison:
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| Intentional blur in the darkroom, on old Barclay fixed grade paper |
It looks like it was taken in the studio but it wasn't - I just let the background go to black. As the caption says, I fuzzied it up in the darkroom, just to see how it would turn out. Here's the original, non-fuzzied-up version for comparison:
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| Straight print |
Thursday, 14 May 2020
Super 8
Hands up who remembers Super 8 film? Not me, by the way - I was never very interested in moving pictures. This gear came with some other bits and pieces from a local School clear-out a while back. I messed about in the darkroom yesterday morning printing out the film rebate:
The print isn't very well balanced and I should have used a smaller aperture to get more in focus but there you go. I think the scene probably has enough merit to try it again.
The mechanics of printing out the rebate are as follows. The negative strip went in the glass 5x7 carrier so the the rebate would show and I used a 90mm lens to get sufficient coverage. Then give the whole thing a couple of seconds at grade 5 before masking off the rebate and then giving the rest of it a few more seconds at grade 1. It's not fine art - it's just a bit of fun during the lockdown...
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| On old Kentmere fixed grade paper |
The mechanics of printing out the rebate are as follows. The negative strip went in the glass 5x7 carrier so the the rebate would show and I used a 90mm lens to get sufficient coverage. Then give the whole thing a couple of seconds at grade 5 before masking off the rebate and then giving the rest of it a few more seconds at grade 1. It's not fine art - it's just a bit of fun during the lockdown...
Monday, 11 May 2020
Back in time
Still playing around with my Still Life table and gathering up a whole hoard of 'stuff' with which to populate it. (Some things work better than others). Hidden away in a cardboard box in the shed next to my parents' house I found a collection of magazines - about a dozen or so copies of SLR Camera from the '70s, when my brother and I had a standing order for our favourite mag. They have the usual mix of advertising, gear tests, technical articles and letters. Not too many adverts, which I think is one of the things we liked about SLR Camera (compared to AP, for example, which seemed to be full of ads of one sort or another). It's interesting just how many editions featured pretty girls in various states of undress...used, of course, to illustrate an article about lighting or something. I was going to say 'used in the pretence of illustrating something about lighting' but that could be viewed as cynical - although I think it's fair to say that the camera scene was predominantly male in those days and that editors weren't slow in realising that pretty girls on the front cover sell copy. Anyway, as a teenage lad growing up in the Northern Irish countryside with no females near my own age within about 30 miles (or so it seemed) it helped my understanding of the differences between the male and the female of the human species, so I wasn't complaining. But the main reason for getting the magazine was, of course, the gear! It was the days of the Nikon F2, Canon F1, Contax RTS and of course my favourite, the Olympus OM-1. I shall return to SLR Camera in a future post, but for now, back to the box of magazines...
Hidden underneath the SLR Cameras were a few copies of Paris Match dating from 1965. I've no idea how these ended up in my mum's shed, as neither my mother or father were anywhere near France in 1965 (by that stage they had two young boys to look after). I know my father travelled extensively all over Europe in his bachelor days, and my parents honeymooned in Paris but that was in 1960. I wondered if they might have had a standing order for Paris Match but thinking about it, I very much doubt it, since money was tight enough in those days. I shall ask my mum if she knows...
The Paris Match magazines are special editions, printed 20 years after the end of the war - so there are articles about Japanese Kamikaze pilots and Pearl Harbour, complete with some rather impressive photographs...like these ones:
There is no mention of the photographers of these shots in the magazine (that I could find, anyway) - and rather bizarrely, the rest of this particular magazine is devoted to articles about the watchmaker Raymond Cartier and Prince Charles playing polo. A strange combination.
So I borrowed the magazine for my Still Life table - which now seems rather a lame affair in the context of Kamikaze pilots and the horrors of the war in the Pacific...
Hidden underneath the SLR Cameras were a few copies of Paris Match dating from 1965. I've no idea how these ended up in my mum's shed, as neither my mother or father were anywhere near France in 1965 (by that stage they had two young boys to look after). I know my father travelled extensively all over Europe in his bachelor days, and my parents honeymooned in Paris but that was in 1960. I wondered if they might have had a standing order for Paris Match but thinking about it, I very much doubt it, since money was tight enough in those days. I shall ask my mum if she knows...
