P67 - The (Model) Number Of The Beast . . . (Unless You Count C330F Too)

Morning m'Dearios. 

This week your Cap'n has been reading about the terrible tale of the Somerset Nog. A horse (half Suffolk Punch/half Dachshund . . well, it gets very foggy on the moors) so long and overburdened that it snaps in two and founders along with its cargo of day-trippers in Ganderpoke Bog. They do say though, that if 'ee passes Ganderpoke Bog at midnight, you's can still hear the two ghostly halves of the Nog singing a lament.
It fairly wrings your withers to read about it. 

So let that be a lesson to you all:

Don't overburden your Nog.

***

My apologies to you all in advance, but this weeks FB is pure photography all the way, so hold onto your hats, tighten your belt and make sure you've got a pair of flat shoes on . . .

It will bore you to hell unless you like talking about cameras. Normal, less techie, service will be resumed next week.

When I started taking photographs seriously again, after a hiatus of about 15 years, I resumed using what I thought would give me the best quality (as our American friends would call it) bang for buck. 

I eschewed restarting with 35mm because I had used it fairly extensively at college and wasn't really wanting to go along that path again. 

At college, I had actually had the most photographic enjoyment at the time using The Beast - a Mamiya C330F. This is a camera so heavy it requires a team of sherpas to move it about. I think back in the '80's a large number of them were seen in use by the members of the Russian weight lifting squad at the 1988 Seoul Olympics . . . .

Sherpa Ten-dzen transports a Mamiya C330F to secret Russian training camp circa 1987

Honest, it feels like it weighs about 20 gravities, but it produces very nice quality photographs, and is actually about the cheapest way you can get into interchangeable lens medium format photography without selling your kidneys.

Having fond but painful memories of the Mamiya though made me search in another direction, namely Germany and the Rolleiflex. They were light and beautiful and the camera of choice for lots of well-known photographers. I couldn't afford a 3.5 or 2.8 F model with their exceptional Planar and Xenotar lenses, so I opted instead for a Rolleiflex T.

It wasn't cheap, but neither was it a fortune. What it was however was a stunning piece of 1960's engineering with a range of accessories that worked and fitted beautifully. In other words it was the bees knees.

I have spent many long hours wandering near and far with my Rollei and despite a few teething problems to start (film transport going funny) it has served me well (and still does actually). They are a very adaptable camera - portraits, landscape, pretty much anything you can think of a use for a camera for, and with a bit of free thinking, you can get there. 

However, as time went on I started looking seriously at the likes of Wynn Bullock and Ansel Adams and wondered whether upgrading to a larger format would make some of their vision rub off on me (it didn't by the way). So after much thought, I decided I was very hungry and needed a bigger doughnut.

Enter The Beast # 2. 

I saved up all my pocket money (and Christmas money too) and bought a trip into larger format heaven - a Pentax 6x7.

This camera looks and handles like the fat boy brother of the largest 35mm camera ever made (a Nikon F2s?).

Smuggled prototype photograph from Pentax HQ, showing proposed sizing of the original Pentax 6x7 (with new Mk II lens range) in proportion to average human being size. You can clearly see a plan for world domination here.

The Pentax is solid and heavy, has the loudest mirror slap you have ever heard and the shutter flings itself across with such violence it will actually torque the camera even though it is secured to a tripod. In your hands it can kick like a .22 air pistol. 

It was widely used by fashion photographers (Mario Testino and Bruce Weber are two who come to mind) namely and for that if you are using fast film, or flash, but definitely in the higher range of shutter speeds, I can see it working, but for quieter landscapes it is quite a proposition. The incredible thing is though, that for many it is the landscape camera of choice . . or was, in those heady days of using film. 

Personally, I found it difficult and I had to adopt a totally mad method of taking photographs with it.

Apologies if you love and use your P67, the following might tickle your funny bone . . . 

Note: if you are using the Pentax for anything other than hand-holding it at about 1/125th with the lens stopped down a couple of stops, then try this method of using it on a tripod . . it works. 

So here we go - Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tips.

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 1: Firstly you fix it to your tripod like you are expecting rough weather and phone 999 (or 911).

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 2: Compose your photograph - I recommend the waist level finder actually, because you do not get the full frame when you look through the prism finder. Make sure all emergency services have arrived and are ready and on standby.

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 3: When you are happy, zip up your flash suit, make sure you are in eyeball contact with emergency coordinators and then LOCK THE MIRROR UP AND SET THE SHUTTER TO B. If you do not do this then you will not get a sharp photograph.

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 4: Use your lens cap the way they used to be used - in other words keep it in front of the lens. You can actually use your hand too.

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 5: Hang on to something immovable and release the shutter. This is difficult to do - I found a bicycle chain around my ankle and then secured around a bollard or tree quite good. A cable release is essential, however I have used a pencil. Ear defenders are recommended. The shutter noise will scare birds and small children so sand-bagging the camera can work too. Don't worry though - the emergency crews should be in place to deal with any mishaps.

Rogers' Pentax 6x7 Tip Part 6: Remove your lens cap, but still keep it tightly in place until you are sure there is no movement or vibration from the camera. Very gently move the cap out of the way for your timed exposure. Count off your exposure. Place lens cap back in front of lens tightly and quickly. Release cable release to close shutter and unlock mirror.

Denouement: There you have made a nice photograph with the Pentax.

Kindly ask emergency teams to stand down, but remain in field radio contact with them as you have another 9 frames to use up.

I simply had to adopt this method because it was easier than that well known P67 tip of forcing all your weight down on top of the camera whilst it is tripoded to stop the torque ruining the photographs. I had had to do this a number of times until I came up with the method above believe it or not. It didn't half get some funny looks!

Unfortunately for me, because of my financially necessary photographic bottom feeding, the Pentax I had bought had probably been done to death by its previous owner(s).

