Back Stage

Photographing literary events soon becomes repetitious and the photographs begin to always look the same. It’s difficult to find anything to shoot, anything other than the ordinary, which is also what’s generally wanted because the people on stage don’t do it every week. On the plus side, I do get to go to some extraordinary locations in Berlin.

Places I neither knew about nor even suspected existed.

The theatre Acker Stadt Palast  https://ackerstadtpalast.de/ in Berlin’s fashionable Mitte district is such a place. I have traversed Ackerstrasse on many occasions, albeit not so often recently, but never knew the theater existed.  A small live performance space hidden behind a large front door in the second/third Hinterhof at number 169. Acker Stadt Palast is a small renovated flashback to Berlin as it was about twenty odd years ago.

As soon as I went backstage to stow some gear I knew I had to photograph the performers dressing room. All I needed was an interesting person to make the image complete. A very real benefit in being the official photographer is you can ask anybody to pose and they are generally happy to oblige. In this instance it’s the poet William Cody Maher who was reading that night and who was also perfect for the picture I had in mind.

http://www.williamcodymaher.com/html/poems.html

The colour version is what I saw in my mind and what motivated me to shoot the picture in the first place, whereas the B&W version is more suited to William Cody’s poetry, which is why I included it.

In the end it doesn’t matter which one is preferred for I am very pleased with both.

Canon 6D, 50mm, f1.4, 2000asa.

At The Cinema

Yesterday I went to the movies for the first time in a very long time to see Dune. I’d been waiting for the film for a months, having heard all the hype and watched the trailer I was excited because it was here.

Originally todays blog was going to be about my opinion of Dune, but let’s face it, I’m a photographer, not a film critic.

However, while thinking about critiquing the film, I remembered telling a cameraman at one of the zoom events I’ve had to photograph this past year that I really didn’t need to make new photographs for my blog, because I already had a photograph for anything I would want to write about, and it seems this may even be true.

It’s OK having a picture that relates to what I want to write about, but finding it in my semi-chaotic filing system can be a problem that takes time.

In this instance I knew what picture I needed. I had photographed the Odeon cinema in London’s Holloway district back in 1999, but never having had a need to use the images in 22 years meant the negatives could be just about anywhere.

As it turned out my old negative filing system was sad, but finding the negs was not that difficult..

I’m not sure why I wanted to shoot the theatre back then, or why I went back a couple of times to do so, but I did.

What? I ask myself now, was I trying to do with the hand-held night shots? 

I don’t remember, it was 22 years ago.  I do remember shooting the cinema during  the day and thinking, no, this needs to be a night shot. In all, for whatever reason I photographed this cinema I used two rolls of film, which for me is a lot on a mildly interesting building,.

As for Dune, it was OK. It’s a known space opera, the plot, is never going to change.Sadly the characters seem as underdeveloped and implausible in this version as they did in the first, which was a huge flop. Version two is better, but ………

Todays photos were shot with a Bronica SQA using Kodak T-Max asa 400.

Working Accidentally

With the improvement in my arm I’ve been playing with the NIK Analog Camera Efex filter I stumbled upon earlier in the week. I wouldn’t like people to think I spend half my life just watching photography videos on Youtube and the other half applying the techniques I’ve learned.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In my free time, after I’ve finished applying the techniques I’ve learned, I’m watching stand-up comedy on the Dry Bar Comedy channel.

On YouTube channels the presenters exhaustively explain everything they do, which makes sense, since you need to know what and why they’re doing things, whereas in I have no idea how I end up where I do. I do know what will result from each individual step, but knowing visually what I’m after in the finished product is not part of my process.

I subscribe to Dianne Arbus’s mantra, “It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize“.

But it isn’t originality I’m after in a picture, more an extension or furtherance of what we already know.

In this photo I started out (I think) with the multiple exposure option and got a weird result, which I liked, so continued on without wondering where it would lead me.

One of the things I really liked about shooting analogue was that every now and again an accident would result in an interesting picture. The processing of this photo was much the same because I found the end result by accident.

I didn’t know what I was doing but I liked what I was seeing.

The photo was shot in Vienna in 2016. While holidaying in the city I saw this woman at various locations on different days, same dress and she was always down low shooting up, her style I guess.

The idea to re-process the image came about as a reaction to a photo shared on my FB steam of a female photographer lying on her back, on her backpack in an effort to get the right angle for her photo. Needing to go one better I dug up the this image to fine-tune for FB in Photoshop. But in between the finding and the fine-tuning of the photo I watched the medium format video that led me to multiple exposure filters that was the start of this image’s journey.

The original:

Canon 5D, 50mm, f3.5

Focusing

Naturally social media algorithms instantly recognized that I am back looking at YouTube videos so my email inbox has begun to swell with recommendations for things that would surely interest me. One of these was from Piximperfect, a YouTuber I had followed until about a year and a half ago.

