Coffeetography

I virtually always carry a camera with me; two, if you count the one in the phone. Very often, I also carry a desire for a coffee. Not that I'm a caffeine addict: at home, I drink decaf - it's simpler, as Heather doesn't do caffeine if she can avoid it, so we only have to have one jar in the cupboard, and that decaf is as satisfying as a legit cafe brew.

When we were in Ipswich some time ago, we were gasping for a cuppa, and couldn't seem to find anywhere that looked like they served a decent brew; when we finally found somewhere, it was pretty disappointing, so we effectively wrote off Ipswich as a coffee-free zone. Since then however, we have found a few places worth a second visit.

One such is Nourish Real Food Cafe, in Brisbane St. It's fairly new, light, airy, and the tables aren't crammed in together. The food is adventurous and the coffee perfectly good. The building was renovated about 18 months ago, and they have gone for the bare brisks look, contrasted by a faux laneway to one side, presumably going to other premises.

My camera eye can be drawn by all sorts of things, but the play of light and shade is usually pretty tempting. Once, at a gallery, I was as fascinated by the shadows cast by a series of exhibits mounted on a row of small shelves as I was with the art itself. There was no artist statement attaching to the shelves. Here, it was the clean lines and subtle shadows on a textured white wall that stopped me in my tracks.

Inside the cafe, it was the walls that fascinated me. Nothing new or terribly unusual about bare brick walls in a modern establishment, but it was the pattern that seemed unusual. Heather knows a thing or two about bricklaying bonds (who'd have thought?), but this didn't seem like a bond that would have made it through building control. What would I know? The apprentice's first attempt?

The last few posts have touched on my inability to abandon film photography, but these were taken with the digital camera that I usually carry. I suspect that in the next five years it may expire; it's unlikely to last another ten. However, I have just bought a bulk load of black & white film, and shall soon run it through some cameras still going strong after 40 years or more. After film camera values plummeted in the last decade, they are becoming valuable again as a new generation of photographers discovers the appeal of traditional non-digital methods.

I shall also be exploring the world of developing the film in coffee and vitamin C—a combination known as Caffenol—which sounds nuts but is chemically quite plausible and has a growing number of advocates and practitioners. And why not do something different, if it works? Watch this space.

Waxing

A bright, clear crescent Moon did shine down last night, and with a young man interested in seeing through the big scope, I stirred myself to grant his wish. While looking at the ancient surface, I noticed that the seeing was pretty good, so got the camera mounted for a few snaps.

There's nothing groundbreaking about a pic of the crescent Moon, of course, but it's always pleasing and never looks the same twice—unless you wait a long time and look at every possible opportunity. On this occasion though, there was a pinprick of light inside a large crater, evidence of day breaking upon a central mountain peak ... and who doesn't like a mountain sunrise?

The telescope is effectively acting as a 1200mm f8 long lens, which is pretty big on a crop sensor camera (Canon 40D). At ISO-400, the exposure would be reasonably short, except that I wanted to make the most of that little sunlit mountaintop, so took exposures of 1/13, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/200 second, to get detail in both highlights and dark areas near the terminator (the day/night boundary). I then combined all 5 exposure levels to make an HDR image.

The southern highlands, at top, appear more heavily cratered as they haven't been overlaid with lava,which process produced the dark 'seas' in the northern hemisphere.

 

Maurolycus, with central peak lit

The crater trio Catharina, Cyrillus and Theophilus, beside the Sea of Nectar

 

Sea of Tranquility; Apollo 11 site circled

 

Time will tell

There has always been a bit of a left-of-centre* streak in my photography, albeit with plenty of straight-down-the-middle conventionalism to balance. I studied photography in a 3-year diploma course, specialising in applied photography in my final year, and encountered all sorts of photographic possibilities along the way. That course led me into employment at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh; not your average job for a freshly-minted young photographer. (* When I say 'left-of-centre', I suppose I should say 'right-of-centre' as well, since I dabble with 3D stereo pairs, but that's another matter; you can investigate here.)

Laser dispersed through flashbulb

When I started snapping in the early 70s, you took a roll of plastic material (coated with dry gelatin & suffused with silver halide salts) and inserted it into a camera. That's right: the back of the camera opened up, and a roll of film went inside, which allowed you to take a limited number of photographs—usually 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 36, 48 or 72—before you had to stop and reload. Imagine a memory card that limited!