It's reliance on batteries was also a pain and proved to be part of its downfall in my eyes. At about -4C, and a number of miles away from anywhere, it just refused to work. I was livid. It is no joke removing a small battery with freezing fingers and shoving it into your pants and clasping it tight in the crease where lower groin meets leg to get a little life back into it. This does work very well by the way, but I wouldn't recommend it if you are photographing in a city . . .

After that trip into the depths of a Scottish late Winter/early Spring I had a wonderful time with a few films being exposed correctly with a perfect frame count all the way through (10 frames on 120 film) and then it started misbehaving again: missing frames and locking completely, resulting in a blue darkroom fog of unloading the partially wound film, respooling it and starting again (!)

Enough was enough and I returned it to the vendor for a refund - they were good enough to do so after my 6 months of using it. I often wonder what happened to it. Knowing the secondhand market, it is probably still around with the problems of the transport still unresolved. 

Old and knackered cameras rarely die, they just keep getting shipped around the country.

For all that I seem to be criticizing the Pentax, I actually think that the problems of the early 6x7's were partially resolved in the later rebuilds - namely the Pentax 67 (see what they did there) and the Pentax 67II.

The superb photographer Steve Mulligan regularly uses a brace of P67II's for aerial photography and I simply don't see how they could have sold so many if they were rubbish.

There is a small whining voice inside me that says, I would love to own one again, simply for their sheer heft and the quality of the lenses. This being said, the lens I had (and could afford) was an early 75mm f4.5 Super-Multicoated-Takumar, and I thought it was a tad soft (there seems to be a concensus of opinion that it is one of the sharpest in the range, so maybe I had a not so good example). 

If I were to go for one again, it would be as late a model as possible with either the 90mm or 105mm lens and the 55mm wide angle. But then again, I would still face the same problem of not being able to see 100% of what I am photographing - a point which annoys the hell out of me.

My notes from when I returned the Pentax read as follows:

Basically no matter how good looking and likeable the Pentax 67 system is (and it is) - never get another one!!

The flaw of the system is the shutter (which is ridiculously loud and heavy in action *

If you want a 6x7 go for a RB67 or Fuji or something but not Pentax.

* The camera will torque no matter how much effort you put into restraining it. Only the lens cap/mirror up method works, but then we were let down by the lens.

The madness of bigger doughnuts did sort of resolve itself from this. The money I got back from the Pentax and lens and all the doo-dads I'd bought for it - strap, UV filter, waist-level finder, plus a trade-in of a nice little Petri rangefinder, enabled me to take a giant step forward.

I got the Supersized lunchtime special doughnut; a camera so large and bulky and yet so wonderful that I still own it. A Sinar F.

It is so much a character of his own, that he will have his own dedicated FB sometime soon.

But back to the Pentax, why does that niggling voice keep going? 

Why would I want to get another one when the original proved to be so unreliable and challenging to use? 

I think it could well be, that I like the idea (but maybe not the practicality) of having one again. Yes it was difficult to use. Yes it wasn't a ready companion miles away from anywhere, and yet, it was a character all of its own. A camera that you had to deal with on its own terms and not your own. A struggle to use, and yet a pleasure too. I hope he is still around out there, giving some bargain hunter pleasure and not pain!

The photograph below was made with the Pentax, at a place called Mossburn Ford in the Scottish Borders. The path Alec Turnips and myself were on passed through someone's garden, before meandering away and up a hillside. In the garden were some overgrown sheds with this incredible collection.

The photograph was made on Ilford FP4 at EI 64. I metered it with my Gossen Lunasix S meter (a totally wonderful light meter) placing the top left corner on Zone V. Exposure was 2 seconds at f16.

It was developed as per Barry Thornton's instructions - basically Ilford Perceptol at 1:3 and 20C, for 14 and a half minutes.

The scan does very little justice to the print, which somehow manages to 'breath' in the greys with a luminosity that is always very difficult to get a hold on.

I call it 'Grandfather's Chair', because of that old candlewick bedspread draped over the chair. 

It looks to me like a figure is sitting there - possibly the ghost of someone's Grandfather, still clinging to the unloved remnant of his favourite chair. 

Allied with the movement from the weeping Willow, and I think an air of strangeness has been imparted to it.

Of all the photographs I have made, it is the only one I have framed and on the wall in my study.

(Ab)normal service will be resumed next week.

God bless and thanks for reading.

Stay Gonk

Mornin' Varmints. 

Today yer good Cap'n be land-based for the weekend, holed up in port with nothing to do but twiddle me thumbs and whistle a happy tune. 

Can you feel it friends? 

The world is poised. 

Something huge is in the air and I can't put my finger on it. 

It is worrying. Like a hurricane coming in and not a breath in the sails. 

I don't like it at all. 

Even my stump has stopped itching . . . 

***

In much the same way that my generation seems to have destroyed the creative heart of a generation of human beings in letting them think that silicone-based gaming is a great way to spend days and weeks, so we have also created, photographically, a very dangerous precedent in the way that the camera phone has now become the primary way of making images.
Remember this is image capture, it is definitely not photography, and whilst profits might well be great for the lumbering technological behemoths, for the name of photography, things couldn't really be much worse.

As I have mentioned before, mankind is essentially (these days) lazy. The point-it-at-the-subject-and-press-a-button generation haven't the slightest clue about what they have just done:

"Ha ha ha ha, that's funny" 

as one youth said to another as a smart phone was passed around, smudging the screen with his greasy fingers..

It is a slice of time, but it definitely is not a photograph and has nothing to do with photography.
Even compared with digital camera capture it isn't a photograph.
A camera (yeah even a digital one, hardened FB readers take note) is a specific device. It used to be (when people weren't mad) designed for making something of permanence whether you realised it or not.

There was a massive difference between a Kodak Instamatic and a Leica, but they both did the same thing.

Both could be crass.

Both could be beautiful.

But both told the truth, for despite the possibility that someone somewhere might have done some very creative darkroom work, at the end of the day in that cylindrical, light-tight cassette, there was an end product that couldn't really lie: the negative.

