Category: Uncategorized

Thought I’d had my fill of this film stock, but I got in the mood recently to shoot a couple of my favourite local nature spots with it. I like the results I got with the couple of shots of grasses/wildflowers/weeds more than the ones I shot in the local hedgerow. It was maybe a little too shady during the very early morning hours when I shot some those frames. Might have to buy yet another roll to shoot more in the wild meadows. Which do you prefer from the ones below, meadow / hedgerow?

I love nature either way, yo.

The photographer reports on spring scenes in the city.

//

The sun is finally out. It drags me by feet out from under the heavy blankets of clouds that’s dominated our skies for endless weeks. A long walk begs; camera in pocket. I set off from Baker Street. I walk a little way down some mews, where the backs of buildings throw jagged grey triangles against the blue sky. Fasting moving clouds with somewhere else to be roll by. Somewhere in a security booth a guy monitoring local CCTV cameras is wondering what I’m looking at. I stand my ground as a construction worker approaches from down the way. “Hey.”  

//

At Broadley Street Gardens I get caught in a sudden shower. I wait it out under my umbrella. It rains sideways, but passes quickly. Semi-lost trying to find the ever-photogenic Wallis building, I stumble onto an estate somewhere off Church Street. I’m pointing my camera towards a water reservoir atop a building, when a woman calls down at me from an upstairs window. “Why are you taking pictures?” I tell her it’s because I like documenting spaces and places. The city as it lives and breathes. I don’t say that wanky last bit. “Soon none of this will be here anymore”, she says, and looks pointedly at the new builds creeping closer. I hold my camera up, as if to say “that’s why”. She seems satisfied. Somehow that’s the only conversation I end up having all day. The one about the why I take pictures. 

//

Two guys with acoustic guitars and aviator sunglasses sit cross-legged on the pavement outside the fabric shop. The scattering of market goers are completely ambivalent to their hungover-sounding off brand desert folk. The fishmongers are deep in conversation under their grubby canopy. Hands on hips. The sun gleams off rows of silver scales. Nearby people are gutting a huge pile of clothes; unseeing and wholly focused on a bargain. I slip around the corner and start swimming up the A5 towards Edgware Road.   

//

I watch a guy in a hoodie kick a deflated football around, for his dog to run after on a small green. The sign on the gate says “No Dogs”. Across the road a guy on the balcony of a large grey block doesn’t seem to notice or care. I can’t be sure he’s really there. I never see people (apart from construction workers) on balconies in London. In some gardens next to the green, two goal posts stand either side a muddy hollow, with a gothic revival church looming large behind it. The image amuses me, given the holy devotion to football in this country. Saint Marcus Rashford comes to mind. I picture a rowdy game accompanied by organ music and the heady smell of incense. Or a small crowd cheering on the local priest. All the better if you could watch it from a balcony.   

//

Somewhere in Maida Vale, I stand in the same spot for a long while to admire the stone arch across the road. A man taking something out of the boot of his fancy car nearby lifts his chin in a “you alright?” motion. [I love how just standing and looking at nothing and everything makes you seem out of place/sorts or lost. I suppose there’s a rule I missed about feet and cities and perpetual motion.] “Yeah, mate, just admiring the architecture. It’s a nice day to walk around and look at things.” He agrees, but says he’s lazy and prefers to drive. I feel obliged to compliment the car. He seems chuffed and jogwalks up the steps of a £1mil+ house. 

//

On the other side of the world (read: a street away), three tower blocks bring their A-game in looking uniformly grim. A sweater hangs limply from a balcony 12 floors up on the first. From some unknown point on the second, the anguished howlshouts of a man. Again and again and again. The long-suffering face of a woman approaching the door of the building suggests it may last for hours yet. When I approach the third building, the door stays open for long seconds as a teenager engrossed in their phone is leaving. I consider slipping inside for a moment, imagining long corridors and deep stairwells. Photogenic cliches. The door clicks shut. And as I’m walking away, I turn back and see a “do not feed the pigeons” sign, defaced to read “do feed the pigeons”. I’ll second small escapist joys when a tortured voice is echoing between tall buildings nearby.

//

I walk a couple of blocks in another direction and then return to the station. Two women outside the entrance bookend a “Learn About the Bible” stand with bright smiles. Nearby a guy sitting on a pile of newspapers is hunched over, hacking his lungs out. They avoid looking at him. It’s not a Good Friday for everyone. As I walk into the station, his voice croaks as if he’s about to speak to me. The moment is gone. I crumble internally and feel like a cad as I descend the stairs down into the belly of the earth. The train is crowded. Three girls stand just a smidge too close to me.

// 

A mother bends down low over her kid and shouts “I told you, I have no mo-ney!!” (two exclamation marks). She’s got him backed into a concrete corner, in prime public humiliation real estate. He says “okay, I’m sorry” in a weak voice, and she drags him and a mute little brother away up the High Road. They pass a man in a way too tight t-shirt with “It’s all about the grind” emblazoned on it. His kids are shading ice pops under matching Pikachu hats next to him. I hate it.