As an aside, whenever I use film these days, the smells take me right back to 197X; they were just an incidental part of the photographic process until the 90s, but now they are an incredible nostalgia trigger. I should get a bottle of Paterson Acutol, just so I can open it for a sniff every now & then. (I don't miss the benzene-based colour chemistry of the 70s & 80s; it just smelt psychoactive.)

So, how did my left-of-centre radicalism manifest? Often, it was just through taking a shortcut to a result, such as shooting a pic on a cut-down sheet of enlarging paper, rather than load a whole film. Or processing in a developer not intended for the job, just because it was available. Sometimes though, I'd shoot pictures with the question 'what if?' in mind. I was always an advocate for the idea that, never mind what the rule book says, have a go, and see what works. I suppose it's surprising, given that attitude, that I never took to cross-processing, but there you go. I wouldn't want to be predictable, would I?

These days, as well as doing less and less photography as time goes by, I use traditional materials on a very infrequent basis. One thing that does get me loading a camera with light-sensitive silver-based materials is pinhole photography. It is possible to do pinhole with digital, but the small sensor size—even if using a full-frame DSLR—is rather limiting, as is the field of view. So, when I see a piece about anyone using traditional materials, or cameras before electronics really took over, I'm immediately interested.

 Extreme-wideangle pinhole selfie

Pinhole photography is photography almost at its most basic (I'll allow that photograms are even more basic): no lens, no shutter, no aperture, no light meter, no viewfinder. Just photographer and instinct. In practice, I might use a hand-held light meter to gauge the right exposure, but it's not absolutely necessary, after a bit of experience. There is something very satisfying about creating a photograph without all that modern technology has to offer.

When I read of a project to create pinhole photographs with 100-year exposure times, I was therefore immediately interested. For a few years, folk have been creating solargraphs—year-long exposures that record the Sun's movement, both east-west and north-south. These photographs are taken using photographic enlarging paper, but are not developed in the normal way; instead, they are scanned as soon as the camera is opened, to record the image that has appeared on the light-sensitive material.

A typical solargraph - source article

Now, somebody has come up with the idea that you could load a simple camera with black paper, and expose it for a hundred years to create a record of urban change during that period. Not black photographic paper, mind you, just black paper. Photographers, as well as scrapbookers, generally like the idea that a photograph will last for a very long time, if processed and stored properly. Cheap paper can contain acid from the manufacturing process, and will consequently not last for a very long time if exposed to light (the acid will also harm any other materials stored with it, but that's another story). Papers intended for archival use will last much longer, but ultimately, papers exposed to light—especially UV-loaded daylight—will fade or turn yellow, and that will be the mechanism that's relied upon in this project.

To anyone who has used that lovely material, Cibachrome, there may be a resonance here. Unlike every other photographic material where exposure, followed by development, created an image with either granular silver or colour dye, each Cibachrome print began with a sheet of enlarging paper that contained all the dyes already in place; it looked brown before exposure etc. The technical beauty of Cibachrome (for me) was in the process of developing a silver image and then bleaching that image and the dyes associated with it, leaving only the dyes that weren't affected by the exposure, leaving a direct positive image (it was used for printing from colour slides, not negatives). (It also meant that the image was sharper, as the dyes in the unexposed emulsion limited light scatter.)

I just loved the brilliance (both literal and metaphorical) of the Cibachrome method, and thought that it had been discontinued years ago, after it had been renamed Ilfochrome; however, the Ilford site says that it is still available. This chap seems to think that it was on the way out, and shows the material being used for original in-camera photography, rather than for printing.

The point about that apparent digression is that the photographer behind this project is using black paper, which should gradually be bleached away to a positive image; or so the theory goes. There are many questions, of course, about this project: will the cameras still be there in 100 years; will the exposures actually work; will the images be worthwhile, in any broad sense of the word? If all goes to plan, it might make for a fascinating exhibition/book/blog post; it if fails, then likely very few people will notice or care … but I suspect that's art for you.

Read about the project here: petapixel.com/2014/05/09/100-cameras-will-photograph-berlin-ridiculous-100-year-exposure-times/

Nocturnal lunacy

Time was, we counted the passage of time in Moons. It's a convenient measure: short enough that one is 'only recently' but long enough that a dozen or so will take you through a set of seasons. 'Moons' in this context, means lunar months—or more specifically, the synodic months from New to Full and back again to New; a period of 29.5 days. (The other lunar month is the sidereal one, when the Moon returns to approximately the same position among the stars.)