I think the root of my problem with all digital capture is that I don't trust 01010101000010101 (Binary Storage) and yet here I am out-putting my heart to the world in the self-same manner.

Am I a hypocrite?

Well it certainly looks that way.

But the thing with the humble negative, is that you can hold it; you can store it in nice little archival sleeves; you can shove it in a plastic bag along with your holiday photos; you can scratch it; drop tea on it; sneeze on it; fingerprint it. In fact you can make a total mess of it, and, short of setting fire to it, something will still be there.

My friend spends a great deal of his time making images of truly ancient artefacts in appropriate settings. They really work, because somehow, and I don't know how he does it, he manages to coax the dormant soul from these objects, however, he finds himself often in the multiple back-up position because they are all digital images.

It is like in the Young Ones when Neil started talking about emptying his pencil case in an exam hall:

"I sat in the big hall and put my packet of Polos on the desk. And my spare pencil and my support Gonk. And my chewing gum and my extra pen. And my extra Polos and my lucky Gonk. And my pencil sharpener shaped like a cream cracker. And three more Gonks with a packet of Polos each. And lead for my retractable pencil. And my retractable pencil. And spare lead for my retractable pencil. And chewing gum and pencils and pens and more Gonks, and then the guy said “Stop writing, please.”"

So my friend has hard-drive backup, a lucky backup hard-drive and writes to discs too, as well as storing on memory cards.

It is overkill, and I call that a bit of a nightmare, but it makes him feel secure so that is what counts.

Actually before we move on, I must have a little aside into the world of Gonks!

There is strangely precious little material about these wonderful creatures out there.

The designs I remember my sister having back in the 60's are nowehere to be seen.

'Proper' 1960's Beat Gonks seem to have been lumped in with 1970's and 1980's fairground prizes, which were not Gonks!

I will be categorical on this. 1960's Gonks were hip and often round, had hands, wore smart 'clothing' and often had mop-top haircuts. In a word they were so Sixities, that they couldn't have existed at any other time.

1970's and 80's fairground prizes were often just fluffy objects with rattly eyes or beaks or both. They tended also to be furry, which no 1960's Gonk would be seen dead as.

I remember one in particular that I won at a fair in the early 70's that actually seemed to be made of cat fur. Whatever it was it certainly wasn't synthetic.

(Quite posh Gonks [Gonkus groovitimus]  and a description of what it is to be 'Gonk')

They were really quite the thing at one point. There were a couple of albums and also a film.
I think they were originally designed as a fun accessory for Swinging London and ended up going nationwide.
The film 'Gonks Go Beat' was a reworking of Romeo and Juliet and featured The Graham Bond Organization, The Nashville Teens, Lulu and the Luvvers, and The Trolls (?). It is noteworthy for the fact that it features Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce (later of Cream) and features two things that I find amusing - firstly a statement addressed to Jack Bruce after a groovy piece of playing:

"Next time I want to hear those big, big sounds that bring the coconuts down "

and Kenneth Connor standing next to sign that says:

BEATLAND - IF YOU'RE WITH IT, YOU'RE IN. 

Here's the not so groovy cover to the dvd release:

(The above is not the original design but a noughties cut-up. 1960's design wouldn't have been half so messy)

(That's more like it! Why would anyone feel the need to mess about with this?)

We're nearly coming to a point though folks, so bear with me, as, at this point in this painful interlude I have to say that 1960's Gonks need to be distinguished from a separate species, the Scottish Gonk (Gonkus hootisii) which started appearing roughly around 1970. These were definitely Scots, and never seemed to make the journey across the Border. Certainly for me they were a thing of remark during our holidays. 

They were basically tubes with arms and were often 'weaponised'. 

Mine had a spear, some had clubs. 

All had furry heads and tartan bonnets. There were millions of them every place we visited . . and now all I can find in a world-wide pantheon of information are just two pictures, of which I shall use just one . . .

(Gonkus hootisii [disarmed])

The above is a posh one and should be distinguished from the more common or garden variety which did not have legs. Actually, I would say this is a picture of a Proto-hootisii . It must be a very early one as the latter ones became cheapened, dispensed with legs altogether and just had the tube body all the way down. Please note, he is also missing his spear!

Alas the genus mutated beyond recognition and this is what the later species looked like.

(These are obviously convict Gonks. Banished to Australia they were later rescued and photographed in their sorry state. Apparently they date from the late 1970's and are of the sub-species Gonkus fairgroundicus.)

In researching all this though, worldwide there is precious little information on them. I checked for the latest version of the Gonkipedia but it didn't exist. 

They seem to have been one of those moments in time that has passed into legend . . . 

An Atlantis of the 20th Century? 

A Beat Sasquatch? 

The Big Grey Gonk of Ben Macdhui? 

Who knows . . . anyway  . . .

***

Phew.

There I feel better for that. 

But what has this to do with photography? 

Well, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To coin a rather well known song:

They paved paradise 

And put up a parking lot 

With a pink hotel, a boutique 

And a swinging hot spot 

Don't it always seem to go 

That you don't know what you've got 

Till it's gone 

They paved paradise 

And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees 

Put 'em in a tree museum  

And they charged the people 

A dollar and a half just to see 'em 

Don't it always seem to go 

That you don't know what you've got 

Till it's gone 

They paved paradise 

And put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer 

Put away that DDT now 

Give me spots on my apples 

But leave me the birds and the bees 

Please! 

Don't it always seem to go 

That you don't know what you've got 

Till it's gone 

They paved paradise 

And put up a parking lot

Late last night

I heard the screen door slam

And a big yellow taxi

Took away my old man

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

© Siquomb Publishing Company 

I had no intention originally of including the whole song, but felt the words were entirely appropriate. Joni's concerns are nearly 50 years old, but their truth rings down the years.

And ever onward we go!

Why on earth would anyone earth want to make an image with one of these:

When they could use one of these instead:

Excuse me for shoving a Leica M3 in there, but it is such a beautiful thing to look at and by all accounts a beautiful thing to use too, though I have never held one. (I also rather like the IIIf which is more 1950's looking but still beautiful nontheless.)

