Sun City: Easy Pickings

Well it was nice for a change to walk around the city in brilliant sunshine for a few hours.  However, my inspiration for some reason was left at home.  In desperation, I came up with the mini theme of 'Spillage', as I was walking along the pavement.  I apologise for the unsavoury image, but it is a spillage that occurs quite often in this town (so much so that it could be still life project in itself).  The manipulated images salvaged a rather non creative day.  All images shot with  Canon 550 and Leica M6 with b/w also came out for a walk (images to be seen later... but not really worth the wait). Thanks Matt Stuart for helping me come up with the image of the girl and the photographer. If you don't know Matt Stuart, check out his images.

Kodachrome scans

I always have sought the holy grail in terms of the perfect photographic camera and process with the ease of use. The highest quality today is probably still the oldest technology ie. large format b/w and colour negatives. I have tried all the main film formats up to 10x8 film and the various types of cameras that accompany them.  With the advent of digital, this had made my choices more difficult.  Many photographers used digital as a way of starting with a clean slate, and for sure, scanning your images is no rewarding task.  However, the process of image making does effect your creativity, and the materials and apparatus is an important part of that process. Anyway, I have so far scanned b/w 35mm and 120 colour film, so I thought I had better tackle my draw of packets of 35mm Kodachrome. Out of all the films available,  the look of Kodachrome was unique. The only way to appreciate its quality is to look at a slide on a light box.  It is a small window into a world of beautiful colour. If all digital photographers could see large format Kodachrome film, I am sure a few would throw away the ease of digital for  the quality of film.  These photographs here do not do the slides justice.  They are quick scans and badly enhanced on the computer, but they do give a slight sense of the possibilities of the now lost process.  I still need to be convinced that the digital  Leica M9 produces a better image and is equally pleasurable to use to the film version Leica MP.  

In a previous blog I had mentioned that the tiger image was influenced by a song.  It was a bit obvious:

'Tiger Feet' by Mud.  My apologies.

Out Shooting today

Some photos from today's shooting. Canon 550 did pretty well on the auto focus setting, but I should have chosen a faster shutter speed as even at 1/125 there is quite a bit of blur on some images.

Zen of coffee

Just a couple of images of an empty cup of coffee residue.  Good example of nature's fractals.

Homage to Mamiya

In today's digital world, few newcomers to photography will appreciate the amazing cameras Mamiya produced over the years.  Besides the fantastic close-up capabilities of the twin-lens reflex C220 and C330 (Diane Arbus) cameras, they also produced my favorite medium format cameras- M6 M7 range finders.  The quiet electronic leaf shutters were so much better than the Leica range finders and the medium format film, meant the photographer was working with both quality and ease of use. Digital mainstream cameras have a long way to go to equal the quality.  Anyway here are few shots from the Mamiya M7 (my favorite camera to date) and of course Photoshop has helped me re-interpret my images.  I put this as a blog, because I scanned the negatives today for the first time since I took the photographs. Revisiting all these negatives from way back and adjusting the image in Photoshop, sometimes makes me feel I am taking the photograph again for the first time.  Name the group that inspired the tiger photo.  Answers on a postcard or if you cant be bothered, all will be revealed on the next blog