Pinhole Landscapes - Take 2

I recently uploaded some scans of various pinhole landscapes but hadn't actually printed any out. You can see some of them here and here. I spent a few days in the darkroom the other week and was surprised to see how well the prints turned out. They have a richness, drama and depth of tone completely lacking in the scanned negatives, which now look rather flat in comparison. Of course, looking at an actual print and looking at something on the screen is a completely different experience, but I had never really thought that there would be such a wide discrepancy between a scan of a print and a scan of a negative. Or perhaps it just demonstrates that my darkroom skills are superior to my Photoshop skills!

I now feel encouraged to continue developing my darkroom work and to expand my pinhole photography repertoire, perhaps exploring the urban landscape. I might even try colour......

Pinhole landscapes

After a gap of nearly a year, I took my pinhole camera out again last week. Of course, I had to go back to square one and re-familiarise myself with the instructions though being a very simple camera, it didn't take long! I used different film this time - a roll of Ilford HP5 about 15 years past its use-by date. This is not a film I use very often - I tend to prefer Kodak Tri-X - but it seemed to have suffered no ill effects and actually the results were pretty good. So far I've been using up whatever film I have to hand and most of it is out of date, so this is hardly a controlled experiment.

Looking back at my previous pinhole efforts, I noticed that a lot of the negatives were over-exposed and had to be heavily corrected in Photoshop. This time I cut the exposure right down and the resulting negatives are better. I've been using an app on the phone called Pinhole Assist to calculate exposure times. This seems to work really well and has built-in reciprocity curves for the longer exposures required for the pinhole, saving on having to work it out for yourself! I also took more care with the composition - the best results seem to be when there is something in the foreground close to the camera. I do really like the sense of depth in the images - you feel like you are being sucked into the photograph towards the vanishing point.

Some of the same scenes feature in a previous post where I used the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. You can see them here and compare the effect - obviously quite different as the phone ones are very dark and dramatic whereas these are lighter and more ethereal, especially No 3 below which is actually a double exposure by mistake where I forgot to wind the film on. I will persevere with my efforts - the sense of satisfaction from using film, the concentration and mindfulness required, the feeling of being totally wrapped up in the moment can't be matched by the ease and instant results of digital!

Drive By

Often when I'm driving along I get the urge to stop the car, leap out and take a photo. Obviously this is only practical if you are on your own! On numerous occasions I've been frustrated as I've been the passenger or else I have a passenger with me, or else I'm in a hurry or on a mission. I may return later only to find that the moment has passed, the light has changed or even that the subject has disappeared - the spontaneity of the moment has gone. Sometimes I may pass by a place regularly and not see its potential - then one day the play of light suddenly reveals its hidden beauty or spectacular clouds transform an everyday landscape. On go the brakes, out comes the camera....

Being inside the car is a bit like looking through a camera viewfinder - something about looking out of the windscreen, rear view or wing mirror and seeing the world ready framed. In his series America by Car, Lee Friedlander uses the car windows as a deliberate compositional device, the mirrors reflecting odd, unexpected fragments of the passing scenes. 

From America by Car by Lee Friedlander

Todd Hido's photographs of lonely rainswept American roads are similarly shot through the car windscreen, the rain blurring and veiling the sombre landscapes.

 From A Road Divided by Todd Hido

In the introduction to American Surfaces, Stephen Shore likens the effect of being in a car on a road trip to that of an 'explorer travelling in a bubble of familiarity'. Driving for extended periods puts him in 'a very clear and focused state of mind'. My journeys to the shops or visits to my father can hardly be compared to a road trip - we're not talking Robert Frank's The Americans here! But even on these short trips I find that driving is conducive to creativity - perhaps because there are few other distractions and the mind is fully engaged on the visual, or maybe it's just having the opportunity for some breathing space where the brain can empty itself of daily concerns.

From American Surfaces by Stephen Shore

  

The other day I found myself doing a U turn on a steep hill in the pouring rain just to take a photograph of a pair of roadside mirrors sitting incongruously on the edge of a wood! There is actually an assignment in the Photographer's Playbook by Steve Young which advocates doing just that:

U-Turn Rule

'Whenever you are driving, and pass something that makes you want to grab your camera, you must immediately pull a U-ey, go back, and shoot it. If you don't, you'll spend the next ten miles thinking about it, and then you'll have to add twenty miles to your trip.'

Here are some recent photographs all taken while driving within a 15 mile radius of home.....

RIP Lone Tree

This morning I went out walking on one of my usual routes - I hadn't been this way for some time and the going was heavy. Over two grassy sheep fields, is another large arable field which has a lone tree in the middle of it. The field had been ploughed over the winter into huge furrows and I felt momentarily disoriented as I scanned the horizon for its familiar outline only to find it missing! I felt sure I had made a mistake - perhaps the tree had been in another field after all. But as I walked round the edge, it became clear to me that it was definitely no longer there. Perhaps it blew down in stormy weather or more likely it was removed by the farmer to make ploughing easier. It had always been a landmark which showed the direction of the public footpath across the field, usually hidden by crops or ploughed up in the winter. No longer will it be there to point the walker in the right direction or to offer a bit of welcome shade on a hot sunny day. Another small change in the landscape, probably not noticed by many but sadly missed by me.

I have taken many photographs of this tree over the years, with various assorted cameras and in all seasons. Here is a selection.... RIP Lone Tree!

There and back II

Another day, another walk. This time across fields and taking in three ponds and some derelict farm buildings for added interest. The fields are heavy with mud which sticks to my boots, the wind is bitingly cold and my hands freeze but it feels good to be outside as my lungs fill with the fresh air, blowing away my mental cobwebs.

The ponds are a feature of the landscape round here - I know of at least half a dozen. They are fed by springs which trickle down from the Edge Hill escarpment, the same escarpment where the Royalists camped out and surveyed the battlefield in the Civil War. I have done this walk at different times of the year, but it is in the winter months that their stark and mysterious beauty is most appealing....