My point is, that much like Gonks, cameras too have become homogenised. They have been turned from lovely square but round-edged Spangles, into the half sucked and spat out 'things' that used to mysteriously appear on pavements when I was young. 

We are in danger of lumbering ourselves with something which in design terms is non-specific, 'user friendly' (though that is a matter of much discourse) and in a word characterless.

I just hate how the world seems to do that. 

Beat Gonks become generic 70's furry animals. 

Genius pieces of mechanical and optical design become a tiny lens in a piece of metal and polycarbonate with 0's and 1's removing all the passion. 

Artisan bread becomes Warburtons and Kingsmill. 

A lovingly crafted pint of Yorkshire Bitter becomes a bottle of Bud. 

Pizza, the poor man's food made with flour and yeast and simple ingredients, becomes a cheese crust, multi-layered monstrosity baked on an Industrial scale. 

I could go on, but I won't. 

All I can say is that we, as photographers, are in serious danger of becoming last centuries thang. Professional cameras shoot in HD video. So do phones and the boundaries are becoming so blurred that what was a camera, is now a video camera and will probably soon be a phone too! And before you know it, it will be its own capture and processing lab, hard-wired to your eye and central nervous system, automatically snatching images of anything and fixing any mistakes to some pre-set criteria of preferences, so that the world looks perfect. 

Gone is any creative involvement other than just pressing that button or blinking that eye.

A one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a second slice of time, chosen and fixed with permanence within a piece of emulsion is fast becoming something so hopelessly antiquated that it will, before we know it, be cast upon history's scrapheap of useless and arcane knowledge.

Mark my words friends. 

It is coming.

AND FAST.

Pick your bogles while you can they don't stay fresh for long.

The above is as imperfect a photograph as you could ever wish to take. It is definitely not homogenised. It is a real piece of film that has been totally abused. I love it.

It was made on C41-process Colour film, which I developed in Black and White specific chemicals, namely HC 110, Dilution G, for 18 minutes at 21C. Apparently you're not supposed to do that. The film's nominal EI was 200, and I rated it at EI 100 simply for the fact of its age. It was Agfa Vista Colour 200, which expired in June 2005. The photograph was made last month, namely May 2012. The colour cast was very great when I removed the film from the fixer so I agitated it for about 15 minutes in a very weak solution of Potassium Ferricyanide bleach which sort of worked, I then re-fixed it. This explains why the grain structure is so soft.

It was made on a £5 charity shop special - a Nikon AF600 point and shoot. I used the Agfa film because it was there and I wanted to test whether the camera was functioning properly. It is.

Stay Gonk my friends (preferably Beat).

A Hero Passes By

This is an unusual aside for FB, but here it is nevertheless.

When I was 12 a story I read hit me right between the eyes and nothing was ever going to be the same again.

It was called The Scythe and it was by Mr.Ray Bradbury, who has sadly passed away at the grand old age of 91.

Years earlier I had been astonished at the sight of Captain Ahab lashed to the giant whale in Moby Dick and had never noticed when Ray's name came up as writer of the screenplay.

It took a number of years in those pre-internet days to put the two names together . . .

To say that I am in part a product of Ray's writing would be an understatement.

For a large part of my teenage years I lived and breathed him.

I was a creature borne of mists and ghosts, of open graves and winged creatures shadowing the moon at Halloween. I was an invader; a defender; an innocent and a cold intelligence millenia old. I was Montag; I was Douglas; I was a dinosaur killer; a watcher of terrible unfoldings; a post-nuclear shadow of sorrow enfolded in dank fog. I was all these and more, for in Mr.Bradbury I found a soul mate.

He wrote like the distillation of all my hopes and dreams and fears. Succinct and never rambling, I could count on Ray (in the passing of a couple of pages) to open up my mind and send a shiver of wonder down my back.

It is a puzzle why, as a nation, Britain has never really seemed to be taken with Mr.Bradbury. The man was an American literary giant alongside Hemingway and Steinbeck.

Was it because he was tagged at an early stage in his career as a 'SF' writer? It was a shadow that dogged him all his life. And yet how many stories like these did he write? Precious few. He was by his own admission a fantasist. He dug over the grave earth of moonless nights, and found beauty. He took us to different worlds, both physical and inner.
To myself, aged 12, reading The Scyth on the number 114 bus, he brought together all the elements of all the authors I had been reading (Poe, Romer, Moorcock, LeGuin, Lovecraft) and in a few pages distilled them into a heady brew of wonder, terror and revelation. I loved him for that.

His short stories especially are a pleasure to read and the pleasure is instantaneous and then in a handful of pages they are done and a small seed of wonder has been planted in the reader. They really are incredible works. His novels read like a blanket of maps, pieced and stitched together with great care, to be draped lovingly over your bed when it is just you and the night and your bedside lamp.

And that, sadly, is that. I doubt we'll ever see his like again.
R.I.P. Ray.
I shall leave this now and go and pick up my battered copies of Farenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine and The October Country and The Silver Locusts and go and sit on my porch in Green Town and remember a man who enriched my life.

Infamy, Infamy . . They've All Got It In For Me

A-har me beauties. The teapot of life is overflowing and there's fresh scones on the gridle.

This weekend's tickling of the trout of memory be such a wide-reaching article that it could well change your life, or maybe even your point of view.

Come and join us and get some folk down by the docks as the Goode Shippe FB wends its way into port! 

Hang up some bunting. 

Dress up yer babes in their Sunday best, because when this comes into town, you don't want to be seen to be wanting!
And as for your Your Majesty . . if you fancy comin' and havin' a chat with the Cap'n then feel free, though in truth, the lack of an invitation to the Goode Shippe FogBlog for the flotilla on Sunday was a bit of a let-down.
Never mind . . I've got rigging to mend anyway.

***

A few months ago, I discovered something very interesting about myself.

It was something I genuinely didn't know and it took me by surprise because the thing I discovered was quite big.

