Seems like there’s a new website dedicated to the Diana Camera. So far, there are three galleries up - Dominic Turner’s is my favourite.
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Look At Me might be the nicest collection of found photographs I’ve ever seen. And you can submit photos, too!
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If you’ve ever seen a Minox camera and you haven’t gallen in love with it something is wrong with you. Seriously. It’s the photographic equivalent of Bang-Olufsen audio equipment: Nice design and technology but quite expensive and more or less… well… useless. The negative is tiny which makes grain an issue. And who wants to fiddle with a camera that is so small that loading the film requires a *lot* of patience and pretty small fingers? Minox cameras are still made by the company. Actually, Minox makes more than just the little spy camera but when people say Minox they’re talking about the “spy” camera. You need special processing because of the size of the film; an easy way to deal with that is to buy film and processing mailers through BH Photo. More infos about the various Minox models can be found on the Minox Encyclopedia of the Minox Historical Society.
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Frequent readers of this weblog will have noted that I usually don’t link to sites with tutorials on how to manipulate digital images. I’m going to make an exception today. This morning, my wife asked me how I’d restore old, faded photos. Even though I more or less knew how to do it I went looking for something online: Needle in a haystack! The signal-to-noise ratio of the web has become quite abysmal. For every useful page you’re flooded with tons of ads and pages where people try to sell you some crap. Anyway, after a while I found this page and I thought I’d link to it here coz it might come handy.
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It probably can’t get any more complicated than this: Should there be a book with photos of what German cities looked like after they were destroyed by bombers during World War II? “‘We’ve all seen the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But these (new) images are not part of the iconography of the war,’ says historian Joerg Friedrich, who compiled the book. […] Mr Friedrich collected the photos from town archives across Germany while touring the country last year presenting a book about the Allied bombing. That book, The Fire, caused controversy both here and in Britain by suggesting the air campaign may have been a war crime. ‘Can you show the body parts of bomb victims collected in bathtubs? The charred corpses of women, who crouched to the floor in a desperate search for oxygen?’ asked Die Welt newspaper. […] a cultural magazine programme on ARD public television wrote it off as a ‘provocation’ that sought to ‘compare the air war with the Holocaust’. Mr Friedrich says the decision to publish the photos was not easy. In the end, the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl played a part in convincing him - with the proviso that British, Dutch, Polish and other civilian victims of air warfare also be portrayed.” (full story; images)
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Soviet-Russian cameras has a lot of information about cameras made in Russia or the former Soviet Union (incl., unfortunately, a silly rant about “Why I don’t like LOMOgraphy”: “It’s a capitalist conspiracy.”). (thru consumptive.org)
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Dublog, which appears to be hopefully only in sleep mode right now, featured Carbon Dust Illustrations of Beetles a while back. Insect Tectonics is the high-tech equivalent: Electron microscope images of insects. Stunning.
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“Madonna is being sued by the son of a French fashion photographer [Guy Bourdin] who has accused her of imitating images created by his father.” (story) If you want to judge for yourself, check out this comparison of stills from Madonna’s video and of photos by Guy Bourdin. The similarities are quite obvious; in particular since the poses of the models in Bourdin’s photos are not your everyday poses. Needless to say, this lawsuit is particularly spicy in the light of Madonna’s attacks on people who copy here music illegally. Nothing but some good old hypocrisy, eh?
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Stahl Art is a website by Harald Finster that shows photos of old industrial sites. (thru what a few days ago was called a most curious marmoset)
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There’s an amusing article on The Luminous Landscape about what all you need in your photo bag.
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What is street photography? I had a look at the “about” section of in-public.com: “Street Photography is about seeing and reacting, almost by-passing thought altogether. For many Street Photographers the process does not need ‘unpacking’, It is, for them, a simple ‘Zen’ like experience, they know what it feels like to take a great shot in the same way that the archer knows he has hit the bullseye before the arrow has fully left the bow. As an archer and Street Photographer myself, I can testify that, in either discipline, if I think about the shot too hard, it is gone.” (this one recommended by fiatvera’s Albert Song)
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“In 1907 Japan enacted the Leprosy Prevention Law. Under this new segregation policy, and despite the fact that a cure had been developed, Japanese authorities forced thousands of patients to be confined in sanatoriums. Japan’s lepers remained quarantined until the law was repealed in 1996. […] Since the law was revoked […] very few have left the sanatoriums, most have no place to go and no families awaiting their return. These islands are still home to the majority of Japan’s lepers.” (story and photos by Luc Novovitch)
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Berlin Mitte - Explorations of an Urban Conversion shows the transformation of what used to be the death strip, dividing West and East Berlin during the Cold War, into the center of a re-united modern Berlin.
