Month: May 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

To edit, or not to edit? To photograph, or not to photograph?

fishyfisharcade6 Comments

Another photograph I made on my final pre-lockdown roll of film today. It’s a photo I like a lot, but it’s one that, from an aesthetic perspective at least, could probably do with some editing. I’m talking primarily about the twigs at the left of the frame and the light stalks of grass at bottom-right, but also possibly the modern turbine (although I do like the juxtaposition, I’m not so keen on the placement of the old and new structures). I don’t mind removing distractions from my photos – although I never add anything in – but I’m also conscious to not completely change the reality of what was observed. Based on this, the twigs and grass are probably fair game, but I feel the wind-turbine is maybe a bridge too far.

Ideally, I would try to avoid distractions such as the twigs when taking the shot, but this particular composition has a very limited vantage point and reaching over to move the twigs would likely involve a fall or a nasty laceration from the barbed wire atop the fence through which I made the picture. Perhaps I’ll try again one day though.

In other news, our government in the UK has announced some loosening of the lockdown measures that will come into force this Wednesday. The key one for me as a photographer is that it is now allowed to drive to an outdoor location for the purpose of leisure as long as social distancing is observed. Although there was no mention of photography specifically, sunbathing and picnics (albeit only with members of your household) were both given as examples, so I’m pretty confident that photography would be ok.

While I like the fact that I can now venture further afield for purposes other than exercise or essential shopping, I’m not convinced that this is a good idea where reducing infection rates from the coronavirus is concerned. While I’m quite happy to just go for a walk around some agricultural land where I’m unlikely to encounter any other people (or can easily distance myself if I do), I fear that it will give free licence to masses of people who will now see it as ok to travel to the seaside, to beauty spots, and to other “honeypot” locations, meaning that these places will become potential hotspots for the virus to spread. Even if everyone maintains a two-metre distance, there will still be the need to use toilets and other facilities where there will be multiple opportunities frof conamination.

I’m not sure if, given my concerns, that my going out for photography – even to a place that is likely going to be deserted – makes me a hypocrite?

Generations

Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Plus-X (expired 2008).

Taken on 22 March 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

The last of the pre-lockdown photos

fishyfisharcade1 Comment

I scanned my final roll of pre-lockdown negatives a couple of days ago – a roll of expired Kodak Plus-X shot with my Yashica Mat 124G. They were all taken the day before lockdown was introduced in the UK, and I managed to get them developed by my local lab on the actual day of the lockdown (it wasn’t announced until the evening). All the subsequent rolls I’ve shot have been developed at home (as of this weekend I’ve now self-developed five rolls).

I’d strongly suspected that the lockdown would be coming and so had taken the opportunity to drive out and get some photos before movement was restricted. Concious of the fact that there was a growing pandemic, I nonetheless chose an area where I was cofident that there would be few (if any) other people around.

The outing also marked the last time I’ve used my tripod oustside of my house or garden. While I’ve taken plenty of photographs since the lockdown began, I feel that carrying a tripod on outings that are supposedly for exercise would be breaking the spirit of the thing. Consequently all photos taken while out exercising have been handheld shots that I could take quickly and safely – literally a case of: spot a composition; lift the camera to my eye; click the shutter; and done. All in the space of a few seconds. There are many more photos that would be possible with a tripod, but they will have to wait.

On the day that this roll was shot though, I had my tripod with me. What I neglected to bring, however, was a cable release! Thus I learnt on the spot how the Yashica Mat’s self-timer function worked. Quite well as it turned out – all the shots where I used it are perfectly sharp and correctly exposed.

Today’s picture is of a cluster of teazels framed against some background fields. I’ll publish more from this fianl pre-lockdown roll in the coming days.

Teazels

Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Plus-X (expired 2008).

Taken on 22 March 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Musings on the pandemic and lockdown and celebrating VE day

fishyfisharcade4 Comments

This week I heard that my aunt’s father died from Covid-19 infection. He was resident in a care home where ten more people including a member of staff have died after contracting the virus. There are apparently over a dozen others in the same facility showing signs of infection. Because of lockdown restrictions, his family were unable to visit other than to look in from a window, and so he had no direct contact with his loved ones when he passed away. The funeral will have restriction on attendance, and there can be no church service. They are obviously heartbroken. What would already have been a very difficult experience is made all the more terrible by the conditions in which it has taken place.