The Moon is endlessly fascinating. Whether you are watching a Moonrise over the bay with nothing but your eyes (and possibly a glass of something convivial), or you are studying it at high magnification through a large telescope under a crystal-clear dark rural sky, it has a universal appeal.

For my part, I have watched with telescope and without; with binoculars; with camera; and with all sorts of permutations thereof. I have watched its phases come and go. I have watched the Sun's light slowly creeping across that distant landscape, illuminating crater floors and mountain peaks: a constantly-changing chiaroscuro that Buzz Aldrin described from its surface as 'magnificent desolation'.

Purbach, Arzachel & the Straight Wall

In 1976 I was given a second-hand 6-inch (150 mm) reflecting telescope. I had arrived. At last, I had an instrument with a proper mount, driven to follow the movement of the stars (actually, the rotation of the Earth, but let's not quibble), with which I could employ substantial magnification upon celestial sights near and far. By that time I had already decided that I needed to learn about photography, so that I could record what I was seeing through the eyepiece. Little did I know the challenge ahead...

I did try to mate my somewhat ancient SLR camera to the telescope, trying to get decent photographs of Moon and planets, but the results were generally disappointing. Fuzzy, shaken images discouraged me and until I was introduced to the Thomas Cooke 6-inch photovisual refractor at the City Observatory in Edinburgh, I did no more telescopic photography. The Cooke was a fine instrument in a poor situation. Murky city skies and poor 'seeing' were constantly conspiring to reduce image quality, but I did dabble a bit, and even recorded the second Scottish image of Comet Halley with it in 1985.

Copernicus, Eratosthenes & Appenines

I have the good fortune these days to work at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium, which is equipped with a Zeiss 150 mm refractor. The beauty of that instrument is that it sits on a coudé mount, which means that the viewing end doesn't move with the telescope, which in turns allows any camera to be mounted without upsetting the balance. The drawback to this telescope is its optical system: as an ordinary 'achromat', it is subject to incompletely-corrected colour, so that when taking photographs there tends to be a blue haze around bright objects. (The Cooke, with a 'photovisual' triplet objective, was corrected for red, green and blue light.) So, after trying for a while to take some decent lunar photographs through the Zeiss, I find that unless I want to discard the blue channel and go for a greyscale image using just the red and green, it's of limited use. Which is where I come back to the old reflector (the 'CF', it having been manufactured by the old Charles Frank company in Glasgow).

The Zeiss refractor, with Yours Truly observing the Moon.

The reflecting telescope was devised by Isaac Newton as an alternative to the simple lens telescopes of the day, which were even more plagued by false colour than any modern achromat (a-chromat ... meaning no colour, but they don't quite live up to that name). I'd never achieved much with mine in the past, but would a modern digital camera make any difference?

One of the great benefits of digital imaging is the immediacy of it: you can see the image without waiting for a film to be processed and printed. So, when you need to assess the accuracy of focus, exposure or subject targeting, you have almost instant feedback. If the camera has live view focusing then the focus can be refined before shooting, under high magnification (although even then, checking the images on a large monitor allows a final decision).

Fortunately, the image scale of the CF is almost perfect for a crop frame DSLR: the Moon sits comfortably in the frame, while allowing some room to move; it's effectively a 1200mm long-focus 'lens'. I have become enamoured of hitching my Canon 40D to it, and recording our nearest natural neighbour, although it's hardly ground-breaking stuff. No two images will be the same though, due to the changing phase and libration—the apparent east-west and north-south wobbling that allows us to see 59% of the lunar surface (even though the Moon keeps nominally the same face to us all the time).

Here then is a set of images taken over the last month or so, as well as a 3D stereo pair using another image from last year. Enjoy.

 The Moon's size varies because of its elliptical orbit. A so-called 'supermoon' is a Full Moon when it's at its closest distance from Earth, although it's only about 14% larger than the opposite extreme.

Waxing and waning gibbous phases. The images have been processed to enhance the subtle colouration due to different mineral composition; the Sea of Tranquility is noticeably more blue than its neighbours.

