January 2022 – Dave's Place

Review of 2021 (Part 4)

Looking at the mosaic (above) of the images from the 2021-365 Challenge I was struck by how “black & white” it was. Bear in mind too that the majority of these images are digital with the minority being created on film. It turns out that around 90% of these daily images is in B&W, which actually correlates quite strongly with the film stats for 2021 too. Around 96% of the roll films I used in 2021 were B&W and the percentage for LF is closer still to 100%. Ilford HP5+ was my most used film with Fomapan 100 pushing it a close second. Unsurprisingly these are my go-to films for my panoramic cameras and pinhole cameras respectively.

This fourth, and final, post covers the period October to December although sad to say the year ended as it started with just the single post in the last month. October though was another busy month blog-wise with sixteen posts, Holga Week, the arrival of the 6×17 pinhole camera and even a few days Shropshire, an area we had not explored previously.

The RSS 6×17 brought with it the need for a new “scanning” approach

I rarely write technique guides but in both October and November I wrote fairly extensively about digitising negatives (a three-part series) and about the Trichrome process (five posts in total). Another essay appeared on the theme of doing your own thing photographically and allowing yourself to have fun with it. Not conforming to the whims of others was a recurring theme in my blog over the year.

Two images taken for my own amusement – I practice what I preach in that regard!

October saw Holga Week and my first participation in this annual event. I entered into it wholeheartedly and dedicated six posts to the event. Using a Holga 120N exclusively for a week was fun, even the roll where I inadvertently switched the camera into bulb mode for all but one image. Guess it could be labelled UnIntended Camera Movement (UCM) rather than the more often seen Intentional Camera Movement (ICM).

In November I finally succumbed to Andrew K’s suggestions and gave Trichromes a try … Trying Trichrome was the obvious alliterative title and I didn’t resist its lure. For many reasons I haven’t pursued it further since working out a process that suits me but that will be rectified over the coming months as I have plans for some large format trichomes possibly even glass plate trichomes but that needs to wait for some better weather.

During November I also reflected upon my ongoing 365 Challenge which celebrated its fourth anniversary at the end of October.

Review of 2021 (part 3)

So far we have wandered through my blog posts from January to July 2021. A total of around sixty posts over the first seven months of the year. Over the next two months though I added thirty five more posts, twenty four of these in August alone. We spent two days in Salford Quays during August and I somehow managed to create eight blog posts from that two-day trip.

Media City, Salford Quays, 12th June 2021 Horizon S3 Pro and Rollei Blackbird

August saw a couple of essays, one a slightly tongue-in-cheek dissertation on how film, not love, is the drug contrary to what Roxy Music might say. The other was more serious and talked about camera club competitions and how the desire to please the judges leads to homogeneity and stifles personal expression. It was a topic I have returned to many times throughout the year including a further essay in September entitled “I #believeinfilm”.

KMZ FT-2: subject of eight blog posts in August alone

I made more use of 5×4 (4×5?) during August and September including a four-day project over five days in September when I visited and revisited a small patch of local woodland with the Intrepid 5×4 and both film and glass plates. Entitled “Into the Woods” this was a spontaneous project and ultimately one of the highlights of 2021 for me.

J Lane ASA 2 dry-plate Intrepid 5×4 camera
16th September 2021

In September we also managed a few days on the coast which provided me with a rare opportunity to fly my drone an all-too infrequent event over the last couple of years.

So, August and September were the most productive in terms of my blogand unsurprisingly in terms of film usage too. These two months accounted for a quarter of my total rolls of film in 2021.

Whilst 5×4 played an important part in my 2021 it was roll film that predominated, Over 230 rolls of film went through 24 different cameras (remember excluding LF) and almost a third of those were exposed in the Horizon S3. Panoramic cameras accounted for around 40% of my roll film usage in 2021. Over 20% of my total for 2021 were pinhole meaning almost two thirds of my roll film usage last year was attributable to panoramas or pinholes.

It was indeed my year for panoramas and pinholes!

