i went to a lecture down the street where richard rinaldi went out and about with this 10x8 camera and then again to fall river for his latest book. i then remembered lois connor’s work in china where she travelled about on a bicycle with a banquet camera and i began to wonder if lugging the deardorff about gros morne was all that much of a problem.

it seems that the passing of time is lessening the pain of trying to be mobile carrying 20kg of equipment about. i seem to have forgot that even with only the hobo and no tripod the walk out of green gardens wasn’t easy. i remember more the slow awkward outings around woody point, trout river, the gulch and st paul’s more than leaving the camera in the machine when heading further into the park.

i remember how easy it was to simply pull off the road and make a snap.
i know that here it is pretty difficult as it is harder to stop along the main roads. people are more paranoid seeing everything as a threat. because there are more roads and thus more options the serendipitous encounter is more prevalent. there is only one option on the burgeo highway.

i opt for what i do for mobility the option of choice of way not dependent on how far out of the way it leads me. i still see my feet as my main method of transport and while there were definite health advantages to the 10x8 - the shedding of 10 kilos by simply using it, it did tend to determine the outing.

but the last two times i have driven and the last two times for the most part there were few options - the burin and the bonavista outings - heading out to bay of islands, the port au port peninsula. while the size of marystown and catalina would be a problem, petit jardin, lark harbour and rose blanche would pose no trouble.

as i am drawn more and more to smaller and more remote places why not slow down more. normally i drive to a place park wander then drive on. here during recent outings this summer, i have even learned how to make u turns on highways when my brain has finally processed what i had seen - there is talk of time lag between the pressing the shutter and when the image is made, my time lag is seeing something and recognising it as 80k/h. on the rock i am fully versed in parking on the verge.

i have five boxes of outdated 10x8 film left someone gave 50 sheets of tri-x 10x8 it would be a pity to have that to go bad. the boxes from 2005 are well on their way but i am guessing this is due to the film being re-packaged forte film from freestyle. i always suspect that it was x-rayed when i had it shipped to the evil twin. it is fine for silver gelatine prints but problematic for slower processes.

if i drove i could cover my bets, while i strive to simplify i would simply, finally admit that it is not possible for me, and pack the boot with the deardorff leaving room for the lads on the seat beside me. along the road i’d unpack it as i saw the sackville snapper doing, hitting larger populations it would stay put.

the romanticism of the large format does confront my style of working. usually frames are wasted as i make a snap before i think about what is in front of me, i then tend to work through what saw by editing out the peripherals and worrying about things formal and while usually it is still the first or second image is made - it seems that my distillation kills the spontaneity - this manner of working would bankrupt me with film costs multiplied by a factor of 10.
that factor has worsened. while everyone else is worried about the rise in petroleum prices, the increase there is meagre when compared to what has happened to film due to the digital “revolution”. in 2005 a box of film was $35 to-day $80. because of this i would use what i have left and then leave the deardorff packed, hoping that working with it would curb my hyperactivity with the lads.

kodachrome going going...

http://www.dphotoexpert.com/2009/06/22/kodachrome-reaches-frame-39-the-end/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124567093975236801.html

northern light

the printing of the danish snaps are taking a bit more time than i had expected. it has to do with this phenomenon that i still have to conquer. northern light. it seems that i am constantly underexposing when i am in it.

i was made aware of this when one winter in the duke, buddy from port kirwan mentioned that light up here was different. yeah yeah yeah i know it is softer, more penetrating - when it is out - beautiful light. he was saying how lightmeters were constantly confused as if the rock the light version of places that send compasses crazy.

it is f:16 at 250 one stop dimmer in newfoundland. i am overly aware of this i am constantly second guessing the lightmeters in the lads. in truth it does seem to give a reading that thinks there is more light than it is. overcast day and i am getting the “sunny 16” reading. i couldn’t remember however if the kirwanian was saying that my guessing would be wrong or that i couldn’t trust the lightmeter. needless to say that i bracket constantly. the odd thing incident meters seem to be spot on.