 

The total eclipse of 15th April 2014. 5 minutes before the end of totality (left), and about 30 minutes later, in partial eclipse (right); the latter image has been HDR-merged from 3 separate exposures that cover the great brightness difference between the shadowed and sunlit portions.

A crescent Moon in two bites, showing the 'Earthshine' that brightens what would otherwise be the dark side.

It might just look like 2 Full Moon images, but this is a stereo pair. Try crossing your eyes, then bring the middle of 3 images into focus. If you can manage it, you should see a round Moon instead of 2 flat images.

Watch the birdie

About 25 years ago, I bought an old camera in an antique shop in Edinburgh. The owner was tinkering with it as I walked in, and I knew straight away it was mine! It was nothing flash, but the design intrigued me.  It was made in an age when glass plates were still the standard medium for taking photographs. When I later sought an idea of the camera's age, it was suggested around 1870, predating the Eastman Kodak company by a decade or so. However, the design of the camera means that only dry plates would have been usable (it was designed to hold a stack of plates, so plates made with the wet collodion process would have been entirely unsuitable). Dry plates were in development during the 1870s, culminating in George Eastman's success in developing a machine process for mass-producing dry plates. So, I'd say this camera was built somewhat later than 1870.

Camera front; 1 cord for instantaneous exposure, 1 for time exposure

Red cord is for cocking the shutter

I have thought on several occasions that I should try to take a photograph with it, but the design made it a less than trivial task to do so, and I put it to the back of my mind until very recently. I have been tinkering with paper negatives for pinhole cameras, to get the development right for use as a negative, and with this foundation, it was an obvious step to using the old camera, using a small sheet of enlarging paper in a suitable cardboard holder.

Back end of camera

Inside of camera back, showing mechanism for lifting next unexposed plate

I had already established a nominal ISO speed rating for the paper, so with a hand-held light meter (a Weston Master III, since you ask…), measurement of the f/ratio of the lens (about f/14 or f/28, depending on which of the 2 aperture stops is in use) and the 'B' or 'T' shutter setting, I was able to give a long enough exposure, as required. Shooting indoors, in a large antique shop, I decided on 45 seconds - manageable by the sitter I had 'engaged' for the job (the shop owner). The resulting negative was somewhat underexposed, as it turned out - possibly the light had changed after I took a reading, and before making the exposure - but with careful digital post processing after scanning the negative, I was able to get a good enough result. I'd like to compare it with any of the plates taken with the camera soon after it was made, but will have to be happy with this modern product.


Now, if I can make a rollfilm adaptor (taking 118 film, perhaps…), I might have something really usable.

Click #2

A moment seized; a fleeting glimpse. Click.
Contemplation. Possibilities; subtle details, obscure even. Click.
Clearer now, focus sharper. New perspective; comes to life. Click.
Different light, shadows new. Chiaroscuro changes mood. Click.
Quiet thrill; a frisson. Tones, texture; composition gels. Click.
Now from here, lower. Detail isolated, highlighted. Click.
Turn a ring; focus narrows, draws the eye. Click.
Close in, tighter frame. Rule of thirds? Break it. Click.
Nailed it.

...

RIP Kodachrome

A couple of days ago, on the northern summer solstice, Kodak announced the end of an era. Kodak: the very name is synonymous with photography, and Kodachrome is a substantial part of the name. Used by professional and amateur photographers the world over, and valued for its many qualities, including colour accuracy, sharpness and archival permanence; immortalized (if it could be any more than it was) in song by Paul Simon, the film that was manufactured for 74 of the 121 years that Kodak has been in business, is history.

Kodachrome was a unique film, requiring a long and complex development process that but a few labs could provide. I knew it only casually, shooting relatively little transparency material, but there was a special thrill in receiving the little yellow boxes in the post, full of card-mounted (as they were then) slides. Now, the advance of emulsion technology, not to mention digital imaging and sheer cold commercial necessity, has brought an end to this venerable icon, as the production lines cease to roll. It's not the first, and certainly not the last, photographic material to reach its use-by date, but it's arguably one of the most poignant. Kodachrome, Cibachrome, Dufaycolour ... when will we see their like again...

Many are wondering whether digital images will be as enduring as those made on this fine material. Only time will tell, but I wouldn't be placing any bets about digital longevity.

