Funnily enough, I thought that this morning was going to be a bit of a washout, and wasn’t really bothered about getting the shots off the camera when I got back.  Luckily I did, and it turned out I really surprised myself.  I was really happy with the selection of shots above…

Hurrah!  Got a mention and some snapshots published on the Collings and Herrin Blog at :-

http://collingsandherrin.blogspot.com/2010/01/made-in-wales.html

If you haven’t tried them yet, Andrew Collins’ and Richard Herring’s brand of Humour is not for the sensitive, or easily offended, but I love it.  It brightens up many a boring car journey via the gift of the ipod.  You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or via the British Comedy Guide at :-

http://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/collingsherrin/.

UPDATE! : Booked to see Richard Herring live at the Glee Club in Cardiff, in March – Can’t wait!

Following on from the discovery in the previous post, I’ve decided to furnish my Lubitel 166B with some food.  Fujichrome Provia 400x slide film to be precise.  It’s been kind of weird shopping for film again for the first time in almost ten years – like I said – feels sort of liberating, and I’m not sure why!  There’s been no real method behind my choice apart from a quick glace around Flickr to see how this stuff works when ‘Cross-Processed’.

Cross processing?  Yes – I had much the same reaction you probably are when I first read that phrase.  See… the normal chemical process for developing slide film is known as E6.  This uses a specific set of chemicals to get the colours as accurate etc as possible.  There is a separate set of chemicals for the processing of colour negative film, and the process is known as C41.  So, what happens when you process a colour slide film using the C41 (negative film) process?  What sort of crazyness is that!?  I’ll tell you what happens… the whole world implodes in an annihilating explosion that takes all mankind with it.  Or not.

Truth be told, it produces what can only be described as funky transparencies.   It basically screws with the colours and contrast of an image, with very interesting effect. I’ve gone and ordered a multipack off Ebay for not much money, so it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with.  I’m going to shoot off a roll or two first, and send it off for processing.  I’ve found a place (Peak Imaging) in Sheffield, that does cross-processing of slide film for just under a fiver…

http://www.peak-imaging.com/htmls/film_processing.htm

Apparently, cross-processing Provia produces a yellowy hue, with greens and yellows emphasized.  Kind of like the following shot (not mine by the way)…

Click here to check out a good photostream on Flickr for some more examples…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonbase/276389961/ in/photostream/

I’ll probably also get hold of some Black and White 120 too, along with a Developer tank and chemicals, and process some myself again (for the first time in 10 years! – oh how I miss the smell of developer in the morning!).  Oh what a voyage of discovery this is!

Lastly – go here for a bit of a rundown of cross processing, and more examples…

http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/10/15/cross-processing-tips-and-suggestions/

Thing is, I’m going back to basics here.  I’ve forgotten what the thrill of sending a film off to the lab and having to WAIT to get it back is like..! Digital is brilliant in so many ways, but this is the first time I’m going to really have to think about what I’m taking, from both an exposure and technical point of view.  But Lomography is about not thinking isn’t it?  Bah!  I’ll figure it out somehow…

The one thing I’m missing in using my iPhone for this is the restriction that film photography places on you.  The thing about digital is that, in the end, if you don’t like a shot, you can delete it.  I’ve purposely been trying NOT to retake shots I’m not happy with, reason being that I wouldn’t have the chance to review and reject with film like I do with digital.  I’ve been really enjoying it, and I’m going to carry with the iphone Lomo – Including a run down of the apps I’ve been using to produce the shots (more on that later!).

Talking of yesterday’s Eureka moment, I had another, even bigger on this morning. A real slap on the forehead, why-didn’t-I-realize-that-before moment.

