Links for December 14th to December 28th

• moominstuff: E-2 slide film home processing!!! – E2 processed in Diafine & a C41 colour dev pack or some description. Nice results.
• British Journal of Photography – Learning experience – Why do a photography course? With this man, no question it’s a good idea. Would there were more of him. Linked to this twice, it seems. Good.
• Harvey Benge: PARRWORLD – social commentary or sneering criticism? – But what does Harvey really think? And what do I really think?
• Joe Cornish talks about Peter Dombrovskis – and blows his own mind in the process. Nice film from Tim Parkin
• Reality TV: CCTV photographed by David Dunnico – a documentary photographer from Manchester in the UK
• Landmarks – Photographs from David Dunnico’s exhibition ‘Landmarks’ : modern buildings in Manchester
• barber shops of durham county | Photo book preview – Black & white photographs from the other, newer Durham.
• 25 Potential Weapons Descending In Order Of Desperation by Mark Page | By Mark Page | Category: Fine Art Photography | Blurb – And while we’re at it, Mark’s Book. Now available from Impressions in Bradford.
• Manchester Photography.: FESTIVE ROGUES GALLERY 2009 – A gallery of photos of people who follow Mark Page’s blog: photographers, mainly. Click through all the links. Top work in there. Thank you Mark.
• Page not found – Shawn Blanc – “The truth is, I strategically deleted what you wsere looking for”. Wonderful. Describes my Flickr account exactly.
• The James Natchwey Internship: Follow Up | Harrington & Smith « jamie’s list – “in the world’s wealthiest nation, about only 10-15 percent of the population can afford these unpaid internships. Odds are that the 10-15% of you who can actually afford these unpaid internshi”
• The curse of ‘Man and baby’: Athena, and the birth of a legend – This Britain, UK – The Independent – “It took only 20 minutes to shoot, and became the biggest selling poster in British history. This week, a print comes to auction 21 years after the original negative was created. Behind the image is a tale of excess, addiction and tragedy.”
• 28stories: London College of Communication MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography 2009 – “They are a very impressive group of modern, adaptable communicators who work with creativity and professionalism, both as individuals and collectively and they have made my job exciting and rewarding. I’m sad to see them move on but enormously proud to invite you to enjoy their ‘28 stories’.” John Easterby, head of the course.
• POLAPREMIUM – :: NEWyorkiSh :: – Submit a Polaroid to NY’s Times Square. Submissions had to be received by December 20th, worth keeping an eye on all this polaroid stuff. 2010 will be a good year!

Photographs taken whilst awaiting a bus opposite a cold and empty St John’s Sq redevelopment. Minus 2 degrees that night.Similar Posts:

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Shot on an big rattling old Mamiya RB with a 6×7 back, to demonstrate some kind of acuity with low key portraits, and hand developed and printed. Shelley is one of the lynchpin soundmakers in the women’s drumming band The Bangshees, photographed only three years ago.

If we were to do it again, there’d be a second light at low level behind her, just to create a halo around her left shoulder. A rim light.Similar Posts:

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These caravan parks, draped like UPVC necklaces all along the coast, will be humming by now. Schools have finally broken up for the summer. No lollipop wardens on our streets, stranger than normal daytime TV, fewer cars on the road. There must be other benefits, but I can’t think of any.

These were taken back in December, when sublime peace reigned supreme. It is easy to see the appeal. The views over a damp north sea are extraordinary.

In process of renewing a love affair with this 6×6 camera. More to come, including a visit to some soon-to-be-gone local architecture and the refurbished Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee.Similar Posts:

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In discussion over the new exhibition of Rhodri Jones’ China photographs at the Side Gallery, some of the visitors from Cleveland CAD were questioning whether the high grain in the photographs automatically makes them look um, timeless, and if it does, is its use in some way a commentary on today’s China and the way its industrialisation connects with say, the documentary photography of the north-east’s mining traditions?

In a highly saturated world, is black and white always a signifier of the culturally traditional in photography, or does it merely strip away a lot of extraneous information? I simply don’t know, but was good topic, and the pictures are interesting. China is more frequently represented in full colour, so perhaps stripping it away leads the eye more to the detail in the pieces, the shapes. My favourites were the slag heap photographs, the horror of another Aberfan-in-waiting, and those showing the roofs weighted down with bricks against the wind, just as the allotment shed roofs are held down all along the Durham coastal villages.

