Private - Public

My BTEC photography course is now in its last few weeks, it finishes mid July. The next to last assignment was to interpret the theme of  "Private - Public" -  on film. The selected images may be digitlly printed, but the original capture must be on film.

I used to take a lot of black & white photos in my pre-digital days. In those days I had access to a darkroom and spent many hours there printing. Alas those days are long gone, but as I kept some developing tanks (and my film camera, a Nikon N70) at least I could process the negatives. You don't actually need a darkroom for that. And I have a scanner - which can scan 35mm negatives - so any subsequent processing can be done in Photoshop and then printed digitally.

Picked up where I left off all those years ago with Black & White film - Ilford Delta 400, rated at 400 iso. The shoot was to be an odd experience for me - keeping to the one iso rating and only 36 shots per roll.

Suggested interpretations of the theme, earlier, were of people in a private moment in a public space. My take was rather different - private/public signs. I'd seen plenty while exploring central London on previous shoots, and this time was no exception. Private/Public signs ? Signs - with writing or graphics - aimed at the public indicating something private. The brief required seven images, so here are those I selected.

 

 

I processed the negatives in Kodak HC-110 for 9 minutes, and found the results more grainy (noisy ?) than I would have liked. Perhaps if I was processing negatives more frequently I'd get back into the optimum chemistry for my type of work; then again the the negatives have also been scanned and not printed digitally and not in a darkroom. Out of practice ?

InfraRed

Back in my film days I used to use Kodak HIE (black & white infrared film) - and liked it. Not for every day use, but probably for some landscape work when it is at its most most effective, at this time of year, ie late spring/early summer when the vegetation is freshest and reflecting lots of infrared light.

Unfortunately HIE film is no longer being manufactured (shame !) and so I'm trying the Rollei version - there is a roll in my film camera now (and more awaiting usage are stored in my fridge) - more on that later. I'll have to get back into film processing and I'm not looking forward to that.

Anyways, in the meantime I'm trying to get an infrared effect with my digital camera. I've got a Hoya R72 filter - its almost black (VERY dark red, you can't see through it with naked eye), with a screw thread. This makes for quite long exposure times - in seconds - so my tripod is getting good use, as hand holding the camera is not on.


Here are some initial - digitial - results.

 I had to do some processing in Photoshop later with the Raw digital files - but nothing like the processing needed if my source files were ordinary colour, and the effect I'm getting is closer to what I want. So far, think I prefer HIE. But I'll be taking some more digitial over the next few weeks and trying out what Rollei has to offer. As I said earlier, more on that later.

TOTP

Yet another visit, this weekend, to a photographic exhibition featuring 1960's musicians - on this occasion to see Harry Goodwin's "My Generation: the Glory Years of British Rock" which has just opened at the Victoria & Albert in London. Harry Goodwin was resident photographer for the TV show "Top of the Pops" from its beginning in 1964 until 1973, and photographed the acts -  most of the major rock acts of the era including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix (the photo of him playing the guitar with his teeth is here) - which appeared on this show.

Also on display were two of the cameras used, a Yashica and a Mamiya, both twin lens reflex cameras. Which means 120 film was used - probably the norm at the time - but you can see the result of using this format in the quality of the prints (and the square format  which seems to very suitable for portraiture) - and  all in glowing Black & White. Who needs colour ? 

Portraits - Irving Penn Exhibition

Back to the National Portrait Gallery in central London on Wednesday last to see the Irving Penn exhibition. My last visit to the Gallery was to see the Beatles to Bowie exhibition a few weeks back. This exhibition overlaps the that time scale to a certain extent - the sixties - but covers 7 decades in all.

The prints are presented chronologically (as was the Beatles to Bowie exhibition) and as this exhibition features only one photographer you can see a developing style over the years. For example there is a change from the 1940's whole figure shots (with minimal props), then the closely cropped head and shoulders shots from the 1950's onwards,  and laterly emphasis on the face and eyes (eg Al Pacino), and sometimes with the part of the face in deep shadow (eg the portraits of Pablo Picasso and Issey Miyake). I also liked the portrait of Lisa Fonassagrives-Penn in the Harlequin dress, possibly because being more high-key was a little different to the rest ?

There are 120 prints in this exhibition, all monochrome and taken on film. Yes, no digital. I wonder if digital has caught up yet tp film technically  - in monochrome -  to the sheer quality of what was on show. 

The exhibition continues until June 6th, 2010. Its worth the £10 entrance fee.

Swinging Sixties

Visited the Beatles to Bowie photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in central London last weekend. The exhibition covers the music scene in London during the years 1960 to 1969 aka the "Swinging Sixties" .  Given the years covered by the pictures, I was a little surprised to find a mixed audience attending - at least mixed age wise - I was expecting to see mostly people who have some claim to have been around at the time, and not so many younger people who obviously weren't.
The term "Swinging Sixties" and photography brings to mind Bailey, Donovan and Duffy, and it was good to see all these 3 photographers represented - although I could only find 1 from Mr. Duffy (see previous post wrt TV Documentary) which was of the Shadows with fashion model Ros Watkins.You've probably seen many of Bailey's and Donovan's work over the years - I have - especially of young looking Beatles and Rolling Stones as they were starting out. One photo I hadn't seen before - but liked very much - was a black and white low key portrait (taken in a studio?) of the Moody Blues.
The exhibition also contained much memorabilia for the period eg LP and EP covers, sheet music and also some of the music press of the time. Interesting to see the exhibition photograph and then how it was used on an album cover or in the press, eg the 1961 McBean colour photo of the Shadows.  Speaking of album covers, many of the albums (LP's ?) from the earlier years of that decade were in mono (it was stated clearly on the cover), stereo only became standard later. Also whilst colour photography was available throughout  the decade  - as just mentioned - the photos from the earlier years were in black and white, with colour dominating the later years.
I wonder what the younger people who visited this exhibition would have thought about things then - music on vinyl records (in mono) - not downloadable MP3 .... no video's ......
Also managed to catch the Turner and the Masters exhibition at the Tate Britain. No prizes for guessing which exhibition I preferred.

Some very old Photographic efforts of mine

In the "olden" days I used to take mainly black & white, on film. The following two images are some examples. The Singer was photographed in Dublin and Fishing picture was taken in Amsterdam.








I'm more up to date now having converted to digital. I certainly don't miss spending time in a Darkroom except for that brief moment, when, after working the enlarger, putting the exposed sheet of paper into the developer and watching the image appear. Magical ! But perhaps not so magical when the safe light was switched off in favour of the ordinary light. But thankfully pungent chemicals are a thing of the past (hopefully !)