The photographer as collector (or, my camera collection is safe ... for now)

What are photographers if not collectors? I’m not entirely sure what it is that they collect: memories, maybe, visual imprints from the world, the action of light on objects, the list goes on.

I read an editorial this week promoting the virtues of reducing one’s worldly possessions. It’s a familiar refrain of today: throw out the things you’ve not used in a year and you will be lighter physically and emotionally. Continue to live life with this philosophy and you will be happier.

Please take this blog entry with a piece of salt, for I am an inveterate hoarder. I do wonder, however, whether there isn’t something very deep-rooted in our desire to keep stuff. Objects help to build our identities and foster memories. They offer a sense of touch, sight and smell that can trigger Proustian moments. Many we associate with particular times in our lives, and some we are compelled to keep through the social contract of the gift.

I wonder if this compulsion doesn’t connect to a much bigger cultural endeavour: the attempt to vanquish our mortality. It is often said that our museums and galleries are simply repositories of efforts to produce something that will out-live - and therefore mark the existence of - their makers. Statues are clearly commemorative and self-aggrandising, but what if a whole gamut of cultural objects weren’t essentially doing the same thing? Does not what we do on a small level in our homes echo this social compulsion to leave a mark? To postpone the inevitable?

It is true that, like many photographers, I have an somewhat unwieldy collection of cameras. I might not exactly be looking for a grand justification to keep them, but, perhaps with the above in mind, I might postpone any drastic cull for a little longer.

Can you say why you love black and white film in one image? The gallery (part 2)

I asked the question and the Twitter photography community answered.

I have already published ‘part one’ of this gallery (see the post here). Such was the quantity and quality of answers that I felt compelled to make a ‘part two’, and here it is.

I hope you enjoy these images as much as I did.

@mrdaveyoung, HP5 pushed two stops.

@dizd (Dizzy Cow)

@CanonF1 (Sergio Palazzi), FP4

@PanamStyle (Copyright Earl Dunbar)

@sammyzorba

@EMULSIVEfilm, Ashes to Dust, Eastman Double-X @ 1800

@lmstevensphoto

@nigel_roberson6

@chris1729 (Chris Wright)

@DrMarsRover (Monika)

@mellonicoley

@jasjitphoto

@JohnScarbro1

@emulsionkid (Zach Schroeder)

@Trend2signif (Dr Al Dav)

@Nebacul (Ben K)

@StuM35mm (Stu Myers)

@viewfinder_m6 (Adrian Taylor)

@196photo (David Walster)

@SilverPanLab, HP5 @ 1600 developed in Microphen.

@pixelsonapage (Barry P)

@AukjeKastelijn, Tri-X pushed two stops.

@ozalba (Duncan Waldron)

@thisJasonSelf

Can you say why you love black and white film in one image? - The gallery (part 1)

The question is at once fertile and mischievous. Fertile because of the questions that it raises; mischievous because answering it is hopeless bordering on folly. As a black and white photographer, I know, to a point, why I like black and white film. I can begin to point to concrete things: grain, tonality, the gravitas of analogue, the philosophical frisson of the image imprint in silver. I can even come up with an image, or maybe two …. or of course more. Choosing but one is difficult.

So when I asked this question on Twitter recently, I sat back and watched the responses with pleasure. So many different, nay radically different, responses. I reminded myself that the photographers were trying to answer the question in just one image: this was ‘it’ for them, an essence, a core approach or love in a sea of possibilities.

Looking at the work, those other questions of which I write soon follow. Is it a black and white film portrait, or the person that is the object of the image maker’s interest? Is it that still life object rendered in film that seduces or is it still life on film more generally? Is it those streets / hills / trees on film or something more abstract again? Do we as viewers identify with black and white film first, or the genres of landscape, street, portraiture (and so on), and then film? Do we simply identify with the image because of its formal strengths, or because the making of it has some kind of significance (like the camera it was made on), or are there autobiographical factors (it was a happy time, a memory)? What role does the film stock play? Doubtless the answers are multi-faceted. All from that seemingly simple question.

Delighted by the response on Twitter, I decided to offer a home to the images. In fact, there are so many that I will be publishing a ‘part two’ in about a week’s time. I started out almost systematically trying to include all the responses to my original post, but the task became simply too big. So please find my humble attempt at a gallery below. It is doubtless coloured by my own eye, and has certainly been limited by the practicalities of contacting folks for image permissions and of putting it all together. Apologies if I’ve left you out, it is more by accident than design.