And yes, any skyscraper block might well have been built within the past 100 years. The coexistence of high rise capitalism and street level poverty might be cliches here, but they work as social commentary in the China context. China, the supplier of all cheap goods, Primark tops at £1.99, is simultaneously the big new bogeyman of industrial pollution. The new red black country.

So what does high grain monochrome have to say?

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One thing about extended illness is that introspection is inevitable, so it’s actually been quite useful to harness that, and just go along with it. The family tree has always been a project on the back burner. We’ve managed to get some way with one wing of the family, but others have eluded until last week, after some forays into the deep archives at Bishop Auckland Register Office. It’s all been fascinating, but as always, the stories are all the better for a photograph. And in this case, the story is in the photograph.

It’s an outing: maybe a works outing, or Sunday School trip. Everyone’s dressed in their best, and since the young women are wearing very stylish longer length dresses, it’s probably post WW2. In fact we know it’s post war, since several of the little children in the photograph are my aunts and at least one of the small boys is my uncle. The tall woman on the right in the dress with the fancy brooch and embroidery, is my father’s sister, the eldest girl in the family. One of the little girls in the middle looks pretty much the same today.

The original photograph was folded down the middle at some point, and then a couple of strips of sellotape down the fold really did for the faces in the centre. It was restored for us by a young photographer and student, and all credit to him for that.

If you know anyone in the photograph, or if you have any suggestions for useful genealogy applications or better still, a WP theme, please do let me know via email or in the comments. One job for 2008 will be to get all these shoebox photographs and the family tree onto a website.Similar Posts:

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The cross processing produces lovely globular grain, with detail in some areas, and not much in others. It’s unpredictable. To add to this delicious sense of going awol, remove the roll of film when it’s not been quite wound back into the canister, and reload. Better still, swop an exposed film with with a friend.

The best results come from combinations involving lots of detail and not much sky, unless it’s got a lot of patterned cloud. Pattern upon pattern is good, and because the film’s going through twice, you can afford to underexpose a bit, but the whole point is play. Don’t think about it too much: just shoot.

If you’d like to do an exposed film gift or exchange, please let me know. I’ve just bought a big stash of suitable film, and compact cameras like the XA are a very few pounds: I sold one on Ebay earlier in the year for £5. When I get a gallery application running properly over at brendaburrell.com, I’ll publish the results of some collaborations so far.

It’s a great escape from the exactingness of studio work and lighting nerdery. Freedom!Similar Posts:

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Mamiya C330 80mm f/3.5 Similar Posts:

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With 5×4 (and 8×10) cameras, not only do you get huge amounts of detail, because it’s such a large negative, but you get the possibility of shifting the lens plane up and down, left and right, and backwards and forwards too. This alters the relationship between the film plane and the lens from strictly parallel, as in most (all?) 35mm and (most) 120 cameras to various flavours of parallelogram.

A parallel film-to-lens plane will create the right conditions for maximum depth of field, and maximum areas of focus, as above. Adjusting the film or lens plane, shifts the focus, as you can see on the polaroid below.

It’s quite rare to find 120 cameras with camera movements. This is one of them, although strictly speaking it’s a large format hybrid camera with roll film backs and a rangefinder.

One of the many advantages of working with all these creative and energetic young people, is the ready availability of stylish models. Dan, in the test polaroids, is my partner for the Lachapelle Roomset project. We have been working really hard, and it’s been much fun.Similar Posts:

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Been reading this blog for a long time (for some blogger value of ‘long’), lost in the writing, never sure whether it was a man or a woman, (not that it matters), never quite sure much of the time what was going on. Got increasingly engaged, and miss it when, like most blogs, there’s a bit of a gap between posts. Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, there was this picture. Not this one, the other side of this tunnel. At least oh, 3 of you, will know what it says. Must go and make the pair.

Can’t remember taking this, but I think from the chronology, it must be the Zenit11 and possibly that expired Konica 100 that was knocking about on eBay for 30p a roll.Similar Posts:

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