Well it seemed quite big to my mind.

Apparently, I was part of a movement.

And it wasn't just any movement like 'moaning old gits vs. society in general', no, I was part of a movement that was named with a rather important word:

Culture.

Not only that, but it was preceded by a weighty word from the 1960's and also hyphenated:

Counter -.

Not only that (as if it wasn't enough) but that world-weary and heavy word was preceded by something even weightier from a far earlier time. A word smelling of cloth and sweat and the adoption of violence for the simple reason that your livelihood was being threatened by change:

Luddite.

But just to make sure that I (and the likes of me) weren't going to smash the servers and chain ourselves to the ping-pong tables at Google, they preceded that with a hyphenated disclaimer:

Neo -.

So there you have it, I, to my surprise, was a member of a 'Neo-Luddite Counter-Culture'!

http://www.blogger.com/goog_1127232314

http://nymag.com/shopping/features/analog-2011-7/

By this I am being defined as a person who eschews modern gadgetalia in favour of good old fashioned methods. And to an extent this is true, but to an extent (and just because I hate being pigeonholed) I'll beg to differ.

This hankering after a golden age of LED's, and Selenium Light Meters and Gramaphones and Valve [Tube] (and Transistor) driven technology can, as far as I can tell, be traced back to a certain musical movement, that for all its down-at-the-heel appeal and dark thoughts of a future devoid of joy (ok . . nihilism . . . to an extent) still has echoes ringing down towards us - namely: grunge.

If you've never heard of it, then fine - here's a potted history:

Checky shirts; making music for the sake of it rather than for chart powerplays; old and often cheap guitars because that was what you could afford; a feeling for melody and the power of a guitar amplifier; turning your back on the traditional music industry (a bit of anathema that one, because it became an enormous multi-billion dollar behemoth); Seattle.

There, a potted history for you.

The most famous band being Nirvana who you will probably have heard of, but prior to, and alongside them, there were a ton of bands. Here's one of the earlier ones - Mudhoney. Their 'Touch Me, I'm Sick' single predated Nirvana's first SubPop singles club release (Love Buzz) by a number of months.

(You've got to love the look. They could be anyone, and that was the beauty of grunge!)

If I remember rightly from my reading of Guitar Player magazine at the time, there was a word that started to appear like an infestation of fleas. It was quoted with regard to guitar design, and these days  has become so far reaching it is now a by-word for anything that looks or feels old (and by old I mean 1960's and nowdays that has transgressed into the 1970's too) . . careful though, it's dangerous and over-used . . . so dangerous and over-used that I am not sure I should tell you about it . . . oh go on then:

 . . . RETRO.

The savvy guitar companies of the time (ever the drivers of taste believe it or not) were so incredibly sussed that they realised quite quickly that all these kids with dollars to spend, were actively turning their backs on the generic Floyd Rose Tremolo equipped guitar with pointy bouts and spangly colours and were buying instead the likes of Naguahyde covered 1960's surf specials!

It really was something else.

A world packed to the gunnels with cheap and ugly, (sometimes) awful playing and sounding instruments had opened up, and more importantly was being actively sought. Guitars that had languished in the back of pawn shops and cupboards were suddenly dusted down because they harkened back to a golden age of finger-clicking, goatee-ridden, Chelsea-boot-wearing hipster, Way to go Daddio!

Ever wonder why the key films that slopped a massive splurge of homogenised 60's 'cool (Austen Powers) into society at large were made? I can't prove it, but I have to draw a conclusion somewhere . . . it has to be down to guitar design and the search for all things older than the 1980's.

So, thank you Mr.Cobain*, for Kurt's far-seeing use of a Fender Jaguars and Mustangs and old-ish effects pedals started the fairly large moss-covered boulder (that had been sitting at the top of a mountainside) rolling, and checky shirted youths everywhere went in search of something 'retro' to prove how cool they were.

Well-read and intelligent older guitar collectors realised that there was a pretty penny to be made from this yearning for something from rock and roll's golden ages . . . and thus a grasping, lucrative sub-section of guitar collecting was born.**

Actually, you have to admire the guitar makers, because they managed to turn around designs pretty damn quickly, and before you knew it, designers worldwide were using it - 'retro' was being applied to everything from toasters to TVs, haircuts to watches. 

Here's some de-evolution . . .

                   
                       





(To the left a Hamer Scepter from the late 1980's (actually a very well made instrument and typical of the sort of instrument yer average pre-grunge player lusted after) and to the right a collection of Vintage Silvertone guitars from the 1960's . . .David and Goliath anyone?)

But all this is rather drawing aside from my main theme, which is me being a member of a counter-culture. Well, in the same way that the back-turning, and head shaking happened in the field of guitars, slowly, it is happening in photography.

For the general everyday photographer digital and all that that involves rules the day.

Camera manufacturers are selling incredibly high powered computers with bits of glass on the front and whilst that is fine, you only have to look at the rise of 'Lomography' as a by-word for anything made with film to realise that there is a pretty serious depth of feeling in the world for all things of a pre-digital age.

And having  poked away at old and crumby cameras for quite a while now, I kind of feel like one of a semi-elite group of elder statesmen of Neo-Luddite Counter-Culturalists.

I love that actually - it makes me feel important (which I am not in the slightest).

It makes me feel that in using film and old cameras I am somehow bracing up the old world (where people did things with the help of machines) against the new world (where machines seem to do everything for you)!

I can wear my cloth cap with pride Mother.

But tell me lad, is there Trouble at t'Mill? You betcha. Trouble down t'Pit too? Och Aye.

You see, we . . that is you and I dear reader, if you like using film, are dinosaurs.

We are perceived as eccentric.

Pursuers of art in an old-fashioned way.

Upholders of the faith.

Defenders of the realm.

And despite our obvious (ahem) charms, we are now being priced way beyond any sense of reason out of our passionate vocation. It is quickly coming to the point where every roll of film is a definite consideration, and where every frame is a financial burden.