For simplicity, I have left the Twitter name to stand for the photographer’s name, especially where a proper name is legible from that. I’ve included proper names where it made sense to do so, and some photographers gave me more information (which I’ve added). Some people requested links to their sites (these are next to the names). If I have your name wrong, please get in touch and I’ll change it. The names of photographers published herein are also an assertion that the copyright of the image belongs to them.

I hope you enjoy seeing the images together like this (I certainly have), and please do look out for the gallery part two.

@AdamAnalogue

@NCMBianchi goshootit.net

@will_mallet

@carusb (Chris Rusbridge)

@RickKellerMD, Gravida, Cambo 4x5, Nikon 300mm f9, Ilford Delta 100

@Tinedo (Michael Zipser)

@SwoonTheMoon (Leah J)

@Givemeabiscuit (Sandeep Surmal)

@atlantean526 (David Henderson)

@DBloomsday (David S Allen)

@mparry1234 (Matt Parry)

@silentcar (Adam James)

@EugeneKCamera (Eugene Keogh)

@Hannah_forsyth, Kodak Tri-X

@JeremyCalow

@HenrySabio

@ntruj (Nick Trujillo)

@AndyClarkePhoto

@royfocke rofopho.de

@stevenelawson

@adiw1202 (Adi W)

@VintagePhotoCo (Rachel Brewster)

#TreePhotoGallery, Part 2

This week I'm pleased to present #TreePhotoGallery, Part 2.

In Part 1, I gathered together a fine selection of tree photographs by photographers on Twitter. The quantity and quality of submissions following my original call for work was so high that I promised a Part 2 - a promise I happily now keep.

I hope you enjoy the work. 

Tom Rayfield, Walk The Faded Line.

Tom's delicate piece cocks a snoot at the notion that central placement is to be avoided. The tonality is stunning: it allows the tree to be 'just' emergent; the viewer continues to do a double-take as the tree shimmers like a grey mirage. There is a tonal lesson too: the range is constrained in the middle values - but just look at its effect! Leading lines are at work from the bottom and the sides.

Matias Takala (@elfsprite), Lone Pine, Ilford HP5+ film.

Matias' image works on so many levels. What a fine juxtaposition of the vulnerable tiny growth in the foreground and the expansive water and forest behind. A successful landscape image so often stands or falls on the foreground-to-background relationship. Matias' image is a great example of how to get it right. 

Analoguephotolab (@analogue_photo), Orwocolour NC19 film.

I enjoy the pale tonality and somewhat humanoid-like posturing of Analoguephoto's trees. It's shot on Orwocolour, a film with an interesting history and idiosyncratic colour palette. I haven't tried it, but from what I've seen I imagine it isn't a film for all occasions. It's an excellent choice here.

Adi Taylor, Twisted, the Owler Tor Tree, Ilford Delta 100 film.

Great photos take great subjects and add photographic magic. That's exactly the case with Adi's image. Not only is the tree itself brimming with visual interest, but Adi's treatment adds fine tonality and careful composition. The square format can be quite a challenge, but here it reinforces the tree's stocky, powerful form.

Tim Dobbs, A Tree At Sunset, expired Fuji NPS 160 film.

Some photographs have the power to awaken senses other than just your vision. Tim's monochromatic piece does that for me: I sense a whiff of the early morning fresh air; or the cool rush of the day's end. The sun is carefully positioned, its light breaking through the branches just above the horizon. Like Tom's image above the tonality is subtle, and gives away more as the eye delves deeper and gets accustomed to the lower darkness.

Lina Forrester, Afternoon, freelensed with a 50mm lens and a Nikon D5300 camera.

A clever use of freelensing by Lina conveys the impression of wavering branches and fragile flowers in this poetic black and white photograph. It has something of a dream-like quality, a moment glimpsed but somehow not quite fixed, as a photograph should. Transience is key.

Sandeep Surmal, Southbank, London, Ilford SFX film with Infrared R72 filter.

I see so many infrared images in which the effect itself is dominant. They seem to say first and foremost: 'look how infrared transforms our visual world'. Sandeep's image uses the infrared effect, for sure, but it does more photographically, because the effect is in the service of the photo, not the other way around. With their leaves transformed, the trees mirror the lamp posts, leading our eye down the Southbank promenade. The partly ghostly people on the left add a lovely visual punctuation mark.

