winter fog

winter fog, originally uploaded by Skink74.

We so rarely get snow in any quantity in this part of the country that I find it difficult to know what to do when it does arrive. When absolutely everyone is going to be taking snowy scenes how do you find something different? My reluctance to take my car out in hazardous conditions means I’m probably passing up some great opportunities in the New Forest, and grey slushy suburbs just don’t do it for me.

A couple of days ago the roads to work were OK, and there was a delicious fog hanging around. So I went, intent on finishing off a couple of rolls of film. I was shooting without a meter, as the cold seems to have killed my ancient CdS-8 so I had to wing it a bit, and I overexposed some of the foggy shots, including this one.

However, the scanner has coped well with the dark negative and I like the grey, damp, cold air in this photograph.

S2A Polaroid back

S2A Polaroid back, originally uploaded by Skink74.

Eager to try something different, some time ago I got hold of a Polaroid back for the S2A. It was in reasonable condition, and came with an original manual, and it was a reasonable price, so I was pretty pleased. When it arrived it had 3 sheets of an old Polaroid pack still inside, but the chemical sachets were completely dried up, so I hadn’t had a chance to try it out until today, when I got a pack of Fuji FP-100c.
Loading it was pretty straightforward, although I was initially wary of the various paper tabs and just how firmly to pull them. There was a break in the otherwise wintry weather, and a grabbed a quick shot out of the window as a test. More tab pulling and two minutes later I had a lovely colour print.
I’m pretty impressed with the output, the colours are very natural, and if I hadn’t been so hasty and focussed properly the print would show plenty of detail even in the 6×6 area it covers. This is possibly the least sensible way to take colour photographs, but I think I could have some fun with it.

Koi

Koi, originally uploaded by Skink74.

I’ve been going back over some old folders looking for interesting shots that I overlooked in the past and I found some colour pinhole frames that I quite like. This one I think I left alone previously because it’s very dark. In retrospect the exposure here should have been more like thirty seconds than eight, to allow for how dark it was in the foreground, and some reciprocity failure. But the danger there would be that the colour would shift unacceptably, and that the reflected sky would swamp the blurred fish.
Aside from the darkness, this shot exemplifies what pinhole photography is about for me; the overall, but constant, low fidelity combined with long exposures that smear moments together. The overall effect is difficult to replicate any other way.

Not a haphazard activity

Reading an article over at Earthbound Light about choosing your point of focus I saw this little section and it resonated with me:
Photography is very much about technical things when dealing with shutter speed, aperture and so on, but it is also very much about creativity when dealing with how you employ those technical tools.
Make taking pictures the result of a series of conscious choices, not a haphazard activity.
I love all the technical aspects of photography, my mind works that way I guess – I write notes for all my film exposures and record the details in the EXIF of the scanned frames later. This is of little practical use, really, although as I’m still feeling my way around the Bronica to some extent it’s good to know where the limits of focus are for a given lens/aperture for example, but I like to know them anyway. But writing everything down is another example of slowing down when taking photography, which for me at least was a big step in improving the quality of shots I take.
It’s tempting, particularly with a digital camera, to shoot away at every opportunity and then sort out the good shots later on the computer but in my view this is a false economy. I’d much rather spend the time outside trying to get the right shot than in front of a monitor, trying to make less thought out images look better.

Story telling

I have read in a couple of places in the last few months that one of the things that makes a great photograph is that is tells a story. Now, perhaps I’ve never taken a great photograph for this reason, but it’s not an argument that convinces me. Many great photographs do, of course, tell stories, but many do nothing of the sort. Take “Leaves, Mills college, California” by Ansel Adams, as fine a photograph as you are likely to see, but I’m not sure there’s much of a story.
Portraying a story is not then at the forefront of my thinking when I set out with a camera or two. I’m usually trying to capture a sense of the space in front of me, to distil a scene and mood into a small rectangle. Sometimes I might play with the result, to create a different mood than the one that I felt, or alter things more radically so the scene in the photograph could never have been witnessed – using infra-red film, for example. I try and pose some questions, most successfully with my benches, in my own view, but essentially I’m working in a pictorial style.
So it was worrying me this month when the goal for our challenge group was to tell a story in three linked images, rather than the usual “add three separate pictures on a specific theme”. Three different pictures on a single theme allows plenty of leeway, there’s more freedom to interpret the theme in varied ways, and I suppose that plays to my somewhat scattered mindset. Three linked pictures with no theme upfront on the other hand requires a different approach. It took me a long time to think of any idea at all and the first couple of ideas were just a bit too corny. So in the end I went for this set:

