(Yet Another) New Toy

I should have known when I sold my ancient large format Manfrotto tripod head a few months ago that it wouldn't be long till I owned a stupidly big camera.

I didn't realise until after buying the damn thing that the negs wouldn't fit into my enlarger, oops! 

Of course 5x4 is getting on for the size where there isn't much needed in the way of enlargement so to get started I just chucked some standard Ilford RC darkroom paper into it to make paper negs. The results aren't great as you can see, especially in the contact prints (paper neg scanned and inverted on the left, contact print on the right) but I have some Harman Direct Positive paper to play with now so will post some results from that soon.

I got a tax rebate

And I got my big hand in for uni done - goto www.anotherseyesphotography.com for a look - so Roz and I went to Barcelona for a few nights. 

When the sun's so bright it seems a shame to not shoot color.

See more of my color photography in my book, A Colorful Summer.

Levi's Commuter Alleycat

Contre Jour is the new bokeh right? First nice evening in Glasgow in ages, was so glad to be out on the bike taking advantage of it. This was before the start of the alleycat, I didn't actually take any photos throughout it as I had intended to do but hey, I was rewarded for my lack of photographic effort with 3rd place in the alleycat. Unfortunately there was only a 1st place prize.

Fat Buddha produced a sweet video of the event which you can see here, 

Post race pics after the jump.

Done

Got my last bit of assessable uni work handed in today so hopefully that'll mean some more time (and brain capacity) for blog posts.

A couple of updates coming your way ASAP.

World Pinhole Day

I'm a bit late posting this but I always think it counts as the same day until you goto sleep.

Met up with some friendly members of the Edinburgh Lo-Fi photography group today and had fun shooting my Holga and pinhole 5D in the Dean cemetery and along Leith water.

It's great having a girlfriend that'll lend me her 5D whenever I want it now that I sold mine (I held onto my pinhole body cap thankfully), it's not so great forgetting that she said the sensor was a bit grubby until I've shot shaky, blurry 10 second plus exposures at about f150 all day!

Tried using the pinhole 5D to make more normal looking shots today. Wasn't very impressed at first but changing to black and white improved things I think.

Think my focal length/pinhole size is a bit off so focus isn't very good but interesting results none the less. 

Some colour images after the jump.

Felt like tourist

I felt like such a tourist taking photos in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Musuem.

There's some awesome stuff in there though, you just have to look at it the right way.

Keeping the screaming kids out of the frame helps too. It was actually quite quiet when I was there yesterday so the place gets a bit of a "Night at the Museum" feel to it. I'm pretty certain those stags do have a good rut after the doors get locked at the end of the day.

A different Glasgow

I'm really enjoying building on the work I have done for Another's Eyes and making images that, hopefully, don't appear to have been shot in Glasgow.

More on Flickr.

Performative pleasure?

I follow a lot of Japanese photographers on Twitter and recently some of them have been tweeting about how they see so many people photographing the blossom each year and that there must be such a saturation of blossom or ‘hanami’ images that there is no point in taking more.

This got me thinking, the word ‘hanami’, if I understand correctly, refers to the viewing and enjoyment of the blossom rather than to the flowers themselves and it seems to me that with the Japanese in particular, making photographs of the blossom is part of their enjoyment. I then wondered if it is in the act of taking the photographs or in the end image that the pleasure is found.

While digital photography attempts to combine these two parts of photography; you take the image and you can look at it straight away, film photography, by it’s nature, splits apart the taking and the viewing. What many professional photographers see as hindrance, I think, appeals to those who take photographs for pleasure. By splitting the act you increase the amount of pleasure you get from photography. If you develop and print yourself then you maybe even have 3 ‘pleasure events’, the taking, the developing and the printing of the final image.

I was further prompted to think about this subject, or at least a very similar one, when Ukranian street and documentary photographer Alina Kisina gave a talk about her work last week. While discussing truth and honesty within images, Alina told us that equipment is not important to her. She acknowledged that her camera was nothing fancy and talked about how she likes to work with the mistakes that she finds in her photographs.

I tried to relate this to my own practice and while I have gone from using top of the range Nikon digital and film equipment to now shooting with a digital rangefinder with less resolution than most phones and what amounts to little more than point and shoot film camera, the equipment is still important to me. I own the cameras I own because I enjoy them. A large part of the enjoyment I get from my cameras is in how they function - the film advance lever, which cocks the shutter on my digital R-D1, or the silent mode on my Hexar for example. I suppose this is part of the performative pleasure of photography. 

Film cases. And why you should have one.

Image: www.tokyocamerastyle.com

I would have much preferred to get my hands on an example of the above Fuji film case from Japan Camera Hunter but Bellamy says these are not going to be back in stock again. He did mention the possibilty of him having some cases made and if that does happen I'll definitely be buying one or two. For now though I'll be making do with a Hama Film Safe that I found on eBay and got for an absolute bargain price. The Film Safe is meant to protect against X-Ray damage which I don't think the Fuji case does.

Sure it only holds four rolls of film but that's enough for a good day's shooting I think.

No why you should own a film case.

Of course there's the obvious like it'll keep your films clean and dry and in the case of the Film Safe at least, protected from X-Rays (although all evidence seems to sugest airport X-Ray machines shouldn't bother you unless you are travelling with film faster than iso800). A film case also makes finding your films in you bag easier than if you carry them loose.

But there's another reason, and in my opinion it's the best reason. Shooting more film. I'm a firm beleiver in having nice stuff because everyone enjoys using nice stuff and the more you enjoy using something, the more you will use it. I've wanted a film case ever since seeing them on Tokyo Camera Style and I'm pretty sure that now I have found one I'll be making a point of shooting with my film cameras more often so I have reason to fetch it out my bag and play with it. 

Alina Kisina at Eastwood Park

Excellent street/documentary/art photographer Alina Kisina gave a talk on her work in the unlikely location of the Eastwood Park Gallery tonight. I say unlikely location as the gallery is deep in leafy, suburban-as-it-gets Giffnock. As curator Janet Forry said, an area not exactly known for it's gallery culture.

It does happen to about a 5 minute cycle from my house though and I missed Alina's talk in Streetlevel when she had an exhibition there last year.

Even if you saw the Streetlevel exhibition it's worth making a visit to the Eastwood Park Gallery as there are several prints on show that weren't exhibited before.

Alina gave a great talk, shed some light on how she makes her amazing images (which I'd been wondering since I saw her work in Streetlevel) and made several points which have really gotten me thinking; shooting wearing headphones to get more detached, finding somewhere to stop and not trying too hard to make good images to name just a few.

Whether your from the Southside or not, make sure to check out Alina's exhibition.

http://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2129