//

A hugely drunk man outside M&S is keeping himself upright, by falling towards the Simply  sandwich in his hand, and then rebounding off it to chew the bite he’s taken. It’s impressive. A kinda-capoeira of sorts. I swerve him and go into the charity shop next door. A 1000-pager amongst the books has “Ulysses has nothing on this” as a review on the cover. A hard no from me. I’d rather dance-fight my way through a supermarket sandwich given the two options.  

//

A lady with neat white curls has the paper spread out in front of her like a map. She’s studying it tight-lipped and frowning. Can she find us a way? Next to her, a long-lashed teenager’s thousand yard stare goes straight through me. She smiles briefly at a memory of a thing. As we pull into the next station a man shuffles off our carriage looking hugely lost. The legs and sleeves of his clothes are too long. His shoes too big. His hat askew. His origin story looks a few thousand miles away. It may as well be beyond Betelgeuse, it’s that easy to feel alien in the city. Been there, done that. The door closes. He’s on his own now.

The last of the yellows on Fuji Venus 800, shot on my Chinon.

The photographer reports on winter scenes in suburbia.

//

The winter days are short in suburbia.

//

The sun rises in a low arc. People lift their hands to shield their eyes, saluting busy lanes of morning traffic. They squint and grimace at the stark light. Their breaths hang in front of them, and they stomp their feet as they wait to cross the road. When the light changes they move swiftly, with long shadows on their heels.

//

A brief graffiti battle ensues on the high road; a duel akin to tossing rainbow markers back and forth across a fence. The strong convictions on both sides last three weeks. Then fade out in blurred lines of pink and orange. Clown bile fired from water pistols, diluted by time and rain.

//

The wind turns from breezy to bracing and requires the wearing of many layers (which I like, and also hate). We are multi-layered beings in suburbia. Occasional exchanges with strangers, wrap around red ears like scarves and warm us.

//

Familiar faces disappear, and new builds appear. The many-storied heights of the latter, not filling the gaps left by the former.

/

A dusty stationary shop becomes a shiny supermarket overnight. A legitimate tragedy, underlined by a sliding electric door. The usual bucket for wet umbrellas by the door is erased. And two warm and earnest shop attendants with it. A long aisle of shiny 1.99 labels leading to a post office counter at the back punches holes in what once was. “For security reasons, this package contains a bleeding ink heart “.

//

The rain turns itself on and off like faulty light switch. It runs in silver rivulets down dark train windows. Pelts down on skylights like handfuls of rice. Dances in a fine mist in the warm halos of streetlamps. Turns sidewalks into mirrors, reflecting pedestrians and cars. Gathers in puddles in parks. And leaves all suburbia damp and cold.

//

Clouds shapeshift across the sky and distract daydreamers from their chores. Like curious Miyazaki characters, animated by the wind. The sun plays “peekaboo” between them in Morse code. And then very suddenly it’s night.

/

Suburbia surrenders to electric light. 

I might have mentioned in my previous Lomochrome Purple post that it’s not a cheap film, but on a visit to the Photographer’s Gallery last week, I got a discounted roll in their bargain bin and decided (or rather, I was encouraged by my online analogue homies) to mix it up a bit. These are probably all a bit too heavy on the purple for me, but interesting results nonetheless.

You know when you see examples of something and think it’s cool or interesting, but it’s not really for you? But then you actually try it out yourself and end up digging it? That’s what my recent experience was, when I finally tried out Lomography’s Lomochrome Purple film. I’d been crying “nah, I’ll pass” for ages, and ended up swooning a bit over the results in the end. This is was I love about film; the unexpected results you get sometimes.

I knew I wanted to focus on shooting plants, because, well, I love them. I also knew I might get some interesting colour variations. I shot these mostly at ISO 400, going down to as low as 160, as the day turned from grey and rainy to progressively brighter and sunnier.

I’ll admit, together on a page these pictures might appear slightly “garish” almost, because of the loud colours. A bit like eating too much sickly sweet candy. Or like a table, sticky with spilled soda. But individually, I think they are pretty cool. They just beg to be given room to breathe on a white wall / as individual postcards or album covers. Waiting for your print requests.

It took me a while to get round to shooting this roll of Svema 100, which I picked up from Analogue Wonderland a few months ago. If I’m honest I think the appeal was in the name; a combination of two Russian words, Светочувствительные Материалы, translated meaning Photosensitive Materials. A few years back I made an attempt at learning basic Russian prior to a visit to St Petersburg, and though most of what I learned is gone now, I’m still gassed whenever I can spell out/read anything in Cyrillic script. Aside from the name/design appeal, I generally like trying out new black and white films.

I shot this using my dad’s old Chinon CP-7M, and hesitated a little over whether to develop it myself, given how badly I scratched the last film I self-developed. I had a little practice run loading film onto the spool with an old film though, and in the end it loaded fine. FPP (the Film Photography Project) describes this film as having “a high efficiency layer on top of its emulsion to prevent scratching”, which apparently did its job.

I developed it using Rodinal, and was reasonably pleased with the results. Quite high contrast, and very smooth grain wise. A couple of the shots indoors were wholly underexposed, and as always I can never quite get shooting plants in black and white right. Maybe because I love green so much.