A bit hazy

I've seen the term bokeh bandied about for some time now, but only just recently came to understand what it's about. Whether that's a statement about me, or about the folk who wrote descriptions that I couldn't follow, I don't know. Whatever the case, it still has me a bit bemused - at least regarding the degree of fascination it holds in other photographers. Having spent many years away from serious photography, this term seems to be quite prevalent, even among relative 'happy-snappers'.

For those who aren't aware, it's a term descriptive of the appearance of out-of-focus detail in a photograph, and is derived from the Japanese for 'blur' or 'haze'. Is it smooth and 'creamy', or rough and unappealing... or something. When I went to look through my own image collection to see how my bokeh compared, it appeared that I had no images that showed bokeh - and then I remembered one that would:


I'm somewhat surprised that I don't have other examples to hand, as the ability to use wide apertures and selective focusing is one of those little tricks that I value (and which is sadly lacking in a wee digital point-and-shoot).

Judging by the comments I've seen elsewhere (such as in the Manual Focus Forum), my bokeh isn't especially good. However, I shan't be losing much sleep over it; nor shall I be going on a quest to find a set of lenses that does produce good bokeh - yet. Who knows what may happen in the future?

Beautiful woodwork, tiny little hole

I have been known to mess around with homemade or modified cameras, all in the name of satisfying an urge to indulge in pinhole photography. There is a certain pleasure to be had in building or rehashing something which then draws light through a hole that may be as small as 0.15 mm - and then capturing that light on good old silver halides; kind of thumbing my nose at modern technology.

I've lately been dusting off a mailing tube camera that I made about 12 years ago. As I lack a darkroom, it's been dormant almost since it was born, but I've been making do and occupying the bathroom to produce wet bits of 5x7 paper with ghostly images on them. Yes, the pinhole muse seems to be back, in fine form.

Using different materials than I used to, I've so far just been establishing the right exposure and processing parameters, but I'm getting there. At the weekend, I recorded myself eating lunch on the back verandah. Not a classic photograph, but it's a step on the way.



It looks like I'm sitting by a rounded corner, but this is an artefact of the curved film-plane and the position of the pinhole. One of the reasons I like pinhole is that it gives you the ability to create images that can't be made with a conventional camera with a flat focal plane. Coming later will be a different curved-plane camera, one with less disturbing image geometry.

Such geometry can be found in images produced by the Pinoramic 120.


This is a panoramic camera handcrafted - with other similar models - by Kurt Mottweiler. They combine the delightful wacky world of analogue pinhole photography with woodworking and design skills of the highest order. When I have bolstered the bank account back up to a healthy level, I shall acquire one - either that, or chew off one of my hands with insane frustration...

Word for the day

Refulgent, adj casting a flood of light; radiant; beaming

...

Just started reading "Building with Light - The International History of Architectural Photography" by Robert Elwall. It's a fine book, which includes some interesting examples of architectural photography from the very early days of the art, prior to the invention of the collodion process. While it's always interesting to see examples of work from those days, no reproduction of Daguerreotypes can do them justice. However, it is testament to the determination of those photographers using such processes, that they were prepared to expose their plates sometimes for days in order to get sufficient exposure on very slow materials.

Nowadays, just having to wait for a film to be processed, before seeing the results of your efforts, seems tedious in comparison with the immediacy of the digital process; I doff my cap to the pioneering stalwarts who had to prepare their own materials, lug around large and heavy equipment and then patiently wait for the picture to record. The nearest I have come to such endeavours (apart from long exposures of the night sky), is using a shoebox pinhole camera and slow blue-sensitive film, which required 15 minutes exposure or more. Leaving the camera unattended then left it subject to 'attack' by a comedian with too much time on his hands. I did get one half-decent result though: this image of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

3D Clouds

A couple of days ago, the clouds were scudding along on a brisk wind, and apart from the general photographic possibilities, the opportunity for taking 3D pairs came to mind. Sometimes, if the cloud forms are moving quickly enough so that they don't change too much between exposures, you can take sequential exposures with a static camera, then view the image pairs side-by-side to create a stereoscopic effect. Obvously, with a static camera position, the landscape perspective is not changing, so no 3D effect can be seen there, but the clouds will appear as if taken by normal stereoscopic means.