I could happily shoot 2 rolls of 120 film of a weekend . . and that'll be £10 please (unless you hunt around) plus the processing costs. It's a lot of money. 35mm is approx a fiver a roll on average; 5x4" sheet film can vary wildly between 60p a sheet and an eye-watering £1.40-odd for Black and White film . . colour is even more expensive in sheet film. At those prices you are being driven into the arms of the digital behemoths. A point of fact of this is that in 2008 a box of 25 sheets of Ilford Delta 100 5x4" sheet film was £15-£18 on average .  . that self same product in 2012 is now roughly £30-£35 on average. 100% in 4 years is pretty shocking. Certainly my wages haven't risen 100%

Ilford started the ball rolling a couple of years back with claims about the rising price of silver (which it did do, however as everyone who studies the markets knows, commodities prices have a habit of rising and falling faster than a bride's nightie) and what with Kodak's financial troubles and now Fuji following suite, your average Neo-Luddite Counter-Cultural-ist (NLCC-ist for short) is finding the ability to keep the golden age going a real pain in the wallet.

It makes sense doesn't it really.

As a manufacturer, your users of film have dropped to a point where they don't make any money, so what do you do? You increase prices to the point where those that are still left stop using your products altogether!

So why do us NLCC-ists keep going?

It is hard to say really, but could it be (to paraphrase a quote from 'Moonstruck') because we are afraid of death and want to leave a legacy of permanence to the world?

Possibly.

Certainly a few years ago it was realised that there was no guarantee that your digital files of today would become nothing more than tomorrow's anachronism.

At least with a photograph and a negative, you have something tangible which can get chucked in a skip when you have popped your clogs.

It is hard this art stuff.

In my case, a self-financed struggle to make sure you can leave a massive pile of creativity that can get dumped in the landfill of life.
I suppose what I am trying to say is, film manufacturers, please, in the name of all that is good, think of the people who actually use your film. Don't price us out of what we love doing.

I like this photograph. It reminds me of childhood.

A very young Alec Turnips was chucking something in the Kyme Eau on a Summer's day in 2003, and I just happened to catch it at the right moment.

This was made in the days when you could get Ilford SFX for next to nothing.

These days it is nearly £7 a roll and I would never use it again even if I had the money. Sorry Ilford - your films are wonderful and I have used them for years, but they have now entered the realm of ridiculous pricing and I can afford to use them no more.

The camera was an Agfa Synchro-Box *** made between 1949 and 1958 - it has two apertures (one landscape, one portrait) and I like its simplicity. The film was developed in Rodinal.

It has all the attributes of retro which will delight the NLCC-ist:

It is a 6x9cm negative.

The really gnarly lens flare is like Sauron's Eye from the dreaded Lord Of The Rings films

The rollers have imparted heavy scratches to the emulsion.

There is a gradation of tones in the foliage which is nothing short of beautiful.

There.

You feel better for this little tootle into art and culture don't you!

If you are about to head out with an ancient piece of technology, good luck to you and make every image count  -I don't know how long they will let us continue.

I hope the light is with you.

God bless you.

* I have to add to this a that a certain columnist for Guitar Player magazine, a Mr. Tiesco Del Ray was also responsible, but of course not many people will know that, as he didn't have the looks, though he did have the skills, the knowledge and the collection.

** These days it has gone beyond any sense of normalacy as your younger guitar buyer who was but a gleam in a parent's eye when a lot of these monstrosities were created, generally doesn't realise what a bucket of dingo's kidneys they are buying at a massively inflated price when they get enthused about a '1978 Hondo Les Paul - MIJ Retro Cool!' guitar.

*** http://mattsclassiccameras.com/agfa_synchrobox.html

Transcendence

Greetings me Dearios - the weekend is here and the sun is splitting the sky, so why are you indoors reading this when you could be out there doing something useful with your time? 

I don't know and I don't want to know. 

You can keep it to yourself.
But if you are still indoors, and you promise to keep quiet about it, your Cap'n will take you on a trip back in time.
Sailin' the Seas of Yore with a benevolent wind at your back.

***

It is hard to imagine the difficulties faced by early photographers, and by early I don't mean the likes of me who gets up at ungodly hours most days . . . no . . . I mean back in time. Early 20th Century in particular. Users of glass plates and makers of Platinotype and Cyanotype and Kallitype prints and all these incredible words that today are by-words to the ever present and soulless inkjet print. 

If you only make inkjets for whatever reason, and have never handled a wet print or worked in a real darkroom even for a brief period of time, then you have never experienced magic.

But darkroom work is tough.You approach the start of a session with passion and enthusiasm and you can often leave, for want of a better Scots expression, feeling like shite.

Productivity and fun in the darkroom are solely the result of sheer hard work; blood, sweat, tears and fixer-fingers. 

But you know, to quote Rik Emmet: "nothing is easy, nothing good comes free" and whilst it is hard to produce a print that makes you want to hang it on your wall, believe me, it is really worth the effort.

I can understand what you might be thinking though, namely how can something supposed to be so artistic and creative be so difficult? 

Well for a start, photographic printing is a skilled and highly concentrated activity. Hours whizz by in a flash and you find yourself out of time before you know what you have done (if anything!).
I have lost whole days, working from the morning and still not been ready to sit down for my tea . . . yes folks, it can be that bad.

Even masters, like a favourite of mine Mr. Eugene Smith, felt that darkroom work was the hardest and least enjoyable aspect of his work, and yet, you only have to look at one of his Pittsburgh pictures to know that his struggle under safelights was helping him produce profoundly beautiful works of art.

(W.Eugene Smith - Dance Of The Flaming Coke)

On the surface you might think it is easy to produce a print from a negative, and it is.
You can make a print in a snap. You can make a ton if you like, but whether those prints satisfy is another matter altogether, and it can become a problem that can lead to all sorts of self-doubt.
The older I become, the less satisfied I get with my printing, and the strange thing is, I know that I can print very well. To get to something that is enriching and visually stimulating is hard, damn hard, and I am not going to wax too long about it at the moment because it distracts from the purpose of this FB.

