The pandemic with its lockdowns has seen the rise of the "Corona walk" of the troubled and socially distant photographer. I empathise with you, dear friend. It was hard not to lose heart; trying to stay calm behind your masks and fogged up eyeglasses, unable to see through your viewfinders; trying to neither lose sanity nor sanitiser. The invisible foe always seemed to be around the next corner.
This is a tiny summary of my nocturnal excursions from January to April 2021, between 7pm-9pm, before the 9pm lockdowns in Turkey. I would sling a Rolleiflex TLR around my shoulder and doggedly walk the same route in İstanbul over and over, only occasionally slipping into some side streets. The Rollei was usually loaded with Ilford Delta 3200, a beauty for night scenes with street lights; although you really have to know how to expose and develop D3200. 1/15th or 1/30th of a second at f/2.8 and the exposure was taken care of, and I could concentrate on the big struggle of trying to make something worthwhile.
At that time I was thinking about ways to handcraft books using real prints and mucking around with different options, one of which resulted in this mini-album. Obviously, being an experiment, it wasn't meant to impress. As you can see, it's as basic as it gets. Lowest grade cardboard for the covers, a sheet of A4 paper, some double-sided tape; and the five photographs of course, in this case 9x9cm prints on Ilford RC Satin (lovely paper).
I've also done a bigger version with different photos, but it doesn't work as well. Size really does matter with this type of folding design. I would say the same for accordion type albums.
And here's an exciting account on Ilford's website about making a photobook from prints. Make sure you check out the video as well. Pretty cool, hah?
There's some good craft skills at play there Omar. It is something I have never even thought of, which is weird seeing as I play around with stuff like this every now and then!
ReplyDeleteCurfews seem like a long long time ago.
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