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photo-genetic.com is a very cool photo site which has its own online magazine plus lots of links.
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Having looked at many hundreds of websites of professional (advertizing) photographers I made an interesting observation: Lots of European, especially German photographers have sections with cars in their portfolio. Lots of Americans have sections with what they usually call glamour - girls in bikinis. What an amusing world it is!
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“The London Photographic Awards reveal an exciting, new program of web-based photographic competitions open to photographers world wide. […] Now in its sixth year the 2003 London Photographic Awards (LPA) is faster, more transparent and easier to enter. What’s more the competition format has been designed specifically to enable photographers’ work to be seen by curators, commissioning editors and art buyers. The London Photographic Awards is unique inasmuch as EVERY ENTRANT, unlike any other awards, will have their work displayed in the entrants gallery within 24 hours of entry, making it visible to an international audience. At the end of the competition the entrants’ gallery will be archived and used as a picture resource for industry professionals.” And they mean it! Check out the gallery of the PhotoArt competition.
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“Seamless City is a continuous visual image of the city made up of sequential photos of a walk through the city shot from a pedestrian point of view.” (thru j-walk) The most interesting aspect of this is to see how boring those streets, in fact most of those cities we live in, really are!
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I did a little search for photos shot with a Polaroid SX-70 camera. The film you use for those allows you to manipulate the photos while they develop. As with most photographic techniques, mastering the technique is the easy part. It is much harder to create an image where the actual technique adds another dimension and is not just some technical gimmick. Anyway, earlier I posted a link to Chris Usher’s site. Cynthia Davis has a nice gallery., as have Michael Going and Gordon Montgomery. Klaus and Elke Wolfer’s website is partly German and partly English but, you know, you really just want to click on the images coz the translation is not that great.
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“Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher’s lifelong commitment to photographing the vanishing rituals and customs of tribal African cultures culminates in their monumental masterwork, AFRICAN CEREMONIES. Ten years in the making, this definitive work contains nearly 850 full-color photographs covering dozens of ceremonies that span the human life cycle.” (gallery) (thru dublog)
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iconomy has a large collection of links for photography done with “Gameboys”. As a little appetizer, check out The Game Boy Camera, especially Airstrike. Oh, and while you’re at it keep browsing through iconomy’s stuff. There are lots of gems to look at.
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I know lots of amateur photographers1 who complain about a lack of inspiration or about a lack of ideas what to take photos of. Here’s an idea. It’s called 26 Things - The International Photographic Scavenger Hunt. The idea is very simple. 26 things are twentysix subjects, some of them fairly obvious (“a sunset”), some of them less so (“new”). The idea is to take a photo for each of the subjects throughout the month of July 2003 and then, on 1 August 2003, to send them the link with the page that contains the photos. For anybody looking for a project this is ideal: There is a deadline which is not too tight (procrastination, be gone!), there are topics to shoot, but the topics are defined broadly enough for everybody. I already started working on mine - I’ve got eight so far. 1 Amateur photographers very often aren’t really amateurs. Maybe it would be better to call them non-professional photographers.
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Boring postcards are actually not that boring at all! (thru thingsmagazine.net)
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iconomy has a link to Binh Danh’s Chlorophyll Art . Seeing that I remembered having read an article about this before called Why didn’t the Romans invent Photography? In that article, there is a little modification to what Binh Danh does: The article suggests to put the leave into a dark box for two days. Given it has been so sunny over the past few days I might even try this kind of photography!
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Very nice gallery of colourful night-time photography at thenocturnes.com (also see previous entry).
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“Do photographs bring us closer to the ‘real’ or push it further away? When is a photograph a document and when is it art?” asks Peter Conrad in an article for The Observer. The exhibiton he refers to I mentioned earlier. (thru esthet.org)
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A photo essay about drag queens in Tokyo by Kyle Sackowski. (thru consumptive.org)
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African Aperture has some very nice galleries of photos taken in Africa. There are so many photos and photographers on there that it literally takes forever to look at all of it.
