Photography Pages » demesne

Contacts and Sunshine

TPP — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:28:58 +0000

Four rolls of this PlusX 125, contacted. They’re a bit heavy, deliberately. It’s easier to pick out the detail when they’re darker. One more roll in this batch to be developed, when the new chems arrive.

These are the 4 rolls of Agfa Vista exposed at Easter and contacted especially for my meeting today. We agreed that it’s not particularly important to publish straight away. That immediate bang-bang live blogging imperative driven largely by digital and our willingness to consume large amounts of things of relatively low significance (me too, of course), is something I’m trying to avoid in this part of my practice. Incubation, gestation and timing of delivery. Crucial.

Colour negative film makes for lovely monotone prints, especially on fibre paper. The blacks are softer; it’s all low contrast stuff. Fitting for the subject matter. Someday my prints will come. Well, I’ll do them myself, but that pun is irresistible.

Three super-quick morning sun prints as a gift for my lunch companion. They really could have been exposed for double the time, but the light between 0800 and 0930 right here, was lovely, and just enough. Doing this is like scooping up the light in one’s hands and holding it, lightly, with the leaf, or feather, or whatever it is. Sharing the exquisite coastal light that falls against my skin each morning feels quite special.

There’s quite a bit more cameraless photography to show, but of course it needs scanning, or photographing, and it’s boxed, awaiting the right time. The portfolio website is being rebuilt, so they’ll appear there, but perhaps you’d like to see the before pictures, like these above? Or maybe see them as pairs? Just thinking aloud…Similar Posts:

Today in the Darkroom

TPP — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:33:56 +0000

When I was here, back in February, one of the actions of self-preservation was a resolve to print and print and print. More about that critical period soon, but emerging, I’ve come to feel rather deeply that the work is of no consequence unless it is printed.

This one’s still in the wash: beneath a running hose maybe a cm below the surface.

The paper had lots of irritating little faults in it: black smudgy spots like a felt tip pen mark, but just under the surface. And a couple of the negatives I’d wanted to print turned out to have strange tiny holes, or were scratched. It’s been frustrating. But to some extent darkrooms can be frustrating places: it’s part of what makes it all worth doing.

So on the whole, I’m rather pleased, it’s been a good day’s work. It’s the long term project.

Everything else I’m doing fits into this.

The denes, the salters’ and pilgrims’ lanes, places where people were once very busy, but are no more. Land that’s ready to be something else, or isn’t ready at all. Two earlier pieces of this work, printed at the beginning of March are in Darlington Media Group’s members’ exhibition, which opens on 17th. It has been wonderful working with photographers again.

The paper is Ilfospeed semi-matt fibre paper, a heavy curl with the convex side the sensitive surface. It’s matt, nothing semi- about it, and it’s just right for this. The colour is much less sepia, more black & white than this, and the right size and shape for those who’re looking for submissions of an A3 print for an exhibition.

Relieved? I’ll say.

Would you like to see more of these? Digital photographs or scans of proper prints?Similar Posts:

On Blizzards

TPP — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:28:21 +0000

Earlier:

#uksnow SR7 10/10Similar Posts:

Schauer

TPP — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:08:08 +0000

Released from the tyranny of a prescribed medium, it’s lovely to revisit the easy pleasure of 35mm colour negative film, and keen readers will know that this tends to get processed in the cheapest local minilab, and in one hour. Straight off the boat/bus travel combination, and it’s hard to describe the delightful frisson of anticipation familiar to anyone who uses film, of the moments, hours, sometimes days between delivering the canisters and collecting the developed film.

Schauer is close to frisson but also watery, the needles-on-the-skin feeling of an envigorating yes, shower, or waterfall, so says my Langenscheidts, which spent the week resting lightly and without disturbance on the kitchen table in England. Could be it translates more closely to the Dutch chickenskin – goosebumps. It’s the first time in Germany without a dictionary since childhood, and the immersion felt as comforting as did surrendering independent travel for the safety of a supported visit.

Also there’s schauder – to shudder or shiver, possibly with recognition, and schau – an exhibition or show. Hmm.

My German hosts are some of the most travelled people ever, so they certainly know something about linguistic immersion. (The serenely accommodating Maiers may themselves be the subject of a documentary piece by a local newspaper journalist, who had connected with us via a piece of artwork redolent with Seaham seaside artifacts.)

This family’s photo archive contains a series of small black and white photos of one small child, who ran happily to play skipping games at a kindergarten in Rinteln in the early 50s. There are no photos unfortunately, of Dessau or Wittenberg in the early 1990s, although the associated work diaries and daybooks are in storage somewhere. More to come on all of this, including some interim results from these rolls of film, plus a roll of TMax shot in Stuttgart, to be processed in the darkroom at No 7 in coming days.

