Equivalents

I'm not doing much new these days, hence the lack of posting on this place.  The weather over Christmas has been horrendous and we're all pretty much house bound.  What I am working on is a presentation to 'The Club' in just over a week's time...the first I've done for a couple of years, so I thought I'd post some shots I'm using just to keep things ticking over.

The working title of my talk is 'Looking for Inspiration' and the goal is to suggest some practical ways of overcoming the photographic doldrums that we find ourselves in from time to time.  

You may be familiar with the work of Arthur Stieglitz, who was a photographer back in the early part of last century.  He took a series of shots of clouds - about 350 in total.  In his own words, "Through clouds [I wanted] to put down my philosophy of life—to show that my photographs were not due to subject matter—not to special trees, or faces, or interiors, to special privileges, clouds were there for everyone—no tax as yet on them—free."  He called his series 'Equivalents' and you can see some of them here.

I like clouds and we get some great cloud formations in this part of the world.  And the best bit is that you don't have to go anywhere special to photograph them - just look up.

So here are a couple of my Equivalents, taken over the last few years and all from the skies above the North East Liberties of Coleraine in good ol' Ulster.  As you can see, not too many are of 'just clouds' - I've a lot more shots where aspects of the land are included, albeit with the cloud formations still a dominant feature. 

Compare and contrast

Another lith print for your amusement today, of a shot you might remember from a while back.  I'll put the two print scans on this page to make the comparison easier.  Here's the lith print:

And here's the original one developed in Multigrade, on the same Foma 133 paper:

I liked the original well enough at the time, but comparing the two prints side by side the lith definitely takes the prize, for me.  I like the warmth in it.  Both the stone and the ironwork have responded better to the lith developer. 

Back at it

Some lith, for a change.  The shot you might remember from a while back (click here to compare it to a straight print):

Somewhere in Oxford.  Foma 133 in Moersch Easylith

The difference between using lith developer and good ol' Multigrade isn't vast on this paper.  It's the first time I've tried lith on the Foma 133 and it's OK.  It's not as warm in the lith as Foma's sister paper 131 and the look isn't as striking. Development was pretty standard by lith standards - around the 10-12 minute mark, at 27-ish degree temperature, but the infectious development part wasn't very infectious, if you know what I mean.  It just kind of got there, pretty uniformly slowly and not much signs of development speeding up as it normally would in lith. Still, the result is acceptable and it's nice to have another paper option which works in lith.

You may recall I’ve been to the Rheumatics hospital in Bath. It was good, I enjoyed the course, although I was pretty bushed after two weeks of stretching and hydro work.  It is kind of a weird time, being away from home and cast into the midst of strangers for two weeks.  Sharing breakfast, lunch and dinner….as well as group based therapy. There’s good and bad, I suppose.

The journey back didn't help the fatigue. Bristol airport is undergoing major works and the place is chaos.  Plus, the only road into and out of the airport from the Bath/Bristol side is also being redesigned.  The tailbacks in all directions were severe - what should have taken about an hour from Bath ended up being nearly 2 and half hours.  Fortunately I had noticed the traffic backed up when I arrived, so I got an earlier coach than I would normally have picked.  Even so, there were a few minutes near the end when I was starting to think I wasn't going to make my flight. I did make it, just, but it was a closer call than I would have liked.  It felt very good to be home.