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| Stop the World, I want to get off |
I have always been fascinated by photos, with their ability to hold a frozen moment in time and yet open a tiny window back to that quantum realm of untarnished memory. With the advent of digital photography, the floodgates opened on my ability to be much less choosy and precious over what I could shoot - the costs of film and development were removed and the scales fell from my eyes as to what was possible and to a degree, permissable. My first real camera was a Canon Sureshot and I marvelled at its autofocus ability and spent whole rolls of film shoving the camera down holes, over walls, in windows, with casual abandon, not knowing what I might find when the prints finally arrived in their glossy envelope. In 2013, after receiving a redundancy payment from a longstanding and stultifyingly dull job, I spent a small chunk on a digital camera of my own, a Samsung NX1000.
Bought primarily for its looks and having the ability to connect to wifi, it was already about three years out of date, but suited my pocket and requirements. However, when it arrived, although very capable, the photographs appeared sterile and dull. (Shortly afterwards, I discovered the benefits of shooting in RAW format - but more on that later).
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| First Samsung NX 1000 shot (Adjusted) |
As I was relying heavily on the automatic features and presets, the shots were not really what I wanted. I had already been using a 8" Samsung tablet as a means to shoot some photographs and various iphones, handed down as my daughter upgraded, came in useful for close up or in the field work, but the camera itself was lacking. The other major plus with the NX was the ability to change lenses and the kit came with a 50mm and a telephoto. Looking at various photography blogs, I noticed that it was possible to use old analog lenses with digital cameras, by means of an adaptor, so I picked up a cheap dumb adaptor from ebay and set about looking for a suitably cheap old lens.
On a visit to a toy fair in Doncaster, I spotted a camera bag on a stall, with an old Pentax, a 50mm lens and various other bits. The stall holder was apparently selling it on for his son, amongst his trains and diecasts, and after a bit of haggling, I walked away with the lot for the princely sum of £12. Later on, I took the lens for a run in the garden, sitting on the adaptor. At first, the results were disappointingly mediochre, with little difference to what I got with the native lens, then, while shooting an action figure, I started meddling with the aperture ring, something I couldn't do with the Samsung, as it helpfully did all that for me.
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| Action Figure shot with analog lens |
Suddenly, the figure sprang out of the frame and the background blurred into a world of coloured soap bubbles. I was suddenly reminded of my college photography course back in 1978, with an old Zenit and mono film. A door blew open in my mind and a few weeks later, I found a couple of other old lenses on ebay, including a wonderful Helios 44, which I bought for a couple of pounds, that would shortly be revealed as one of the most desirable analog lenses for digital work. With this new foray into classic photography, I was reminded of filters and other accessories and began to search car boots for old items.
Since that time I have amassed a lot of old kit, 80% of it virtually useless, but what I do use, I find more rewarding than the modern lenses and equipment. Alongside the Samsung, the iphone photography trend flourished and today, my iphone 12 Mini is technically superior to my digital camera. With a whole suite of dedicated camera and processing apps for the phone and an almost unlimited potential for taking photographs, I have reverted to my original methodology of shooting anything and everything, from the hip, the car window, the tripod of whatever I happen to be near and for every 20 shots that I take, I may gather in one useable one, but the excitement and thrill of shooting blind will never leave me.
The Samsung setup with tripod and remote release comes into its own with studio or landscape work, the Helios lenses giving a beautiful ethereal air to the shots together with the cameras ability to zoom in for pixel perfect detailing, while the iphone allows for on the fly and vernacular work in the field.
Every shot is still an experiment, despite the iphone camera’s almost infallible ability to grab a sharp focus, whilst the analogue lenses require some manhandling to get a good shot. I have invested in four NX camera bodies, one of which I had modified to full spectrum capability and added a couple of infra red lens filters to my arsenal. This came into particularly effective use when I visited Cyprus and the almost perpetually sunny weather allowed for some unusual shots.
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| Cyprus landscape in Infra Red at 750nm range |
With all these lenses, camera, phones and filters, I have amassed thousands of photographs, some good, some not, but all of them a vivid slice of virtual memory for me. As I am not a fan of social media, my previous habit of posting to Instagram has now abated, so in order for me to enjoy my shots in a larger than viewfinder fashion, I have decided to post them to a blog.
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| Philip Larkin |
The title of the blog refers to a poem from one of my favourite poets - Philip Larkin, whom I much later found out was also a vey keen photographer. Larkins beautifully visual poem ‘Whitsun Weddings’ ends with the following lines:
We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
The idea of shooting arrows and shooting photographs - one act entirely inward and the other outward, may seem unrelated, but photography for me is all about aim and a target image, the transmutation referred to by Larkin occurs later, when the image is finally apprehended. Much like arrows, some find their mark, whereas others may disappear into obscurity, irrespective of the skill of the archer.
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| Self Portrait iPhone 12 Mini |
Bill Bulloch June 2023