Just before the virus struck I was experiencing a lot of pain in my right arm, much the same as those who suffer from Carpal tunnel syndrome. The pain was due to overuse of the mouse, or, in my case, graphic pen. My doctor informed me that the arm needed to rest for 18months at least. Then came the pandemic, work dried up so there was no real need to spend endless hours on the computer.

I had watched this guy from Piximperfect almost from the beginning of his YouTube career, when he only had a small laptop, mouse, plain wall as background and truckloads of both skill and charisma. I think he is a wonderful teacher and as he has 3.2 million subscribers I guess I’m not alone with my opinion. Like most of us I tend to ignore suggestions from SM posts, but I’m doing some re-learning, so why not? I had 9 minutes to spare.

I hate noise in pics, but I hate over-sharpened images even more and sharpening tends to increase noise. The process he demonstrated interested me so I downloaded the action  to test it. For subtle amounts of sharpening it worked well on the few images I applied it to.

In today’s pic it might be hard to see at this resolution but the image on the left has been through the process and is clearly better.

The photo was shot with a medium format Pentax 6×7. To get the background I wanted the tripod had to be mounted on the unstable 4 meters long table, which meant I had to lie on the table to focus and make the shot. Wanting a very shallow DoF meant stopping down to f2.4, leaving no room for focusing error. But with film you never know what you have until the neg is developed. In this case the sharpest point was the fingers, about 5- 10 centimeters forward of the face. The technique fixed the soft focus around the eyes and eyebrows without adding any noticeable grain.

If you use PS it is definitely worth the time it takes to watch the vid.

Pentax 6×7 MkII, 105mm, f2.4, FOMAPAN 200, hand developed in my bathroom with Rodinal

Learning Curves

For more than 10 years now I have had the Nik filter suit, and I often use both, Silver Efex Pro, Colour Efex Pro, sometimes Viveza, but rarely the other apps in the collection.

However, two days ago, bored but feeling like I needed to brush up on some forgotten skills I started watching “how to” videos on YouTube when I noticed a video on how to make a digital photo look like it was shot with a medium format camera. It wasn’t long before I realised the video was about the Brenizer effect, a technique sort of invented by a wedding photographer named Rayn Brenizer.

I knew about this process and have been using it for years, often with great results, although at other times the results were weird but wonderful. It is a great technique for portraits.

Does the effect really look like medium format? Almost, but not to the educated eye. However, it does give a good approximation of what one would expect from the larger formats.

To cut to the chase, having nothing to do I continued watching the vid and towards the end the guy mentioned that Analog Efex 2 in the Nik suit had really good borders and other cool masks that mimicked medium format images. As I have already mentioned, I’ve been using Nik filters for a decade but this came as a surprise to me. Must be in the new NIK 4 version, I rationalised.

Or was it? My version is the free version Google gave away when it bought/acquired Nik, but as it’s the full version I thought it was worth checking out. Besides, I’m on pandemic time, so time is what I have plenty of.

Yes, the free version does have all the same bells and whistles as the new Analog Efex 4, I just never knew where to look.

The moral of the story is always keep looking and learning because it’s amazing how much one forgets and how much more there is still to learn, no matter how much you already know.

This pic was processed with Analog Efex using the plate camera and border filter .

Canon 6D, 24mm, f1.4 ISO100

Reading

I’ve just finished reading the opening chapters from Kim S. Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and a very depressing read it is. It’s been slotted into the SF genre because it’s set in the future (2025) arguably dystopian, a  well researched fictional version of what our world could look like if we don’t do anything to stop climate change. It’s really about this planet’s near future, ostensibly because society doesn’t have the will to change. It’s also generally agreed that we’re already in the slippery downward slope where major effects may be mitigated but not stopped.

I suppose climate disasters are a bit like airplane crashes, we read about them happening to people in another part of the world and are shocked, sad, but confident it won’t happen to us.

10% of the coastal and low lying areas destroyed doesn’t sound too bad if you don’t live near the coast.

Food shortages for 20% of the worlds population is worrying, but like the air disaster victims, the bulk of the developed world’s population figure it won’t be them that do the suffering.

No, it’s best to have a positive future outlook for when the pandemic is over, or if things do get bad, very few really expect themselves to be amongst the starving billions.

Books make one think and broaden one’s understanding of people, society and the world. Sadly, more people rely on this particular medium for their information than they do from well researched books and periodicals.

The photo was shot at a truck stop in outback Australia in 2003.

There is no tree for 500kms.