The intention behind the photos I hope will represent a feeling of kennzeichnende Bedeutungslosigkeit which is to say almost remote, almost abstract, though pictorial compositions, clean lines and unfussy but with emotional warmth. Possibly it is characteristic insignificance: imbued with meaning, and at the same time free of specific geographical signifiers. Now there’s a dialectic! As often happens, the concept grows with the work. So we shall see. Frisson indeed.Similar Posts:

There’s No Place Like Home

TPP — Sun, 03 May 2009 09:54:30 +0000

Yesterday’s response from Michael Ormerod’s daughter on the competition winners we’ve featured here reminded me to post my 2008 entry. Click though to see a slide show.

Interesting visual serendipidy with the psychogeography post.

I like these photos. Maybe that’s the trick: to revisit your negatives in 12 months’ time. For the gadgetheads amongst you – it’s an elderly V series with turret finder, difficult to focus and helps you to take your time, which is always good. And it’ll be some expired Kodak colour neg, the yellow boxed stuff. Digitalab’s special discount £1 a roll days, probably. Cut price competition entering, then.Similar Posts:

Dig Where You Are

TPP — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:53:48 +0000

A long time ago, Myra Connell wrote a short story about a woman sitting in a railway carriage imagining the lives of those around her and dreaming thoughts of turf and territory, of land and home, as the wheels sped through the countryside.

Of late there’s been a bit of a buzz about psychogeography. To some extent, all the very best of the modern wave of landscape photographers are telling their life stories, their autobiographies. Not the pretty picture landscapes, not the sunscapes or the stunning mountain views. Although perhaps them too, yes.

One wet day this winter last, in an attempt to find some of the houses where I used to live, a sudden storm blew gusty rain into my eyes and this piece was found, later.

As a representation of the house, of a certain style of suburban architecture, Google Street View surely does it better. But this day, this night, photographing on that corner, in that rain, is personal. This corner once looked upon, looked into my personal space, where I slept.

This is where I first heard that Diana had died, where one night I fell and knocked myself out cold on the staircase, where my son hit an emotional and traumatic high. Things happened. Big things, life changing. Irrevocably, unalterably, nothing would be the same. It was a house of the cusp, of the tipping point.

This one isn’t my house. I never lived here. It’s in Scotswood in Newcastle, where the council has torn down street after street of graceful Victorian terraces because it didn’t like their inhabitants.

I once lived in house like it, though. And its destruction is a better metaphor for digging where we all were then, than the other neat double-fronted with its grassy verge. One theory was that if you had a patch of grass between the pavement and the road in your street, then you’d really made it. Scotswood has all grass and all pavement now, and bright sunny days filled with emptiness. Nobody made it.

This is the first in an occasional series where I’ll dig where I am. It might be rooted in the now, or in place far off in time, or in geography. Like Myra’s train journey, we are not dependent upon a sense of place, but place might define who we are in some way, tangible and intangible.

We shall see.Similar Posts:

Last of the London Darkrooms

TPP — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:24:42 +0000

There’s a debate in several places on the internet about whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that these darkrooms are now all closing or closed. Nice that someone, somewhere is running against this trend.

This is a postcard from the wall of a collaborative art piece called “I Wish…”

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Joycean Walking

TPP — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:06:36 +0000

Photos using a new point-and-click camera on its first walkabout yesterday. I didn’t take these photographs mind, still preoccupied greatly by its film version. More on both of these to come, although fear not, this site isn’t going to turn into a gadgetboy camera fan site, no siree.

And while posting these, into the event horizon that is a Firefox live RSS reader came this goodie:

It’s Bloomsday tomorrow and I am celebrating with a walk in Newcastle UK . I have generated a walk based upon the lotus eaters section of James Joyce ’s Ulysses. This is made possible by Conor McGarrigle Joycewalks interface which uses the googlemaps api. This is part of the 1000 Joyce walks event.Sctv, TransitLab, Jun 2008

And testing this new thingummybob which reblogs, found on Sctv’s page linked there above. Not sure yet. About either the camera or the reblog button. The Lotus Eating style walking is definitely going to happen, sadly without the substances. Come along, if you can.Similar Posts:

Cost of an Undergraduate Photography Degree (part 2)

TPP — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:05:46 +0000

…of which part 1 is here.

So, having made some initial estimates, it looks to be between £10,000 and £18,000 over the two years of a Foundation Degree. Then if you want a BA, there’s Year 3, which should add another £5-9,000 minimum. So we’re talking in the region of £15-27,000 and that’s without travel, accommodation, living expenses. Are you shocked?

I know I must have missed things, and immediately I save the Excel file to web, there’s something else. I could add all sorts of bits of equipment, batteries, chargers, filters, processing chemistry and whatnot, but some of these can be borrowed at some colleges, whilst at others, film processing is free and film is provided. Oh and there is the cost of producing a portfolio and a final show, each of which could add another £500 – £1000 to the totals, but you’d do those anyway, wouldn’t you?

Not included in the spreadsheet are commutes, lunches, clothing: all that you’d have to pay for anyway, unless you were completely under- or un- employed.

Tell me what’s missing, what is different at your course, what you think is too expensive etc, and I’ll redo it, but on the whole that looks to be a pretty reasonable first attempt. What d’you think?Similar Posts:

Derelict

TPP — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:52:36 +0000

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