He was a WWII veteran, having fought through Western Europe from D-Day until he was injured by enemy fire in Holland, wherupon he returned home to recover. Now he has died during the current pandemic.

As the lockdown in the UK has been in place for over six weeks, and as the incubation period of the infection is up to fourteen days, this means that he has become infected since the lockdown began. At some point, most likely unknowingly, someone has come into contact with a contaminated surface or an infected person and had brought the virus into the care home where it has spread amongst the residents and staff. This fact illustrates why social distancing and proper hygiene is so important if we are to get the situation under control. The high number of deaths due to Covid-19 in UK care-homes is a tragedy.

Earlier this week, government sources gave hints that there would likely be a lifting of some of the lockdown measures announced this weekend, and some hints were given as to what these might be. The mainstream press had a field day. Headlines were written in a way that all but implied that the lockdown would be coming to an end. This, along with the VE Day holiday seems to have resulted in a considerable number of people suddenly relaxing their commitment to the lockdown rules to hold street parties. While many of these street parties were clearly described as being held in such a way as to maintain social distancing rules, it has become quickly apparent that this fell through in many cases with people mingling together like the virus has gone away. I’ve seen footage online of people having group singalongs and even a whole street of residents performing the conga. While they did appear to be two metres apart, I’m not sure this constitutes a necessary activity, even if it was 75-years since the war ended.

My fear is that we will now see a spike in infections in the coming weeks, just as things were starting to get a little better. I can only hope that more WWII veterans (and indeed anyone else) does not become infected or killed by this virus as a consequence of people’s desire to get out and celebrate. It will be a terribly irony if further survivors of WWII lose their lives as a result of people celebrating the end of it.

I don’t really have a picture to illustrate the words in my post, so here’s another from my pre-pandemic outing to Magpie Mine.

Stay safe everyone.

Track, puddle and mine remains

Yashica Mat 124G & Fomapan 100.

Taken on 16 March 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Focusing fun

fishyfisharcade4 Comments

I went for a walk before work again this morning and shot a few more frames with the Bronica.

One of the things I always find a little tricky with medium format cameras is focusing – specifically those with focusing screens as opposed to rangefinders. I find it easy to get the focus looking good on the screen at initial glance, and for medium / long / infinity distances, especially at smaller apertures, that’s usually fine. But when it comes to close subjects, particularly if I’m shooting wide open, then it’s a different matter.

I find that I’m second guessing myself, twisting the focus ring back-and-forth by marginal amounts, never quite sute if a fraction of a degree one way or the other is the setting that will nail perfect focus on my subject. Flicking up the magnifier, squinting at split prisms and sparkling polygons of ground glass until my eyes ache. I think it stems from a number of images where I was feeling confident of my focusing only to discover later that the negs were soft in the places it mattered.

It’s not too bad with a tripod, where I usually have the gift of time to get things spot on, but on situations like today where I was shooting handheld and at wide apertures, it’s trickier (my fault for loading 100asa film I guess). Even a slight momentary sway of my body is easily enough to spoil a shot.

Will today’s shots suffer from bad focusing? I guess I’ll have to wait until I finish the roll and develop them, but I’m certainly looking forward to the days where I’ll be able to leave the house purely for photography, carry a tripod if required, and not have to bolt the attempt to make photographs onto an exercise outing.

Today’s photographs come from Magpie Mine again. If you’ve followed my blog over the fast few months, you may find the first of the three familiar – some of the compositions are very close to those I shot on the same day with my Zeiss Mess-Ikonta and a roll of 30-year expired Kodacolor Gold.

Two trees a chimney and a gate

History on a hill

Magpie Mine

Yashica Mat 124G & Fomapan 100.

Taken on 16 March 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Getting it wrong

fishyfisharcade6 Comments

I got up early this morning for a pre-work walk. The weather has turned nice again, although at the time I went out it was quite chilly and at points on my route there was frost on the ground in shaded areas. I decided to take the Bronica ETRSi with me in case there was something worth photographing as the camera has a part-used roll of Fomapan 100 loaded and I though I might grab a few more frames as I walked.