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| "The desperate start of suicide pilots" |
The Paris Match magazines are special editions, printed 20 years after the end of the war - so there are articles about Japanese Kamikaze pilots and Pearl Harbour, complete with some rather impressive photographs...like these ones:
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| That photographer had nerves of steel, presumably battle-hardened. I guess there really was no place to hide out there... |
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| Aerial photograph of ship going down - some poor souls clinging on the side of the ship, trying for a soft landing and others already in the water. I suspect the chance of survival was close to zero. |
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| What a great piece of photojournalism...the contrast between the wounded man in the Church/Makeshift Hospital in the Philippines and the praying women |
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| This Japanese plane is about to hit the ship...and the photographer. I suppose there was little point in keeping your head down in those circumstances, so might as well take a photograph... |
There is no mention of the photographers of these shots in the magazine (that I could find, anyway) - and rather bizarrely, the rest of this particular magazine is devoted to articles about the watchmaker Raymond Cartier and Prince Charles playing polo. A strange combination.
So I borrowed the magazine for my Still Life table - which now seems rather a lame affair in the context of Kamikaze pilots and the horrors of the war in the Pacific...
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| HP5+ via the Nikon FM3a and Vivitar 35-85mm lens. On Ilford Warmtone fibre paper - toned in sepia for the lighter tones and selenium for the lower tones. The phone was our house phone when I was growing up, so 1960s or maybe '70s depending when we actually got a line installed. Our number in those days was simply 'Coleraine 2172'. Nowadays it would be something like +44 (0)28 7034 2172. That's a younger version of my mum in the photograph and then a variety of artefacts which I thought would suit the period. I was rating the HP5+ at 200 iso and shooting at f/8 which allowing for film reciprocity meant an exposure of 11s. |
Thursday, 7 May 2020
Monday, 4 May 2020
C'est moi
As near to a selfie as I'll ever take:
I'm forbidden to go into the coalshed for more than a minute these days, on account of the swallows starting to nest. They are brave wee birds, as they sweep down from the sunny sky into the black void of the coal shed. I assume it's the same birds that nested there last year and maybe the year before, but still it must take a leap of faith from them. This year I happened to be watching when they made their first few passes, getting ever closer until one took the plunge and flew in. He (or she) came out unscathed and after that it was full steam ahead and now they're in and out several dozen times a day, building their nests (or perhaps simply re-furbishing last year's). The swallows are synonymous with summer here for me, coming every year since I was a young 'un (and many years before that, no doubt). The farm down the road used to be visited too, but about 10 or so years ago the last of the brothers that owned it passed away and the new owner did a major makeover....which it badly needed, I must admit, but the downside is that the old barns were renovated and closed in, so the swallows had no means of getting in. I don't know where they went...but I'm guessing there are still enough old sheds and what have you dotted around the place that they found somewhere to nest without too much problem.
So I leave the doors open on our outhouses from about the first of April. The swallows usually manage two broods before they leave for sunnier climes around mid September. I feel bad for the second brood, as they don't have very long before they have to leave for the long journey to Southern Africa. It is simply amazing that some are able to find their way back next April to the very shed that they were born in - they must have one heck of a good GPS system...
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| Me in the doorway of the coal shed, April 2020 |
I'm forbidden to go into the coalshed for more than a minute these days, on account of the swallows starting to nest. They are brave wee birds, as they sweep down from the sunny sky into the black void of the coal shed. I assume it's the same birds that nested there last year and maybe the year before, but still it must take a leap of faith from them. This year I happened to be watching when they made their first few passes, getting ever closer until one took the plunge and flew in. He (or she) came out unscathed and after that it was full steam ahead and now they're in and out several dozen times a day, building their nests (or perhaps simply re-furbishing last year's). The swallows are synonymous with summer here for me, coming every year since I was a young 'un (and many years before that, no doubt). The farm down the road used to be visited too, but about 10 or so years ago the last of the brothers that owned it passed away and the new owner did a major makeover....which it badly needed, I must admit, but the downside is that the old barns were renovated and closed in, so the swallows had no means of getting in. I don't know where they went...but I'm guessing there are still enough old sheds and what have you dotted around the place that they found somewhere to nest without too much problem.
So I leave the doors open on our outhouses from about the first of April. The swallows usually manage two broods before they leave for sunnier climes around mid September. I feel bad for the second brood, as they don't have very long before they have to leave for the long journey to Southern Africa. It is simply amazing that some are able to find their way back next April to the very shed that they were born in - they must have one heck of a good GPS system...
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