2009 calendar - the collection grows

I decided one calendar wasn't enough, so 3 more have been added to the collection. Go here to see all of them. Hint: buy all 4 and save on postage :)

2009 calendar

I have just published a new calendar, via Redbubble. It's a collection of my favourite personal images, and can be previewed and purchased here; the price is AU$26 (approxUS$20, but see here for a current value), not including delivery. This is the front cover:



RedBubble calendars are satin-coated prints on high quality art paper. They’re A3 size (that’s 297x420mm, or 11.69x16.54") Order now for the holidays!

More 3D

Prompted by fellow Redbubbler PigleT, here's another image from the 3D collection. When we bought our last house in Scotland, the garden was graced with several teasels - wonderful if you like variety and appreciate the beauty in jaggy, scratchy things, but less so I suppose, if demure bedding plants are your thing!

Anyway, I liked 'em, and took a few snaps (too few, in retrospect). Getting up close and, as they say, personal, I recorded this 3D pair; the delicate pink flowers are a nice counterpoint to the spiky head.

As before, you need to use the crossed-eyes method, to view the images properly (cross your eyes until you see 3 images, and the middle one should be in 3D). If you can't manage it, sorry...

Daybreak

The morning stumble through the house … wake daughter … into the kitchen … kettle on … pause a moment … notice shadows on cupboard doors … suddenly awake and camera in hand … daughter stepping around me with breakfast things, as I crouch on the floor…

The main shadows, stretched at a sharp angle down the vertical surface; the contrast of wooden handles against the white Melamine, glowing warm in the first rays but reflecting blue sky; the fine texture on the surface of the doors; the very subtle shadow of flyscreen, cast between the handles. Caught before it changes with the advancing day.


There is so much to see in our daily lives. We all enjoy seeing our loved ones and spectacular sights in this wonderful world, but what little things would you miss, if you lost your sight tomorrow? What would you give, to be able to see ordinary things again?

3 Phases of The Moon

I've been taking photographs and stargazing for a long time; inevitably, those two pursuits cross paths now and then. It might be a startrails pic, a guided exposure of a comet, or something a bit more whimsical.

Delving into the archives, I took a moon photo from circa 1984, and played with it a bit to create this image. I'm not divulging the recipe, but you won't find it as a simple Photoshop tool! Actually, I'd probably find it difficult to reproduce myself; sometimes I 'explore' an image, making derivative copies, modifying and combining them in different ways until I create something that looks a bit interesting. Usually, I leap rapidly from one transformation to the next, without recording exactly what I've done, so the end result is usually unreproducable. One such exploration, that I didn't save in the end, produced some images that looked like an aged Daguerreotype, and to some extent I was trying to recreate that here.

Click the image to buy from Redbubble
(Available as a card, laminated print, matted print, and more)

Can I be an artist please?

I’ve been taking photographs for many moons now (or to put it another way, more than a full orbit of Saturn). In that time, I’ve exposed many frames of film, and printed more than a few boxes of paper. I started with a Box Brownie, moved on to my Dad’s Yashicamat, then on through a succession of 35mm, rollfilm & 5×4 cameras of varying quality and pedigree. [The largest camera I ever used was 48 inches (1.2 metres) in aperture, and took thin glass plates 14 inches (356mm) square … the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. However, as you can’t actually look through a Schmidt, it is technically just a big camera.]

Professionally, my work was scientific in nature, while my spare time interests were more creative. I have produced some right old rubbish, and a few more memorable and enduring images. My aim was always to produce something that I’d be happy to hang on my wall, and which would be a pleasing image of some sort. Apart from a few years in a camera club, almost at the start of my involvement with photography, and a couple of later low-key exhibitions, I never seriously contemplated the possibility of providing my photography for wider consumption. Redbubble, however, has been influential in changing my mind on that.

For much of the last 15 years, my photographic effort has been almost nil. I seemed to have lost touch with my muse. Some time within the last 5 years or so, I did start playing with images again – initially just dabbling with low-res digital tweaking of some of the few pics I had taken. Gradually, I started feeling the desire to do more than this, and as my PC systems were upgraded, was able to work at higher resolutions until I could handle poster-sized images without too much difficulty. But still I wasn’t shooting much to speak of, so the end results were little more than just stretching my photographic muscles again, so to speak.