The point I am trying to make is how was it possible for someone (working back at a time in the early 20th Century, when the reliability of silver gelatine photographic paper [which we take for granted] was but a dream) to produce a work of such profound beauty that I seriously doubt any of the renowned photographic artistes these days could hold a candle too it.

The photograph I am alluding too was by one Mr.Frederick Holland Day and it was made in 1907. It is called 'The Vision'.

He was one of those early workers. A collection of dreamers and visionaries, impassioned artists, but above all else photographers and craft workers. Names like Clarence White, Frederick Evans, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, George Seeley, Robert Demachy and many others.

Names not often heard these days but giants of photographic imagery.

Although primarily associated with Pictorialism (basically and to reduce a thesis down to a few words: trying to make a photograph [a product of science] look rather like a painting [a timeless, organic human endevour]).
I feel that their output is still relevant today - indeed the influence has crept back in, as large numbers of television programmes you see these days use narrow depth of field. Camera magazines are packed with photographs taken with lens apertures wide open for that soft focus effect..

But this is moving aside from Mr. Holland Day.
He was by all accounts a remarkable and private man who has been judged mostly solely on his imagery.

He was fond of making images with nude male youths, and you can just tell when you mention that, that people will go 'Nudge nudge, know what you mean squire'.

But I'll be contentious here - I don't think he was motivated by sexuality.

He was an educator, a publisher, widely travelled and moving in influential circles.

A man who was moved by poetry and romanticism and a yearning for earlier, simpler times. I believe that just maybe the use of the male nude was a harkening back to that imagined Golden Age.

And how can I say this?
How can I claim to know what motivated another artist?

Well I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating:

It is hard to believe that an image created over 100 years ago can still affect one so deeply.

It certainly does affect me. It is profound and beautiful and has seeped its way deep into my psyche over a number of years. There is something archetypal about it, evoking a dawning age; an idealised romanticism from the deep deep past of mankind.

The photograph is one of a series based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, the poet and musician, made by Day from 1907 to 1908 and shows a close up of Orpheus' head over his stretching figure. Apparently this is a visual metaphor, referring to  Orpheus' murder by the Maenads who tore him to pieces and beheaded him. His head was said to have floated down the river, still singing.

It is a platinum print held at the National Media Museum here in the UK and was donated by the Royal Photographic Society, and appears to be a contact printed from two plates. The actual image size [71/2 x 91/2 inches] doesn't appear to conform to plate sizes, however one could assume there was some cropping of the print involved before it was mounted. 

Timelessness is the marque of great art, and I believe Frederick (hope he doesn't mind me being too familiar) has achieved it in spades. The image is perfect - I don't think there are many images you could apply that term to.
Frederick gave up photography altogether when the Russian Revolution halted supplies of Platinum and I think that says as much about the artist in him as you could write in ten thousand words.

Whilst reading up more about him I came upon some facts of note. One of Mr. Day's other asides was that he tried to educate young immigrants in the slums of Boston.

One of these was a Lebanese youth by the name of Kahlil Gibran.

That is a name that sort of stops one in one's tracks. Indeed in tootling around I found a photograph of him made by Frederick circa 1898 when Gibran would have been around the age of 15.

 

(Kahlil Gibran by Frederick Holland Day c.1898)

The dreaded Wikipedia states: "Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898."

It is all too easy to put two and two together and think that the 'publisher' was none other than Copeland & Day - Frederick's own publishing company, which was active from 1893 to 1899.

Anyway, you'll know the name of Gibran as the author of 'The Prophet' (published in 1923), and I think I shall leave it to him to round off today's FB.

Now you should really go outside and get the wind at your back and the sun on your face.
Take care.

Excerpt from The Prophet:

This would I have you remember in remembering me:

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.

It is not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?

Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else, 

And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.

The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,

And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.

And you shall see.

And you shall hear.

Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.

For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things.

And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.

Investigation On The Third

Greetings land-lubbers . . . well another week passes on the high seas and yesterday's dreams become yet another wave cresting a far-off horizon.
But I am troubled. Yer Cap'n really doesn't know why he wastes time with this 'ere Blog he really doesn't. Checking the ol' stats it appears that for every legitimate reader there's a dozen robots. And you know how I feel about them. So swab that deck before I kick the bucket over - I be in a mood and it is hard to get out of it.

***

This week's FB was going to be about something lightweight after the taxing excursions into square-ville of the last couple of weeks, but you know, I am not feeling so inclined . . so I'll still be square for one more week! Normal service will be resumed soon.

Last weekend, geed on by my own lyrical waxings about square photographs, I broke out the Rollei after not having used him in about 4 months and decided to see what I could see in a revamped dock area.

Years back it used to be warehouses and docks and now, because someone thought it was a good idea, it is housing and a hotel and shops and dentists and surveyors. Quite a change from the old docks of yesteryear and setting the scene nicely for the upcoming V&A.

The Tay is a wonderful and beautiful river, and as it enters the North Sea it widens to become something huge and powerful. It is tidal at Dundee and this partly explains the cities history as a major (and now semi-minor) port. The port was established in the middle-ages with a trans-continental trade in all things Scots but went on to become a major whaling port and from there into the Jute centre of the world.

The expanse of Dundee's former extensive dock area is hard to find these days as, when you come down off the Tay Bridge or when you come in via Riverside Drive and the Railway Station, the land you are moving over is actually largely reclaimed and was once dock.
You are moving over the memory of water.
Dock Street was just that, a street next to a dock

1928

1966

(1928 - this clearly shows the extent of the old docks - the red dot indicates the roof of the Caird Hall [and NO, it doesn't really have a big red dot on its roof . . I only say that because that is the sort of question I would ask].

1966 - less than 40 years and most of it is gone - the incoming spiral in the bottom right quadrant is the East-bound run-off from the newly built Tay Bridge. [Although un-credited, I do believe this to could be a Joe McKenzie photograph as he said that he was commissioned to photograph the road bridge from the air when it opened.])