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Exhibition with photos taken in defeated Germany in 1945. Unfortunately, the number of photos which can be found online is pretty small. But they’re quite stunning.
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The Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) has a very interesting exhibition about “Bildberichterstatterinnen” - that’s how the Nazis called female photo journalists. The exhibition shows the work of Liselotte Purper between 1937 and 1944, depicting the Nazis’ view of the role and work of women. Unfortunately, the text of the exhibition is in German. But even if you don’t understand German you can still look at the photos which are very interesting in themselves (all the photos are thumbnails, click on them to see large versions).
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Kodak never was more stylish than this. (thru solipsistic)
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photojapan.com offers stock photography of everything and anything Japanese (incl. vintage photos). If you feel like simple browsing and looking at lots of photos go and have a look!
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The Empire That Was Russia contains colour images made from negatives produced around 100 years ago by Russian photographer Sergej Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. “We know that Prokudin-Gorskii intended his photographic images to be viewed in color because he developed an ingenious photographic technique in order for these images to be captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system [right] involving the same three filters.” (taken from the page which explains how it works).
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All you ever want to know (and much more) about jpg/jpeg compression can be found in this very cool article on photo.net.
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The Orange Scourge (Vietnam - the effects of “Agent Orange”) and A Depleted Generation (Iraq - before the latest war in which even more ammunition containing depleted uranium was used).
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Something in me tells me that getting a super-precise pinhole made with a laser takes away a little bit of the fun. However, if you’re looking for a place which can make you such a pinhole check out Lenox Laser’s website. (thru cold marble musings)
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I was curious what a Google search for photographic self portraits would result in. In the end, I didn’t find too many photos I liked. Sabina Spaldi’s ones are interesting (albeit too small to be really enjoyable). Gottfried Helnwein’s self portraits are as weird as you can possibly get. And I found some by famous photographers Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts (which I’m just including to show you that famous photographers can do pretty bad work, too), Helmut Newton, August Sander, and Imogen Cunningham.
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If you want b/w slides/transparencies the obvious option is to use Agfa’s Scala film which produces very nice results. However, there’s another option I came across by chance just today. Through a process called “dr5” David Wood managed to turn regular b/w film into transparencies. Check out this fairly enthusiastic article about it. Information about the process, how to treat the films and how to reachthe lab can be found under dr5.com. I’ll definitely want to test this process with Kodak’s (very low-speed) Technical Pan film (for which I couldn’t find a decent link).
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I just noticed that they put up my contribution on Images Against War. Unfortunately, they didn’t print my little statement so, I guess, nobody will ever get what the photo is about. The photo shows the window of a deserted coffee shop near “Ground Zero” in downtown Manhattan in December 2001. It’s cross-processed, hence the weird colours. I picked the photo as a sad reminder that those people who lost their lives in the “Twin Towers” are now only remembered for one purpose: To justify war, and thus more destruction.
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You can fake lots of things so why not fake taking photos with a Lomo? The obvious answer - true for many things you can fake - is: Because it’s no fun. But that’s a different story. (link thru thingsmagazine.net)
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“Everyone who values optical/mechanical perfection and robustness will love the LEICA MP. By means of the use of high-grade materials and complex fabrication processes, the MP is designed for extreme longevity. The MP is independent of batteries and all its operating elements are made of metal, so that it withstands heavy duty use under extreme conditions.” (link) If I still had the money I’d buy me one right away.
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The US Transportation Security Administration has just published guidelines about what to do with film on an airport. Excerpts: You should remove all film from your checked baggage and place it in your carry-on baggage. The X-ray machine that screens your carry-on baggage at the passenger security checkpoint will not affect undeveloped film under ASA/ISO 800. If the same role of film is exposed to X-ray inspections more than 5 times before it is developed, however, damage may occur. Protect your film by requesting a hand-inspection for your film if it has already passed through the carry-on baggage screening equipment (X-ray) more than 5 times. […] At the passenger security checkpoint, you should remove the following types of film from your carry-on baggage and ask for a hand inspection: Film with an ASA/ISO 800 or higher Highly sensitive X-ray or scientific films Film of any speed which is subjected to X-ray surveillance more than 5 times (the effect of X-ray screening is cumulative) Film that is or will be underexposed Film that you intend to “push process” Sheet film Large format film Medical film Scientific film Motion picture film Professional grade film
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an unblinking look?in words and images?at the reality of warfare
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Photos taken with various “toy” cameras
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“Neat Image is a digital filter application designed to reduce visible noise in digital photographic images. It is a tool for owners of digital cameras, flatbed and slide scanners; and is for use by both professional photographers, and digital image processing enthusiasts.” Of course, you can do all that with Photoshop but Neat Image just looks somewhat easier to use. I’ll have to do more tests to see how good it really is but the tests I did looked all very promising.