Lucy Wainwright, Fuji Superia 400 film.

Lucy's image is one which reminds me why I enjoy shooting film so much. It's hard to put into words, but the medium, with its bluish cast and gritty grain, add a gravitas to the struggle of the stalwart, gnarly tree. It's an image of survival: of steadfast resistance in the face of nature's unforgiving side.

A fine image to end a fine collection.

Here's a quick link to #TreePhotoGallery, Part 1 in case you missed it.

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Which developer for FP4+ film?

Here's a bit of fun.

I thought I'd run a little developer popularity contest, based on Pebble Project results and FP4+ film (which I have the most results for). I'm asking you to take a stab at your favourite using on-screen results, so no need to be too precious (of course, you may have your experiences to draw on too).

Results to follow!

P.S. Pebble Project gallery can be accessed under 'resources' on the main menu, or just click this link:

Pebble Project Gallery

The results of my Pebble Project tests to date now have a gallery. You will find it under the 'Resources' section of this site's menu. It puts all the results in one place, and offers both film scans and darkroom prints. You can click on each individual image for a larger version. Any further results that I share in blog posts will be added here too. I hope this will make the gallery a useful resource.

If you have been tuning in to this project, you will notice that I have added some scans and prints of other film and developer combinations. The addition of HP5+ and Delta 100 Professional here suggest the structure of my thinking for films to explore.

If you are mainly interested in the visual aspect of the tests, you may want to head over to the gallery now to take a look. What follows are some technical details and corrections for those interested in such matters, or who want to actively use the recipes explored.

Darkroom Prints

When making the darkroom prints, I was able to standardise at contrast grade 2.5 and aperture f5.6.  I used Ilford's Multigrade paper. It was not possible to print every negative for the same time, of course, due to differing exposures and hence negative densities. This then demands a standardisation procedure, and inevitably judgements - my personal judgements - come into play. I decided to print to the first hint of very pale, 'almost white' tone in the central lower small stone. I plan to do some tests with Multigrade Warmtone, which will necessitate changes in exposure times once again due to the different ISO of the paper (roughly half the speed of 'standard' Multigrade).

Adjustments and errors

I came up with quite a list originally with which to offer some interpretations of my first results (grain, midtone contrast, sharpness, and so on). The list itself was good, but I am now a little more philosophical about the comparisons.

Allowing for the fact that these are my results made with my own conditions and equipment (the old zone system caveat of the individual nature of test results), it strikes me now that tonality is the most obvious category of general applicability. The tonal comparisons that the gallery has to offer are broadly good, and I would expect you to get results not unlike mine if you followed the same film and developer recipes.

Making inkjet prints from scans adds variables that are different from darkroom printing variables. Because I am somebody who makes both inkjet and darkroom prints from negatives, I wanted to explore both processes. Comparing darkroom prints to inkjet ones provided an object lesson in the role of the printer drivers and scanner. One could argue that comparisons of grain, sharpness and midtone contrast are still good within, but not across, systems (be it digital setup or darkroom).

I was already aware that exposure variations would impact on tonality. I took the decision to expose the Perceptol samples differently, for example, because it is a speed reducing developer. This is in line with normal exposure practice. Put differently, there is no universal standard of exposure even following ISO in a studio situation. As the zone system teaches, ISO is nothing but a starting point for an individual's exposure value. That said, I exposed the FP4+ sample at 100 ISO, which in box speed terms is a little additional exposure. The Delta 100 sample was similarly exposed at 100, thus making it slightly less exposed by comparison. This can be seen in the negatives. I have ruminated somewhat as to whether to continue to expose Delta 100 at 100, or to give it the extra exposure in line with FP4+.

Lastly, I must declare a good old fashioned mistake. I adjusted aperture in order to change the exposure (as mentioned in the Perceptol sample), but neglected to take this into account when thinking about sharpness and grain. The problem is that, when comparing samples containing aperture and thus exposure differences, you are looking first at differences in aperture, and only second at the role of the developer. Other than making more convoluted adjustments to the lighting strength (and thus introducing a new set of variations), I'm not sure how this can be avoided. Better to look on sharpness differences with this in mind.