I took a few shots – one of the local signal box, one of some wildflowers beside a tree, and then some dew-coated cobwebs in the vegetation next to the river. After taking this last shot I checked the frame counter to see how many shots remained and was surprised to see that it still said 5, the same number that had been displayed when I set out on my walk.

Puzzlement, and concern that there was some problem or fault causing this quickly turned to realisation as to the true cause of the issue.

A couple of days ago I’d used the camera to make a still-life of some ornamental fruit that we have in a display bowl in the kitchen. As the light was dim in the kitchen, and as the film is quite slow at 100asa, I’d mounted the camera on a tripod, inserted a shutter-release cable, and then locked up the mirror before taking the shot. Or so I thought. What I’d actually done is switched off the camera’s multiple-exposure protection. The switches for this and mirror lock-up look practically identical and sit next to each other on the side of the camera body, and I’d obviously forgotten which was which.

So, as a result of my mistake, I now have a frame that has (I think) four shots exposed upon it. Maybe it will reveal some sort of wonderful happy accident, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

After rectifying the situation I managed to grab a couple of extra shots on the remainder of my walk, although I suspect the better ones are on the ruined frame.

Today’s photo is from my trip to Magpie Mine in March. It has little to do with the content of today’s post, but was shot on a roll of the same film.

Near Magpie Mine

Yashica Mat 124G & Fomapan 100.

Taken on 16 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Rural transport and the making of memories

fishyfisharcade4 Comments

Yep, it’s a bus stop. It’s quite a nice stone-built one though, and it’s in a beautiful location.

This is one of those photos that I like without it being of a traditionally photogenic subject. A bus stop is mundane, but this one looks like some sort of miniature bothy sat on a wide grass verge beside a country road.

I like the way the telephone wires lead out of the scene to destinations unknown.

I like the white laundry blowing on the washing line as it reminds me of the freshness in the air on the day I made the photograph.

I sometimes wonder how much a photograph engages it’s creator because it triggers memories? For other people, the stories need to be created. For me it brings the day I visited this place back to the front of my mind, and reminds me of the other things that happened on the day: How I was cross that it was cloudy on the morning I left the house, despite the weather forecast promising otherwise; how my mood lightened as the sun began to break through the cloud cover; remembering a long-ago school trip to one of the villages I passed; thinking my little car might struggle to carry my weight up a very steep hill; how myself and another walker struggled to follow the footpath (and he climbed a dry-stone wall and nearly did himself an injury on some barbed wire; how a man videoing Magpie Mine asked me if I would let him record my thoughts (I did); waiting ten minutes for clouds to move across the sky and balance out one of my compositions…

Maybe not a thousand words, but it’s not the half of what this picture says to me either.

Country bus stop

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford Delta 400.

Taken on 16 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

The size of a tree

fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I took these two photographs on my way back to the car after visiting Magpie Mine back in March. The light in the village here was lovely and I finished the roll of Delta 400 that was in my (somewhat tempremental – it sometimes decides that it’s won’t fire, until suddenly springing back into life a few minutes later) Sure Shot Supreme making photographs of some of the scenes.

I didn’t really pay heed at the time, but on seeing the scan of this first image it really brought home to me just how big trees can grow in comparison with their surroundings. This one towers above the house it stands beside and I wonder which of the two came first?

Giving trees a sense of scale

It’s not really a tall tree in the scheme of things either, there are much larger ones to be found – including true titans such as the giant sequoia’s that grow in the western US. I think that this one is a sycamore (judging by the texture of the bark at least), but it’s very possible that I’m wrong. There was a time when I was younger that, in true boy-scout fashion, I could readily identify a whole range of trees from their shapes, leaves, fruit, bark etc., but it’s a skill that has faded over time. I still know the obvious ones – oaks, chestnuts, maples – and I would recognise sycamores from their leaves and seeds – but I’m not sure I’d know an ash from a birch these days without looking it up. I have a book of British flora and fauna, so maybe I’ll see if I can refresh my knowledge.

Scenes that catch your eye

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford Delta 400.

Taken on 16 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Developing, scanning and remembering a trip in the countryside

fishyfisharcade10 Comments

I’ve remained mostly housebound today, with the exception of a quick trip to the local shops for some food and other essentials – and as my wife was with me, that was in the car rather than walking it there as I usually do these days. I was amused to see that the car parked beside ours had been converted into an “RV”. I’ve seen plenty of vans that have been converted, but this was a family estate car that had a cooker, cupboard and fridge, along with electrical sockets fitted in the rear. It looked like a fairly professional job had been done, but I can only image the amount of back-twisting maneouvering that would be required to carry out tasks in a space maybe three feet wide by three feet high!