I think it just about works although, in retrospect, perhaps a vertical crop on the first shot, of the clippers, would have looked better alongside the other two. Also, the last photo is a bit poor – it turns out photographing your own head in closeup is a lot harder than I thought.

found on a stump

found on a stump, originally uploaded by Skink74.

The invisible audience

Somewhere, out there on the interwebs, is my audience. I haven’t met many of the members but they’re out there, and they come and look at my photographs. Chances are that if you’re reading this, then you’re one of them. Discovering that I had an audience was a delightful surprise and probably one of the most important developments in my personal photography – before I started publishing my photographs on the internet pretty much the only person who’d see any of them was me.
Once I had photos on flickr, without really trying, I found people would view my photos. Once I had enough photos visible, I began to see how different images were received and to see how my ideas didn’t always get the reception I’d imagined. This had a number of effects on how I think. Firstly, I discovered that I didn’t react well to criticism – I would spend time and effort tweaking and cropping, and then defend every decision quite resentfully when someone suggested a different crop, or some other change. I also quickly realised that just putting up almost every shot I took wasn’t worth it – the impact of a single image isn’t as great if there’s a very similar one right next to it.
So at first I started to focus more on the stronger photos from a days shooting, and only upload those, then I took it further and started simply taking fewer photos in the first place, thinking carefully about the final result before even clicking the shutter.
In my, admittedly subjective, view this has led to an improvement in my photographs, and since I continue to acquire new contacts it seems that my invisible audience is still growing. So while I continue, primarily, to make photographs for my own pleasure, I get a warm glow from knowing that there are plenty of friendly folks out there who share my taste, and hopefully gain a little pleasure themselves. Which in turn drives me to get better and better at this craft.

Ps & Qs

As is obvious to the casual visitor my primary interest is in landscape photography, although perhaps I take a rather broader view of that term than some. As such you might reasonably expect me to be fond of wide-angle lenses, and this is very much the case. My favourite lenses to shoot with are the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 on my 20D, the Canon FD 20mm f/2.8 on my A-1, and the Nikkor-OC 50mm f/2.8 on the Bronica S2A. However, there’s more to landscapes than wide-angles and big skies, and in my part of the world – which has relatively little in the way of geographical relief – using extreme wide-angle all the time tends to result in a lot of pictures of a large bit of sky, a large bit of plain, grassy foreground and a thin strip of landscape in between. In many situations around here it makes more sense to use a telephoto to compress the depth of the shot, and pick out the subjects of interest.
With the two Canon cameras this is easy enough as I had long lenses for each of them, but with my Bronica I only had the standard 75mm and the 50mm wide angle. Until now.

I recently got hold of a pair of telephotos for the S2A; the Nikkor-Q 135mm f/3.5 and Nikkor-P 200mm f/4, as seen here. Now compared to the other two Bronica lenses they are not in as good shape, a bit more beat up. The 200 is mechanically ok, but has a bit more dust inside than is ideal. The much older 135 is cleaner inside, but has a ding on the filter ring and , more seriously, the iris is a bit stiff. It stops down okay, but is a bit too stiff for the camera mechanism to operate, so I’m looking into ways to remedy it. They are both perfectly usable though, so I went out in the mornings before work and shot a roll off with each lens.
I have to say I’m excited by the results – they’re what I’ve come to expect from top quality Nikkor lenses. Even though I was shooting wide open much of the time due to the gloomy autumn light and the lack of a tripod they are pretty sharp and I can’t say I noticed any major negative effects due to the dirt despite shooting contre-jour a few times. They are both bokeh monsters, for sure, although that has a cost in that they are not the easiest to focus as the f/4 makes the viewfinder a little dim, expecially in overcast conditions. Keep an eye on their tags on flickr to see the results as I upload them: nikkorq135f35 and nikkorp200f4.
On other points they’re not a large as I thought they’d be, especially the 200, and not as heavy. They are both only slightly longer than the 50mm, and both are slimmer, and the 50 and 200 weigh roughly the same with the 135 a 100g or so lighter. Really the main irritant so far is the close focusing distances which aren’t really very close – 1.5m for the 135mm and about 3m for the 200mm – I’m adding a set of extension tubes to my shopping list. The only other problem is working out how I’m going to fit everything in my camera bag.