I dragged myself out of hiding to take part in a fun photographic event hosted by the Regional Gallery, where photographers were invited to bring along a BW image and talk about it briefly; I really enjoyed that, partly because it brought me into contact with the local art community. This is what I took along:

Pigeon Woman

For the ensuing year or so, I began to take my photography more seriously again, and wondered whether some of what I was doing might be suitable for any of the local galleries. Somehow, I always had difficulty with that – whether photography, mine in particular, could stand alongside works that were palpably more worthy of being called art. That’s just me. Somewhere, there was always a nagging feeling that I wasn’t an artist, that my reason for taking pictures was just to hang something on the wall that was nice to look at, without there being any greater substance, any social comment or underlying meaning to the images.

Then on that wonderful evening in November last year, I stumbled upon redbubble; seeing the tremendous wealth of talent out there seemed to be the catalyst I needed. Since then I have been gradually developing a body of work – very mixed, it has to be said – that might soon become something more than just a few images on the HDD. I might at last dare to call myself an artist. Maybe I’m too left-brain though, too concerned with technical quality, and not sufficiently able to let go and just be utterly creative, without always comparing with existing standards and references. I hope not!

3:58 pm

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the regional gallery again, and found an exhibition that in itself I didn’t find particularly enthralling. The following part of the brief introduction to the work on display did catch my eye though:

• His figures can be easily read as archetypal images of ‘man’ giving no indication of external factors, no clues, and no contextualization, leaving viewers to contemplate the trans-historical universal human.

Now, I’m curious about how many other visitors to that exhibition will have "contemplated the trans-historical" ... etc, as it hadn’t occurred to me to do so. I think that this is substantially why I have had difficulty seeing myself as An Artist. I don’t seem to understand the lingo. My more frequent reaction to exhibitions is "yes, but is it art?" Or perhaps, "why is it art?" I think I’d like to take a group of artists, critics, gallery directors and other cognoscenti, as well as the lay public, through such an exhibition without their reading the introduction, and see how many of them would actually come up with a reaction that reflected the commentary. It might be an interesting experiment.

Lovely bubbly

I'm a RedBubbler now; discovered the site a few days ago, and have just started uploading images. I've been looking for an online outlet for a while, and this seems to be a good one. Check out the images and leave a comment.

Hydrangea

It seems I have a minor - but possibly growing - obsession with a hydrangea. We have one in a large pot on the back verandah, which is enjoying exuberant growth. It was somewhat abused a couple of years ago, being fairly sunburned and drought-afflicted. After being moved to a better spot and being treated more tenderly though, it is thriving once again.

I am drawn towards it with camera in hand; there's something about the leaf shape and texture that is so appealing: well-defined veins and bold serrations, with a satisfying sheen on at least some of the leaves. There is also a slightly unruly quality to the leaves, with unexpected twists and curls. The pink flowers, pretty though they are, don't interest me so much; possibly because I am inclined to render the images in monochrome, and they don't present enough of a graphic form to be worthwhile. Maybe I should take another look, and see if I can create a pleasing image from them as well. I might surprise myself.

Images Copyright Duncan Waldron 2007. All rights reserved.

In the third dimension

Something I've dabbled with for a long time, is 3D photography. When I was studying applied photography, it was one topic that really grabbed my attention. I've yet to do something really dramatic with it, but - having been asked to mount an exhibition at one of the local art galleries - it's just a matter of time.

One of the earliest exponents of photography (then Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth) was quick to tackle the 3D world, and created stereo pairs in various locations as far apart as Egypt and Russia. So, I follow in illustrious footsteps. In fact, one of the more pleasant tasks during my time as photographer at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, was to help with the production of an exhibition of some of CPS's work. It was certainly a fun change to the usual drab observatory work, and the resulting show was a delight to behold - and a pleasure to be associated with.

If I'm honest, I've only dabbled with 3D, in that I haven't produced a great body of work; however, I have managed to get some out-of-the-ordinary images, such as are not generally captured by those photographers still working in 3D. It is that sort of image that I would intend to include in the exhibition. And what sort is that? All will out, in due course...

Meanwhile, here's a taster that I took while visiting Stonehenge in 1997. It wasn't taken under the best of circumstances, but does give an impression of what the monument is really like. You need to use the crossed-eyes method, to view it properly (cross your eyes until you see 3 images, and the middle one should be in 3D). If you can't manage it, sorry... Warning: if you click through to the larger image, sit back fom the screen a bit, to avoid getting a headache from severe eye-crossing!

Image copyright © Duncan Waldron 1997, All rights reserved.