so here i was roughly the latitude of nain and glasgow experiencing the same thing. when out on the wanders i noticed that readings didn’t seem correct. there with the constant greyness i had no point of reference. i bracketed tried to remember through the fog of the duke as what to do and soldiered on.

i wonder when my facility with light in the north was lost. when on the course at goldsmiths’, i had no trouble with light in britain - it couldn’t be the constant greyness which left no room for variation because it seemed worse there. i knew that while the eyes wouldn’t register it, light readings would fall off quickly when duckish. i can only attribute the ease there with my laziness. not having a camera with a built in lightmeter, i would look and guess before i would actually take the reading. after a while hating being bothered, and seeing that my guesses held up. i stopped pulling it out.

with the pyro development which makes negs seem thinner than they are there was a mild panic when i went to print them. the shadow detail is there but the printing resembles those negs that one used to have at a school that would under-develop their negs in microdol-x - expose incorrectly and all is lost. breathing deeply i am making many more tests than usual quietly celebrating when there is a print.

when heading to charm city, i over packed but then again i had great plans. i realise that i have become too specialised for my own good. i took the dslr for the internet version of ding dong ditch up when i made it up to inwood. i brought along a leiquinha for a day of wander while making my way to the upper reaches of manhatten. it was the camera of choice as the last time i was in the city early morning wanders with the leiquinha worked well. i brought joãozão even though i constantly worry that one day it will simply not function anymore while i am in the middle of nowhere.

he is the camera of choice for while i talk a brave talk in the entries, it still takes me some time to get used to the ambience of violence that overwhelms the city. the camera has this chameleon quality that when folded can be passed off as a book, no one dares stare long enough in charm city to notice that it is not a book. i can have it out and almost ready but folded when i feel somewhat threatened. even opened it looks cheap.

didn’t get to nyc. the cameras meant for it became extra weight in the carry on. while playing bus tag i did take the digital but only used it those times when i met someone and mad a snap of them. the leiquinha seemed superfluous and was only on an outing when i meet chi for brunch - being timid i didn’t want to whip out joãozão to make a snap of her.

it came to me that i lug around extra cameras from the assumed expectations of others. i felt that the dslr was justified as after making the snap on the 54 i could validate myself as a photographer by turning the camera around and showing her the snap, the same happened with tom, willie girts and and the woman awaiting the 54. but in truth they could care less. it was my insecurity proving to them that i was a photographer, really.

i also used the dslr for snaps of family which again seems strange as i still don’t take the camera seriously, it is still mainly used for entries here and while i did photograph everyone i met with the dslr last year i think it had more to do with that immediacy than quality of the snap. i find this action strange as one would think that snaps of one’s family would be considered important - especially when they are so rapidly ageing - and thus worthy of a mode of documentation that has some permanence to it. once again i saw the use of it as a 21st century polaroid, the act of making the snap was more important than the snap the party atmosphere of the digital but with real photographer pretensions. i may have been scarred when photographing some kids in petty harbour, they wanted to me to turn the camera around to show them the snap, they didn’t understand the idea of film.

in the last bus tag trips i didn’t take the dslr at all. it seems the only area that suffered was pictures for the entries. but it also means that i am not making the same snap on two cameras so that i can have snaps to show as i ws doing in denmark.

so it looks like i am taking a step in my usual direction - backwards. there is more of an engagement with film, the wait, the extra care when in front of the subject. once again an awareness of as much as possible before firing off the shutter. none of the make a snap then after seeing how lazy my composition was, making another. once again i am more aware of the edges, of junctions in the frame, of the direct view of the rangefinder. the feeling of progress as rolls are changed - forgetting that they seem to need changing when something important is happening or i am in the most problematic of neighbourhoods.

i realise also that if the world weren’t so paranoid with foyers locked, gated condos etc, i could do a simple object based ding dong ditch.