Canon EOS 5, Fujifilm Superia 200asa

More of the Doll’s Story

… continuing on with the Doll Story; the real difficulty was working out a way to make pictures  where the dolls were involved with each other and to permeate the images with the potential for violence, difficult because they’re static plastic things. It was the obvious built- in problems which made the project very interesting from both a technical and intellectual perspective. Naturally, just like in the movies, a suspension of disbelief is required to engage with the work, after all I’m telling a fictional story, not reconstructing reality. From my perspective I need to have faith in the audience’s ability to intelligently deconstruct the graphic content otherwise the entire project is senseless. Problematically, the greatest hurdle to overcome was, and still is, my ambition to create an engaging narrative without words, not even an introduction, just the photographs. While deep down I still believe that a complex narrative is possible using photographs, so far it hasn’t worked.

As a writer friend told me: words will introduce the reader to both what is going to happen and why – as well as giving them a reason to continue.

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, which may be true, but is seems the plural, pictures, still needs a few hundred words to explain why you don’t need the thousands more.

Canon EO5, Kodak Tri-X 400asa, 50mm with extension tube, all lighting with table lamps

A Doll’s Story

Back before digital everything was a thing I would conceive a project, then spend endless hours setting up a photo, shooting it carefully, slowly considering every shot before exposing the frame. Then came the developing, drying, proofing before a negative could be selected for printing. It was a rare event when I shot 36 frames from a scene, developed the roll of film, proofed it and printed a few photos all in the same day. The process was long, required both commitment and, because it used costly consumables, a lot of thought .

I have always liked projects.

This image is from a project with the working title, A Doll’s Story. The story is about domestic violence and while it’s obvious that the main characters are dolls and that everything is a set up, the theory is that substituting dolls for real people makes it more subtle and therefore the subject matter is approachable to a wider audience. How effective this theory is is debatable, as most people I’ve shown the images to reacted negatively, asking why I concentrate on such depressing subjects, to which I generally answered, ‘Ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away, it may make you more comfortable because you don’t have to think about what’s going on, whereas the victims of domestic violence are generally vulnerable, forced to live with both the constant fear and pain of mental and physical abuse and they need help.’

 I used a male and a female doll because it conforms to stereotypical norms, whereas I knew if I used dolls of children, I would have outraged and alienated almost everybody, which is not what I am seeking to do.

The dolls are 12cm high and a desk lamp supplied all my lighting needs.

I often wonder how we managed to do the work we did with such primitive tools but then there were so few really affordable alternatives that our options were very limited

Canon EOS 5, Tri-X, asa 400, I think I was using a 50mm with an extension tube.

Back before digital everything was a thing I would conceive a project, then spend endless hours setting up a photo, shooting it slowly, carefully considering every shot before exposing the frame. Then came the developing, drying, proofing before a negative could be selected for printing. It was a rare event when I shot 36 frames from a scene, developed the roll of film, proofed it and printed a few photos all in the same day. The process was long, required both commitment and, because it used costly consumables, a lot of thought .

I have always liked projects.

This image is from a project with the working title, A Doll’s Story. The story is about domestic violence and while it’s obvious that the main characters are dolls and that everything is a set up, the theory is that substituting dolls for real people makes it more subtle and therefore the subject matter is approachable to a wider audience. How effective this theory is is debatable, as most people I’ve shown the images to reacted negatively, asking why I concentrate on such depressing subjects, to which I generally answered, ‘Ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away, it may make you more comfortable because you don’t have to think about what’s going on, whereas the victims of domestic violence are generally vulnerable, forced to live with both the constant fear and pain of mental and physical abuse and they need help.’

 I used a male and a female doll because it conforms to stereotypical norms, whereas I knew if I used dolls of children, I would have outraged and alienated almost everybody, which is not what I am seeking to do.

The dolls are 12cm high and a desk lamp supplied all my lighting needs.

I often wonder how we managed to do the work we did with such primitive tools but then there were so few really affordable alternatives that our options were very limited

Canon EOS 5, Tri-x asa 400 I think I was using a 50mm with an extension tube.

Memory Lane

While wandering down memory lane I made a few prints of these old pics, which made me a little nostalgic for the Good Old Days of photography. Only they weren’t, were they, really?

The technological advantages of new modern-day equipment makes life just so much easier.

Low light, no problem, up the ISO to 12,000asa, problem solved.

Underexposed, lift the exposure in PS.

Speed lights that work independently of each other, controlled at the camera, please, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

But there are caveats.

During the early part of my digital transformation the majority of pictures I presented for display looked like paintings, as this one (shot in 2006) does.

The painterly look was a very common theme in my work at the time.

Even my street work often had a very Edward-Hopper-like look.

While the above photo was set up and styled to appear earlyish 20^th century, the painterly look comes from the camera and I would argue, that although the length of the exposure may have contributed,  it’s the lack of the cameras dynamic range that’s central to the final image(sure, it was only 6megs and not the current 20,30,40megs file size)

It could all be put down to my style as well, but the technology at the time was partial to this type of work, whereas I doubt I could get the same look with my current equipment.

Nikon D70, f9.5, 1/3sec ISO200, Tungsten lighting