I was thinking back over the film cameras I’ve still got, and digging through my collection of old Zenits, Canon EOS and Minoltas, when i remembered an old TLR (Twin Lens Refex) medium format box I got hold of years ago.  I got hold of it back in university, in an attempt to do some experimentation with Medium Format 120 roll film.  Unfortunately, it’s something I never actually got around to doing, what with the advent of digital and all the cheap snappyness associated with it.  So I dug it out…

Turns out, it’s a Lubitel 166B.  What’s a Lubitel 166B when it’s at home I hear you cry (or not). Well… it’s a Russian camera, produced in the early 80s, but based on a design from around 1950.  It was cheaply made as a way for Amateurs to experiment with using Medium Format. The best bit…?

It’s made by LOMO.

I’ve had it here all this time, and never realised I was sitting on a bit of classic Lomography kit!  It’s one of a selection of cameras used by the Lomo community to capture images on film. Examples of such work can be found at http://www.lomography.com/photos/cameras/Lubitel%20166B/popular.

Looking over it – it’s a lovely little bit of kit.  It feels so raw and primitive compared to the most basic of digital SLRs.  It’s completely mechanical, so no batteries, and no electronics.  It’s a box, with a variable hole at the front, that allows you to project a fixed image on a piece of film.  In short – it’s a camera – with no bells and whistles.  No auto focus, no auto exposure.  Nada.  Why is it that that makes me feel so excited???  Shouldn’t I be looking at this, in all it’s out-of-date plasticness, and be horrified at the prospect of having to manually work out exposures?   The answer is a resounding no. The simplicity of all this is what interests me.

Anyway – I thought I’d take a few shots of the little beauty (ironically, with my Digital SLR) and share them with you…

It’s got a plastic-covered body, with a metal underframe.  Focussing is done manually on a groundglass screen (pic two), and there is a little pop-up magnifier which assists the process a bit, though ease of focussing is not meant to be one of its strong points.  There is something nice though, about using a focussing screen to frame the shot rather than a held-to-the-eye viewfinder – not sure what – I just like it! Aperture (f4.5-22) and shutter speed (Bulb, to 250th Sec) are done manually.  It does have a self-timer though, so selfs are a definite possibility. Pic one shows it all packed up and capped.  It only weighs about 500g – nice and easy to carry.

The upshot of this is that I now have a ready path to follow in actually trying genuine Lomography.  Bizarrely. I’m actually looking forward to the restrictions that this camera and the use of film will place on me.  The fact that it has the viewfinder on top is also going to be interesting.  This will allow me to ’shoot from the hip’ so to speak. I know for a fact that getting interesting candids probably wont be as hard with this. I will, of course, blog about it once I’ve done a bit more fiddling around…

Let me explain…

Photography is an art.  In the end, it’s all about the aesthetics.  Beautiful photos opportunities rear their heads in the most unlikely of places.  There are things, that, unfortunately, generally need to be present in order to produce most photos.  One, not surprisingly, is a camera of some sort.  Kit. Equipment. Tin. Glass.   Also needed is some form of technique.  Rules of thirds, exposures, shutter speeds, so on and so forth.  Not to say that these things are the be all and end all, but they help.

So.  Now take the large proportion of that clutter out of the equation and out of the process.  So – what do we have left?

Raw potential – that’s what.

What am I babbling on about?  Well… I love photography; that much is clear.  However – sometimes, I feel like having to make sure I have kit with me (from camera, to tripod, to batteries, to memory cards, blah blah until the end of time), as well as having to carefully consider technique and the pressure of finding a shot to start the inspiration flowing, end up producing a grand total of bugger all.  You can easily end up being stifled by everything and anything you have with you, be it in your kit bag, or in your head.  So – what about the times you’ve got too much in your head to fit any more in (never mind photographic technique!).  What about the times (and there are many), when you don’t have your kit with you?

There is something that many of us now carry about our person that is capable of producing basic reproductions of the scenes around us.  That something is our mobile phone.  The majority now have some sort of camera in-built.  This applies to my very own iPhone.   I have a 1st Gen iPhone 3G, with the 2-odd Megapixel camera, no flash etc.  To use an internet cliché – meh.  Its pretty useless in most situations.  Bar brightly lit scenes, with nobody actually moving, it’s output it is, at best, severely lacking.  Mostly, I’ve looked at these shots and tried to work out how I can make them better – turn them into something beautiful.   Its not an easy task,  and has meant that the iPhone has really been mostly confined to the limits of I-haven’t-got-anything-else-with-me-but-want-this-snapshot trivialities and keepsakes.

