Battles.

Some music and moving images, rather then my crappy photos for your viewing pleasure.

Kodachrome

Immortalised in Song by Simon and Garfunkel, the legendary Kodachrome slides are nearly extinct with only one lab left in the world who develops the K-14 (Dwayne's Photo in Kansas USA).

The only type of the brand left available is 35mm 64iso. Many proffesional and well known users of the film are having to switch to either e-6 process brands, negative film, or digital, I my self had to order it from abroad as it is no longer sold in Ireland. It's as rare as hens teeth to come by.
I bought some through 7dayshop.com for sheer novelty value, I heard that Steve McCurry's famous Afgan girl photo was taken with Kodachrome.
I've rarely used positive slide film, shot a roll or two of velvia, I do love the prospect of seeing your film in positive form, makes editing a hell of a lot easyer.
It costs about €8.50 a roll, which has processing and return postage included, from there you have to spend anouther €1.50 to post to Switzerland (with this lovely envelope proved by Kodak), from there they then send it to Kanas in America.
A week later you receive your slides back.
I heard a lot about it, but it is the best and most acurate colour reproduction of reality I have ever seen.
It's decline over over other brands of slide film leaves me perplexed, it's just so good. What started out as a brief experiment, to test it out, has become something that will permanently be in my arsenal as long as it's made.
These are from the test roll I put through the Leica m6.
I scanned the slide carriers on the light box, to give the touchable effect of how the slides are viewed and handled. Makes a change from moving things about on a viewing box, as opposed to digi files in Adobe bridge.
Tourist throwing up in temple bar.
A rehash of an image I took in B&W last year, I'm repeating my self too much these days.
It's a pity the boys in shadow, the poster in the background is a jockey falling off his horse. This will end up in my maybe limbo bucket.
This well end up in my interesting but requires cropping bucket. The second mans shadow is making a shape totally different from his body, a bit strange, alas I was not close enough, I don't print or use images that require significant cropping. Other wise I don't learn from the mistake.

Not that I'm boasting, but out of 36 shots, one exposure was a dud, not like anyone gives a shit anyway.

To be honest the lack of latitude in shooting chrome, is part of it's appeal, the fact that even if your 1/3 of a stop over or under your screwed, you have to nail there and then, easy for landscape photography, anouther ball game for candid on the street moments of people.
It takes the being there and then to a whole new level, your mentalitly has to be the oposite of the HDR photo manipulaters polluting the internet at the moment.

The Revenge of Neopan

I found two rolls of Neopan 1600, lying in the back of a fridge, it's a film I rarely shoot, I don't know why it has a really unique grain structure and quality to it.
Again these images are from last year, some are from March last year exactly, the kissing photos are from St Patrick's day 2008.

I'll explain some other time why I leave it so long till viewing or editing personal photos (besides I just couldn't be arsed).
Probably one of the first photos made with my 21mm Voightlander lens. I suggest full view for this one.
For some reason there were lots of Kissing photos on the roll's, must have been that time of year. Like a scene from Jacobs Ladder, that movie scared me so much when I was twelve.
I came very close to getting the crap kicked out of at this point.
They were carrying a makeshift coffin, I liked the way the boy ran into frame, the 21mm lens gets everything in.

These last two pictures are my attempt at getting an MFA, sadly it's not taken with a 10x8 view camera, therefore it can not be art.

From Last Year

Some scans from last year.


I'll always leave photos sitting for month's before I do anything with them, picky bastard I guess.

Yay for Colour.

People always say to me it's great that you shoot so much black and white film, keeping it real and traditional.
But to be honest it's more of a matter of financial necessity rather than artistic preference. It costs three times as much to shoot colour film which has to be handled in a c-41 or e-6 lab as opposed to developing your own black and white which is cheap as chips.
Believe me if I had my way I would shoot more colour .


I suppose I've shot B&W for some long colour opens up a whole new world and a way of seeing, although after a time of just using colour I'll get bored and go back to the compositionally pure world of monotone.

Besides doing experiments with colour, I'll soon just work exclusivly in the panoramic or square format of the Hasselblad. I'm so over standard rectangles.

Leicaflage

The chrome on the Leica M6 was drawing too much attention, so I decided to break out some black tape and engage in some urban camouflage.


Now that's much better the chrome was too pretty. I might even get some brown masking tape and throw it on there for good measure.

Panoramic London

Hi here are some recent photos from my trip to London in January, all images captured with a Hasselblad xpan.

I had very little time to go around to make images, I was too busy at the SWPP convention.



After about two minutes before this picture was made, at Canary Wharf in London, I was aproached by two police officers who started to demand why I'm taking pictures and where I'm from. When I said Ireland. They asked that I show them some ID, I told them I don't have any, and said I'm tourist and I didn't think there were any laws about taking photos in public. They just said you can't take photos here. Strange how the 20 people I saw with camera phones could snap away and I can't.
I continued on shooting whatever the fuck I felt like after they left.
I should mention that I had only a few hours sleep, and still half pissed from the night before.

It was my last day in London, and marred what was an otherwise nice little trip.

I have some images made with the Leica I'll see if I can dust off the negs, upload them some time.