I’ve not compiled the stats for my large format photography in 2021 but have a feeling that pinhole will make a very good showing there too. If I get time I shall include some LF numbers in the fourth and final part of my 2021 retrospective.

Review of 2021 (part 2)

After a slow start blog-wise to 2021 things picked up apace and from March to July I averaged around ten posts each month. I never set a monthly target for blog posts, preferring to only post when I’ve something to say, but nevertheless like to see a healthy output of writing to complement the photography.

One of the projects that I started in May was a new zine, entitled A Sense of Place, which brought together a series of images all made in or around water. My “happy place” as it were, as I love being beside water be it the sea, a river, a lake or a reservoir – I even enjoy the rain sometimes! The initial intention was to print and sell the zine to recover my costs but ultimately I made it available to anyone who wanted it via the ISSUU website.

Also in May was a very small set of images made with a swing lens panoramic camera in the back streets of Halifax town centre. The resultant images, documented in a blog post entitled “Here Be Rats”, were a totally unexpected hit on Twitter and amongst my favourite images of 2021.

Halifax town centre 10/5/2021 Adox Silvermax, Horizon S3, FX55 developer

Here be Rats. Have you ever peered behind the facade of your town centre? I do reglarly, in the name of urban photography, and the service yard behind these four fast food premises in Halifax town centre on 10/5/2021 were a sight and smell to behold. I didn’t stay long as the rats were getting curious! Adox Silvermax, Horizon S3, FX55 developer

In June I wrote “An Ode to a Wooden Box”, a blog post that subsequently became another zine which I gifted to my friends in the Twitter #believeinfilm community. I really enjoyed all my excursions with my various pinhole cameras over the course of 2021 using them for my “365”, in urban settings at home and whilst away from home, on the sea shore and in fact at pretty much every location I visited during the year. For obvious reasons my travel was severely restricted this year but I still managed to get quite a large number of films through my pinhole cameras over the twelve months.

June also saw the start of an ongoing project that came to dominate the blog in July. A series of “dry” posts chronicled my entry into the world of dry glass plates using both my large format Intrepid 5×4 camera and also my 5×4 pinhole cameras (a Titan and a Zero Image). Over the Winter months I paused the project but there are a supply of plates in my cellar awaiting the Spring when I will resume my experiments. A very niche subject in a relatively niche hobby I guess.

Zero Image pinhole camera and a J Lane dry glass plate 25/7/2021

July saw another essay, this time pondering on the longevity of digital images as a source of family memories. It was more than anything a plea to print out these precious memories rather than trust to the anonymity of a computer hard drive or the inimitable cloud drive where I suspect so many family memories fester unseen. My large format pinhole camera continued its travels on it’s “world” tour and the growing group of participants kept up a lively and often irreverent discussion online. Meanwhile, I continued to expose film in my pinhole cameras and develop an even fonder affection for the genre.

I am not a huge podcast follower but there are a small number that I tune into fairly regularly. One of these is The Lensless Podcast so you can imagine my pleasure at being invited to take part in an episode during July 2021. I was apprehensive to start but it turned out to be one of the highlights of my photographic year. The host, Andrew, coined the phrase “a photographic butterfly” when introducing me and that indeed does describe my current approach to the hobby as I have eagerly attempted a host of new challenges throughout the year and indeed have plans for more in 2022.

The image that launched Dave’s Pinhole Camera World Tour 2021

Olympus EE3, Rollei Blackbird rated at 64. Id11 (1+1) 10.5mins

As a further development on the panoramic theme, and not content with using the various panoramic cameras at my disposal, I chose a half-frame camera to create, in-camera, joiner-style panoramic such as the one above which uses six consecutive frames from an Olympus EE3. I also “discovered” Rollei Blackbird during 2021 which in the right situations proved to be a fabulous film.

This was the second part of my 2021 retrospective, I’ve deliberately refrained from putting “nth of x” because I’ve not yet written subsequent parts … we will see when we get to the end how many parts there were!