Then I had bit of a back-to-front idea.  Instead of trying to bring up to standard something that was not, why not play on it’s weaknesses, and revel in its low fidelity?  In other words, rather than messing about trying to make them better, I would see if I could make them ‘worse’ (in a manner of speaking).  I started to punch various synonyms of lo-fi photography into google, and came back with some interesting stuff.  Not surprisingly, there are a lot of bods out there with similar ideas.  It seemed that lo-fi photography was (paraphrasing the Wikipedia entry), a reaction to the general perceived ease of taking technically perfect photos in the digital age.

Another term which reared it’s head was Lomography.  Again – from the Wikipedia entry…

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing are often considered part of the “Lomographic Technique.”

There are 10 ‘rules’ of Lomography (again, more details can be found here)

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don’t think (william firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don’t worry about any rules

So… Lomography is the art of photography sans rules.  I like the sound of this.  Something a bit more freeform, a bit less constrained by the aformentioned technique and kit. I’d heard of this a while back, but only today linked the iPhone camera to the possibilities.

Thing is, the rules above are great, but some of the rest of the philosophy is a little skewed.  The whole thing is based around the ‘Lomo’ brand of Russian Cameras, and shooting on 120 film.  I’d love to do that, but unfortunately, both associated cost, and time would be a hindrance.  Unfortunately, the community based around the art tend to be rather protective about what can be defined as Lomography.  Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to do it properly.  I started out in darkrooms, and the smell of developer and fixer is still something that takes me back to some of my most formative and creative days as a photographer.  However, for now, I’d have to be happy to embrace the philosophy encompassed by the ten rules above, without conforming completely to the standard.  In essence – dancing round the first nine rules, whist fully embracing the tenth.

I’m going to give it a go with my iPhone.  I’ve set up a separate Flickr account, as I want this to be as freeform and spontaneous as possible.  I don’t want these photos muddying my standard Flickr Photostream, as I don’t want my standard photos muddying this.   I want it separate.  The ‘Lomostream’ will be at :-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axemanlomo

It’ll also be on a constantly playing slideshow on my homepage for the time being, which will look something like this :-

Well.. truth be told, it’ll look exactly like that, and will update in real-time as I upload more shots.

Let’s see where this takes us shall we?

Click the thumbnails to move through the gallery, or click the main picture to expand to full screen. This also places it on a more uniform dark background for easier viewing…

Part of the incredibly complex and ornate exterior of one of the buildings of the Bhuddist Golden Temple in Bangkok.

An HDR shot captured in the Brecon Beacons.  I couldn’t work out whether this tree was long-dead or just dormant for the winter.  The environment here can be so harsh, and makes for some bleakly beautiful landscapes.

A stunning afternoon on the Blorenge, a mountain near Blaenavon.  I was fascinated by this sign with its one-way-to-cold, one-way-to-warm suggestion, (and no, I didn’t knock the icicles off one side for dramatic effect!).  With the vast range of tones in this shot, I had to resort to HDR to make it look as it did to me when I was there.  There were some amazing ice formations around this afternoon, but none caught my eye as much as this one.  Below are my two favourite shots of the day.

I love this shot.  It’s the first in what I hope will become a series of studies of my newborn daughter Amélie.  Baby’s feet are so perfect.  they’re one of those parts of the body that, when they’re new like this, look so different to when they’ve carried the owner around for their whole life.  These feet will carry her throughout her days, through whatever trials and tribulations that the world throws at her.  They are one of the most photogenic parts of a new child, and I loved taking this.  Gave me chance to flex my depth-of-field muscles too…