an occasional blog about framing, photography, art, and living with an analogue mind in a digital age…
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare”
With apologies for opening a post with a repeated quote, but I think it’s entirely appropriate.
The last year or so, in an attempt to escape the various lockdowns, we’ve taken to walking.
Not just walking, you understand, I mean, we’ve been walking ever since we moved on from the toddling stage, but proper boots-on, follow-a-map type walking.
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” ― Robert Hughes
I imagine many of us occasionally have those feelings that we’re out of our depth, that we don’t know what we’re doing, or we’re out of control and being carried along against our will or judgement. Most of the time these feelings are momentary. We attempt to regain control and move on, but what happens to our creativity during these periods of doubt? And what if those periods are not fleeting, but consistent, long term and debilitating?
Following on from the previous post which described the darkness that Don McCullin feels from his years of bearing witness to the worst of humanity, and how those dark feelings are alleviated, just a little, by photographing the land, or creating classical still life compositions, I wanted to explore a little more the idea of how our mental state might affect, and be affected by, our photography.
I’m a big fan of square photos, it’s long been my favourite format, but I’m increasingly finding that there’s something about the panoramic format that appeals to me.
You may have read my earlier post about my first foray into pinhole photography. It’s no accident that my self-built pinhole camera utilises the panoramic format.
I’ve long fancied getting my hands on a nice Hasselblad x-pan and a couple of lenses, but my wallet just won’t stretch to that, so my little wooden “x-pin” is as close as I’ll get for the foreseeable future.
Now, I know that digital technology makes creating big panoramas relatively easy by stitching multiple images together, but really, if you’ve read anything on this blog you’ll know that’s just not me. The mere thought of spending that long at a computer screen puts me in a cold sweat. It’s not a facet of photography that I will ever enjoy, so I’ll leave it to those who do. I will concede though, to a brief dalliance with panoramic cropping. It’s quick and easy, and can sometimes throw up an intriguing composition. Continue reading “playing with panoramas”
It must have been around five years ago that I decided to build a pinhole camera.
I’d come across this website:
http://www.teamdroid.com/diy-high-capacity-panoramic-pinhole-camera/
which sparked my interest, so using the plans on the site as a guide, but making a few minor adjustments, I set about cutting, shaping, sanding, gluing, drilling and painting.
I used 6mm MDF for the outer shell, and 6mm “mighty-core” foam board for the internals, making quite a sturdy little box. A simple winding mechanism pulls the 120 film in front of a piece of thin brass shim, which I hand-drilled with a 0.25mm drill held in a pin chuck.
With the 0.25mm diameter hole, and a distance from pinhole to film of 40mm, the f/stop according to Mr Pinhole’s calculator is f160.
A steel washer is glued onto the front of the brass shim in a recess on the front of the box, and a “memo board” type magnet fits snuggly into the recess as a shutter. Continue reading “pinhole photography – my first attempt”
Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk
Some years ago, when I had delusions of being an adequate photographer, I was given the opportunity to shoot a corporate calendar for my employer. You see, I’d made such a fuss about the quality of the previous year’s effort that I think they decided it was the only way to shut me up. Late 2003 it was. My deadline was very tight, but I managed to deliver a dozen nicely exposed 6×6 slides of moderately interesting views, and even got involved with the graphic designer on the layout. In truth, the print quality of the final calendar didn’t do me any favours, but that was well beyond my control, and having sold a number of the images as framed cibachrome prints, I’m happy in the knowledge that my personal quality control was up to standard. It was a fun project, and I wrote an article describing the experience and speculatively sent it off to Amateur Photographer magazine. Joy of joys, it was published, and only slightly edited. Surely I was now set… the big league beckoned… a stellar career in calendar photography, or journalism, or both, was a certainty…
Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk Originally published 30/12/12
Have you tried “on-demand publishing” yet?
It’s an oft-quoted fact that people no longer print their photos. We live in an age when anyone and everyone is a photographer, and you can upload the most banal photograph of your breakfast to a potential global audience before you’ve rubbed the sleep from your eyes, but people just don’t print their photos, preferring to view them on a smartphone screen, brushing each image aside, glancing but not looking, seen but not digested, instant gratification, instantly forgotten, swipe, swipe, swipe… It seems the humble photo album, that printed link to our, and our family’s past, is now itself, a thing of the very past it used to celebrate. What a great shame that is. Continue reading “On-demand publishing”
Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk Originally published 16/04/13
It’s easy to see why aerial photography by the likes of Yann Arthus-Bertrand has become so popular. It’s probably the driving force behind the current rise in popularity of camera drones. There is something quite compelling about seeing “the earth from the air”. It’s a perspective we seldom see, and can be breathtaking.
However, remotely controlling a drone from terra-firma cannot possibly compare with actually being up there like the girl in the “nimble” ads… (ask someone who remembers the 1970s).
So, July 2012 and I’m in a big wicker basket suspended beneath a big red balloon. It was a warm, slightly hazy and remarkably still morning at Etchinghill. In fact, so little wind was there that, after drifting lazily this way and that trying to find some direction from breezes at varying altitudes, we eventually came back to earth on the same golf course from which we had taken off some 90 minutes earlier. Continue reading “Up, up and away”