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I refused to participate in the [journalists’] pool system. I was in the Gulf for many weeks as the build-up of troops took place, and then sat out the ‘air war’, and flew from Paris to Riyadh as soon as the ground war began. I arrived at the ‘mile of death’ the morning the day the war stopped. It was very early in the morning and few other journalists were present. When I arrived at the scene of this incredible carnage, strewn all over on this mile stretch were cars and trucks with wheels still turning, radios still playing, and there were bodies scattered along the road. Many people have asked the question ‘how many people died’ during the war with Iraq and the question has never been well answered. That first morning, I saw and photographed a U.S. Military ‘graves detail’ bury in large graves many bodies. Journalist Peter Turnley in the introduction to a grisly series of photos from the first Gulf War.
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It is a matter of personal taste - as pretty much anything related to photography - but Polaroid transfers are probably the watercolours of photography. And this is not necessarily meant to be a compliment. Done well, Polaroid transfers are … well, let’s say interesting. Take, for example, Melinda Carvalho’s gallery. Those are some very good examples of Polaroid transfers. It’s easier to find plenty of not-so-good ones. One of the main problems of Polaroid transfers could be that most people seem to be too interested in the technique itself rather than in the actual result. Means they show you some Polaroid transfer and expect a “Wow! Cool!” - regardless of the actual photographic merit of the photo. It’s like seeing the usual beach-lighthouse watercolour. But maybe I’m being unfair, maybe you could say that about many artistic techniques. Anyway, this is not to deny that Polaroid transfers are actually quite tricky to do. It’s a steep and expensive learning curve. If you want to do your own check out Holly Dupre’s (free) online manual (downloadable as pdf file).
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Alternativephotography.com has all about cyanotypes and other “alternative” types of photography and/or photo development. It’s a very cool site with lots of examples and also some pages with tutorials.
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Most people have probably never heard of Polaroid’s Instant Slide Film. Thing is most people will also probably never hear of it because I heard it is not being produced any longer now that Polaroid is heading for bankruptcy. It’s a pity! By chance, I found the little processing “darkroom” for those slides at a local thrift store. I started looking into the film doing a Google search. I found a very nice page about the film by Mark Meyer. I also found a few dealers which claim they (still) sell the film. I think what I’ll do is to try to get some film while it’s still around and play with it.
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It’s a bad time for professional and especially semi-professional photographers - unless you’re well known already and have clients. The other day, I mentioned how I had talked to a local gallery owner who told me how slow business was. A couple of days later, I read a story in The Economist (the British semi-official organ of the Republican/Tory Party) about the advertizing industry which isn’t doing too well. Business is slow, and nobody knows when money is coming back. And yesterday, I received an update from Desert Doplhin. Business is slow, sluggish, you name it. It seems even the big agencies are having troubles. The good thing about the guys at DD is that they’re not gouging their photographers like certain other very big agencies. So I think I’m actually fairly lucky - despite non-existing sales. And I have no intention to explore other roads. I’m not going to prostitute myself as a photographer. There are way too many talented photographers out there doing “glamour” photography or related stuff (btw, RIP, Herb Ritts, I wish you hadn’t wasted your talent the way you did it). But can you blame them? I don’t know. People will always tell you how you need to make some money etc. so why not do those commercial assignments which add no value whatsoever to your portfolio? Well, I guess, it’s everybody’s personal choice. And the question of artistic integrity is a tricky one anyway. I’m fairly lucky I have my day job - which I really enjoy - and maybe some day there’ll be some money made from photography. This is I’m not in it for the money. I actually wouldn’t mind showing my photos in a gallery and not selling a single photo. Oh well, I’m rambling… Time to stop.
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Hoax Photo Test for the snazzy readers of this weblog.
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