I spent the rest of the day doing some other film-related tasks.

Firstly, developing a roll of Delta 400 that I finished shooting about a week ago. The process went smoothly and the negatives look good (although I haven’t scanned them yet). Some of them do look like they have noticeable dust on them though, which hasn’t happened before, so I might have issues when I do get around to scanning them.

I also scanned a roll of Fomapan 100 that I shot during my trip to Magpie Mine a little while before the country entered lockdown. The shots on that roll look quite nice, and I will post some here later in the week. The camera I used for the roll, my Yashica Mat 124G, has developed some haze on the taking lens and is currently away for a service, but the shots on this roll aren’t, for the most part, showing any signs that they’ve been affected.

Today’s photo was taken on the same day as visiting the mine as I walked back to where I’d parked my car.

A place in the country

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford Delta 400.

Taken on 16 March 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

The birth of a thought-bubble

fishyfisharcade4 Comments

The house needed it’s top-to-bottom celan today so the morning was taken up with that uninviting task. After that was done, I needed to mow the grass. Then, as it’s been a nice day today, I decided that I would go on a walk after completion of the morning’s chores. After being in a poor frame of mind when making photos while out on a walk a couple of days ago, I was hopeful that I might feel a little more inspired today. I think that one of the reasons for trying to make more pictures was that I could then develop the roll this weekend – I already have a roll of Delta 400 sat waiting and was thinking about getting them both processed at the same time. I’m not sure if this impatience is necessarily the best reason to try and shoot photographs…

As the weather was nice, and as it’s the weekend, there were quite a lot of people out, so it was a case of playing 2020’s no.1 game – Social Distancing. I kinda feel I’m trapped, Tron-style, in a game of Pac-Man. Except instead of avoiding ghosts, I’m trying to not collide with or get too close to any other humans. I wonder how many extra miles I’m walking as a result of all the times I cross the street to avoid oncoming people? Probably not many…

Anyway, my walk took me on a slightly different route and onto some heathland that I’ve not visited many times in the past. It didn’t offer much in the way of readily-available photographic opportunities unfortunately, but I’ve got some photographs of wildflowers, fenceposts and, er, barbed wire on the roll. Maybe they will look nice when I develop them…

I finished the film on my walk. I was slightly surprised when it ended at around frame #34, so that might be something else to look out for when I see the negatives. I don’t think I mis-loaded it, so I don’t know why it reached the end a couple of frames early.

My route home took me through Rother Valley – somewhere I’ve mostly been avoiding for fear of higher numbers of people enjoying the park. The weather and weekend meant that my fears were confirmed and there were a signigicant number of people there. Not as many as might be expected in normal times, and not so many that it wasn’t easy to avoid close proximity, but I’ll definitely avoid the place in future unless the weather is foul, or I go very early.

Before writing this post, I decided to load my film into the developing tank, ready to sort out tomorrow. My plan had been to develop two rolls of B&W 35mm together but, after getting the first roll (the Delta 400) onto the spiral and into the tank, I had a sudden thought that I best check the times for both rolls. I’d gotten it into my head that Delta and HP5+ have the same dev times, but was now doubting myself so, after making sure the first roll was safely light-sealed in the tank, I removed my arms from the changing bag and checked Massive Dev Chart. This was the right thing to do as HP5+ needs and extra minute over the Delta. Phew!

It’ll now mean two seperate developing sessions (plus all the boring cleaning up that is necessary afterwards – I’m making sure everything is thoroughly washed and dried after I’ve finished to ensure I don’t run into difficultie in future due to badly cared for equipment), but I’m in no great rush. I think I’ll wait until next weekend to develop the second roll now.

I thought today’s picure befitted the post as, thanks to the positioning of the lights in the store where the strange “Superman in drag” mannequin was stood, it looks like it’s in the process of forming a thought-bubble, with the though about to pop into view. Maybe that thought is “Do Delta 400 and HP5+ have the same dev times?” 🙂

Speech-bubble formation

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford Delta 400.

Taken on 14 March 2020