Review of 2021 (part 1)

So, 2021, like 2020 before it, has faded away with the midnight chimes and 2022 lays ahead of us, virgin and unsullied with untold promise. Or, less prosaically, it looms ahead with the sour taste of the past two years clinging to its coat tails and the promise of more to come. But, the purpose of this post isn’t to dwell on the trials of 2021, or for that matter 2020, but rather to celebrate the successes of the past 12 months and to publicly proclaim a positive and bright optimism about the coming year. Creatively at least!

Let’s start with something that I finished last year by talking about – my ongoing 365 Challenge , which

passed the 1,500th consecutive daily image in December and which now enters the fifth consecutive full calendar year. I’ve written before about the benefits of embedding it in my daily routine and that I feel is one of the big secrets to the project’s longevity. I’ve hopefully persuaded good friend John Martin (Temporal Light Images) to have a go this year too and so extend him my best wishes and good luck for the year ahead! It won’t be easy but it IS absolutely worthwhile my friend.

Looking at my blog archive I can see that In January 2021 I made no posts to the blog and just the one in the February. What a post it was though, the portent for what would become one of the themes of 2021 – the panoramic format and in particular panoramic swing-lens film cameras. I started the year with the Horizon Kompakt, briefly dallied with a Horizon 202 before settling on the Horizon Perfect as my day-to-day panoramic camera, and for long stretches of the year as my go-to camera full stop. A high point occurred in March 2021 when PanoPhotos on Twitter named me their first ever monthly Spotlight Photographer.

Of course, I didn’t restrict myself to just the Horizons. The built-like-a-tank KMZ FT-2 made its way into my hands in August and what an experience that was, as many 2021 blog posts will testify. A panoramic Holga pinhole camera found its way into my bag and towards the end of the year a 6×17 roll film pinhole camera was added to the arsenal. This latter (an RSS 617) is yet to feature strongly in the blog but is loaded and ready to go! It wasn’t just film panoramas though as during 2021 I managed to get my drone back in the air, albeit briefly, and also started to explore the sweep-panorama feature on my Fuji X-series digital cameras.

Ninety minutes in the life of the room where the boys play: RSS 6×17 pinhole, Fomapan 100 (rated at 400)

Panoramic was definitely a big theme throughout 2021 and February saw the first of several articles talking about the format and sharing my suggestions for using the Horizon series of cameras, metering and even a video tutorial on loading film. My final purchase of 2021 was a Reality So Subtle (RSS) 6×17 pinhole camera which finally brought together the two themes of 2021 – panoramic and pinholes.

During the year I bought, used and in some cases sold on many pinhole cameras in formats from 35mm through 120, panoramic and 5×4. I ended 2021 with the Holga WPC mentioned above, the RSS 6×17, an ONDU 6×6 and two 5×4 pinhole cameras on the shelf. January 2022 will see the arrival of a new pinhole camera – so watch this space!

2021 was also the year when one of my large format pinhole cameras started a fascinating adventure – Dave’s Pinhole Camera World Tour 2021 was born following its loan to John. As the schedule stands I am due to see my camera again around June time this year, well over a year since it set out. I will blog about this more later in the year but I am hoping that one of the highlights of 2022 will be the culmination of the project in a zine.

By the start of the second quarter of the year I had got back into the stride with my blog after a very diverse collection of posts in March I followed this up in April with a whole series of posts on the subject of semi-stand film development (My week semi-standing) which also coincided with my first ever FP4+ Party on Twitter. There was even a biographical essay on the subject of Me:Photographer in a rare moment of philosophical rumination on my photographic past.

Out and about in Elland on a foggy morning with one of my digital cameras

Lovely detail from this film and developer combination. Bronica ETRS, Y/G filter and a roll of Ilford FP4+ Semi-stand development in Rodinal (1+100)

Zero Image Pinhole at the beach – overlapping “joiner” panorama

This was the first part of my 2021 retrospective, I’ve deliberately refrained from putting “first of x” because I’ve not yet written subsequent parts … we will see when we get to the end how many parts there were!