Strangely, the river seems almost sanitised by its interaction with the edge of the city centre - to get a feel of its power you have to move upstream to the Rail Bridge and be patient as the traffic thunders past.

This is the best point to see the tide on the turn and it is really something else. As you can imagine, the bulk of the waters coming downstream on Britain's seventh longest river meeting with the power of the sea is not something to be taken lightly. Strangely though there isn't a mighty battle -  the surface of the river stills to an almost mill-pond calm that belies the fierce energies and currents moving under the surface. The tidal estuary current and the onward-flowing river forces meet and mingle and become something else, something that is changed and yet the same.

Photography can be this way too.

I spend a lot of time thinking about my craft. I think about images and technique, about cameras and light, about the upward-spiralling cost of making my little art pieces, about formats and film and permanence.

I find myself inspired by light and surroundings and I like my weekend mornings because I can usually get up early (especially at this time of year) and get out and photograph. I am very lucky, because I have an incredibly understanding wife who doesn't mind my early morning looning around and I can really immerse myself in the whole photographic process. I generally decide format the night before, pick up a camera and go. It is pure pleasure and a very fine way to spend an early morning.

During my excursions, I am, to put it poetically, transformed by light. I see something and I react intuitively to it. I know my craft and in having already put in the hours and hours of reading and photographing and developing and printing I am at the 'Joe Pass Stage', namely "learn it all and forget it all".

It frees you to react.

And when intuition doesn't work, sometimes I'll ponder and move around a bit and see how the subject looks in the viewfinder from a different perspective.

And when that still doesn't illicit anything, when I doubt everything, I have a little mantra that I use:

'Is this the world's most boring photograph?'

And you know, quite often, that little phrase halts the process just enough so you can think, 'Well, I've taken loads exactly the same as this and I haven't printed a single one.' And then I move on.

The world is ever changing, like the river. I am a surge of tidal movement and I am one with that world.

(Call the prose police . . . a crime has just been committed . . what a load of blarney eh?)

At the end of the day I just enjoy taking photographs for the simple fact that I am, to paraphrase Garry Winogrand: "curious to see how the world looks photographed."

Sometimes though, things look so incredibly strange that you are compelled to release the shutter no matter what your head and heart say. Such was the case with the photograph below.

I had been wandering around in a bitter wind and I had 3 of the Rollei's 12 frames left.
I saw these reflections and wandered closer and was struck by how three planes were fixed in one place: the doors and stairs on the far side of the centre; the reflection of the dock and the double image in the window. It wasn't an obvious subject at all. But my photographic-self got the better of me and I ended up making it anyway.
I don't think it would have worked half as well as a rectangular photograph (see how I managed to lever in the square theme there) - being square it has contained the space and concentrated the eye on the clear way through to the doors on the other side, which were just slightly off from the Rollei's lens axis.
It actually looked incredible in colour and I wish I had been using that, however this was Fuji Acros 100 at EI 100, developed in HC110 Dilution G for 19 mins at 21C. The exposure was 1/30th at f8. I placed the shadows on Zone IV. The result is a very smooth and fairly well graduated negative though a tad underexposed. I think my EI for this should be about 80.
Now although that is almost the end of this week's FB, please don't switch off your sets yet . . . the bit below is relevant!
Is there metaphor for being able to see clearly through obstructions by intuition in this photograph? Sounds a bit 'art-speak' to me, however when I came home and was thinking about it, I was listening to the music I mention below, and it struck a chord.

***

Some people, at times, can have an insight into what you are thinking and in some cases the words of a song or a book can exactly mirror your thoughts.

The following are some lyrics, in the original Italian and also with an English translation, by one of my favourite musical artistes, Mr.Franco Battiato. On the surface the music is strange and very very Italian, and I don't mean 'When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's Amore' . . . .

Franco's music touches all bases, running the gamut from cloying Italo-pop, through to rock with a progressive edge, through to choral masterworks and lieder. In other words what I admire most about him is that as an artist he is a complete man. He isn't pigeonholed. He does what he likes and if you like it too, then that is great. It is a difficult path to tread at any time, but especially these days and he is lucky in that he has transcended the need to impress and has an accepting audience. 

The only thing I will say is that my ears and his have drifted apart in recent years, I actually prefer his albums when he was working with the programmer and keyboard player Filippo Destrieri.

Anyway, this track is off his album Caffé De La Paix.

Ricerca Sul Terzo (Investigation On The Third)

Mi siedo alla maniera degli antichi Egizi

Coi palmi delle mani

Dolcemente stesi sulle gambe

E il busto eretto e naturale

Un minareto verso il cielo

Cerco di rilassarmi e abbandonarmi

Tanto da non avere più tensioni

O affanni.

Come se fossi entrato in pieno sonno

Ma con i sensi sempre più coscienti e svegli

E un grande beneficio

Prova il corpo, il cuore e la mia mente

Che spesso ai suoi pensieri m'incatena

Mi incatena.

Somma la vista

Ad occhi chiusi

Sottrai la distanza

E il terzo scoprirai

Che si espande e si ritrova

Dividi la differenza.

◊◊◊◊◊◊

I sit in the manner of the ancient Egyptians

The palms of the hands softly resting on the legs

And the torso erect and natural,

A minaret pointing to the sky

I try to relax and abandon myself,

To lose all tension

And anxiety

As if I had entered a deep sleep

But with senses ever more awake and aware

A great sense of well-being

Pervades the body, the heart and my mind

That so often chains me to its thoughts,

It chains me.

Add vision

With closed eyes,

Subtract distance

And discover a third state of being

That expands and returns.

Divide the difference.

(Translation © Gerald Seligman/EMI Records)

http://www.battiato.it

I love that last stanza:

Add vision with closed eyes; subtract distance and discover a third state of being that expands and returns. Divide the difference.

Pure magic!

Ciao Bambinos. Stay Square!