Déjà vu

I’ve posted previously about revisiting subjects and locations, but sometimes it’s worse than that. Since I often head out with more than one camera there’s a good chance I’ll take two or more shots of a subject from the same viewpoint, but using different cameras. These shots obviously end up looking very similar, with the variation typically coming only from the format and lens. Sometimes I think I’m a little click happy with the shutter button but I do think it’s useful to look at the different results and compare them.

The first wasn’t taken in exactly the same spot, and was on a different day, but the light and scene are close enough. This deserved a post of its own as soon as I scanned it, so you’ve probably seen it already. Shot with the Bronica S2A and 50mm using Efke infrared film and an R72 filter.
The second was shot with the Canon 20D and wide-angle zoom at 10mm and is the result of combining seven different exposures. The third, and last for now, was shot on Ilford HP5+, again with the S2A and 50mm, immediately before or after (I forget which) the second example.
So what does this comparison show? Each of these images conveys a different mood to me. The infrared has an ethereal feel because of the glowing foliage – even the grass in the shade is bright. The HP5 has a darker mood, whereas the digital colour really has a bright almost spring-time mood despite the beginnings of autumn visible in the turning leaves, helped by the extra width letting in a glimpse of clear blue sky. The widest angle has a more expansive feel because of the empty space on the right, while the square format of the others produced a more intimate impression, with perhaps more balance to the composition.

An interesting technical point is that because the second and third were taken from the same spot, you can see proof that perspective depends solely on the position of the observer relative to the subject and is not dependent on focal length or similar property of the camera system. You could crop the colour image and come up with the same shot as the mono version taken with a very different lens.
There are also comments to be made about noise and grain, sharpness, distortion, dynamic range, etc., but these specific relative merits of film versus digital can wait for now.

I have some as yet undeveloped rolls of colour film taken with the S2A in the same place. When I get those developed and scanned, it will be another set of comparisons to make. I’m looking forward to it.

Square

One of the many joys of using the S2A is the square format of the 6×6 frames. This is partly practical in nature because it means there is no distinction between “landscape” and “portrait” format and so no awkward rotating of the camera is required, making it quicker to set up and compose on a tripod. However, there’s also the aesthetic nature of the format. In many ways a square format isn’t ideal, it provides a completely symmetrical frame and so the rules of thumb like the “golden” ratio don’t really work, and it can be difficult to balance the composition when bold elements are placed off-centre.

On the other hand when it works it can work really well – it’s a challenge, and I wouldn’t be shooting film with a camera that weighs a couple of kilos if I didn’t like making things difficult for myself. I find the square format works well with strong shapes and lines, and the restricted frame makes it well suited for single subjects. I also find it can work with negative space much more pleasingly than a rectangular format.
For landscapes, it can go either way, you get more height for a given width on a horizontal rectangle, but you can’t get the same sense of a sweeping vista before you that a 3:2 format can provide, or manage quite the same towering skies. In less open landscapes on the other hand, it seems to work more successfully, providing a more intimate atmosphere beside a woodland riverbank or in a city street, where a wider frame might end up just showing a blank wall on one edge.
I think it suits my own style fairly well – even before I got the S2A or the Zenith I would find a square crop in many cases suited my intentions better than the normal rectangle.