The Final Mess

It seems that there are several contenders that are going to finish us off pretty soon.  Up until a short while ago climate change or nuclear war were the prime contenders. Now we also have AI on the list. With the kind of people running the circus these days all seem likely, even simultaneously. I'm old enough not to be too sorry about myself; but our children...God, that hurts, and I hope it won't come to the worst.

On a much smaller and painless scale, I recently managed to create my own mess. I'd decided to make a couple of pictures at two locations, each with multiple exposures; the "multiple" being a rather large number up to 50, which supposedly gives a different kind of long-exposure look to the image. The impulse was given by reading an interview with the late John Blakemore, who had made such exposures. The Nikon F3 loaded with HP5, I set out on my bike one early morning. Now, on the F3, if you flip a tiny lever at the side of the winding crank after the exposure, you can re-cock the shutter without winding the film. The lever will flip back after the winding though, so you have to flip it again if you want to keep on exposing onto the same frame. And you can do this as many times as you want. However, you have to be careful that you calculate each exposure correctly, depending on how many of them will add up on the same frame. You also have to factor in some potential change in lighting, for example the light getting brighter each minute at dawn. Having said all that, B&W film will probably be able to handle most of what you throw at it.

And you also should not be a fool like myself, and not forget not to flip the multi-exposure lever once you're done.

The first picture was eight exposures of a long pond in a local park. You should be able to count eight bobbing swans at the bottom left, or rather the same swan eight times. After I was done, I thought that I had wound the film on to the next frame. I cycled onwards to a spot on the Rhine to give a beloved poplar tree the same treatment: I blasted a further thirty-three (!) exposures not onto the next frame, but on top of the same frame with the eight exposures of the pond! When I hung up the wet film after development, it took me a lot of head-scratching to figure out what the heck had happened here. Slowly, over the course of a few days, it all fell into place. But it didn't take that long for the photo to grow on me. Now I find the mess kind of charming.

And oh, the John Blakemore experiment; yeah I'm still keen on re-doing that!

By the way, the print is on 20x25cm Ilford RC Satin, a lovely paper. I might also print it on 24x30cm FB paper one day...but I think I have to live with for a bit longer first.

The Rhine Flows In E Flat Major

 

Come June, the great mowing begins. All the spring grass that has been growing waist high in the fields and along the river banks, transforming the landscape into a lush green, so refreshing after the dreary winter, is cut down. By July, the yellow of hot summers dominates the scenery.

I hadn't been by the Rhine for a month. This morning, August 1st, I jumped on my bike and pedalled down to the river, eager to see how much the waters had receded as a result of the ongoing drought. It wasn't too bad. As expected, the banks were hay coloured, and there was a delicate cloud cover. The river was flowing without a sound*. Indeed, it was utterly quiet all around. I set up my tripod and made a photo, just meters away from where I had made another picture in April.

 *Did you know that "The Rhine flows in E flat major"? This saying, presumably common in German classical music circles, is a reference to Wagner's Rheingold and also Schumann's 3rd Symphony ("Rheinische"), both of which are in E flat major.

Living With The Dead

 

Scattered around Istanbul are small patches of Ottoman graveyards from bygone glorious days, that are accepted - with reluctance or reverence, I'm not quite sure - to exist in close proximity to the wild urban sprawl. If I'd consider this photo as evidence, I'd hazard a guess that neither the living nor the dead are happy with this arrangement.

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In this bizarre case I found a sycamore tree determined to take some kind of revenge from the dead...no matter how long it would take.

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The first photo is from 2022 and I printed it back then in my darkroom in Istanbul. The second one is from 2023 and I printed it for the first time just a week ago, in my new darkroom in Düsseldorf. It always caught my eye on the contact sheet, but for one reason or another I was never quite sure that it was worth printing. Now that I've printed it, I'm convinced that it was worth it...go figure. That's the power of  contact sheets; you come back to them again and again, and you might decide to give a picture a chance after all. In comparison, I've no idea when I'm going to look through all the photos from my digital camera again. I make a cull immediately after I’ve downloaded them, and that’s it. Those that didn’t make the first cull I put in other folders. They might as well be lost forever.

By the way, the second print is on graded Fomabrom N 111, a paper new to me. I'd decided to give it a shot and ordered a 24x30 cm packet of 25 sheets. It took some time to getting used to, but I like it now.

I was surprised to see how fast the Foma paper is. I have to expose Ilford MG Classic  around one and a half stops more. But then you don't have a filter in the light path of graded paper. So I guess it evens out.

And although it's graded as Normal (hence the "N" in its name), I find it's still slightly soft, even with the condenser light of the Focomat. The Foma webpage says they produce a C(ontrast) version as well, but my retailer doesn't stock it. Still, all is good, because these days I like my prints with a longer grey scale anyway. And I haven't explored selenium toning with this paper yet. I expect a good response, so this should be another option if I want a slight contrast increase.

When dry, the surface is slightly duller than Ilford's glossy FB, which I actually prefer.

FWIW, here's an iphone pic of the wet print.

So, my favourite season, summer is finally here. I was all set to enjoy it until I read that the experts are predicting a strong El Niño with all accompanying calamities: extreme heat, forest fires and what not. The planet hasn't much time left I'm afraid...well, the planet actually has, those living on it don't; apart from cockroaches maybe.