Frankencamera

102 year old lens on 5D mkII - Video Footage by Timur Civan from Timur Civan on Vimeo.

Take a 1908 Wollensak Cine-Velostigmat f5 lens, stick it on a Canon 5D mkII and what do you get? Well a slightly soft, dreamy view of the world if the video footage is anything to go by. A great idea though, to combine two different eras of photographic technology.

Maggie the Indestructible

Margaret Bourke-White photographed on top of the Chrysler Building, New York, 1931

While browsing through the images on Tumblr, I came across this portrait of Margaret Bourke-White. I think it's a fabulous image. A vaguely glamorous photo of the youthful and talented photographer, and yet it seems to also perfectly capture the persona of a jobbing photographer, hard at work high up above New York.

Of all the posts i have placed on the blog over the years, Margaret Bourke-White's remains the most popular by far. I even received comments thanking me for profiling the photographer's work, such was the admiration for this woman and her work. Forty years after her death, she still inspires new generations of photographers.

The skill and diversity of talent she had as a photographer is obvious to anyone who sees her work. How many people could photograph Joseph Stalin's great aunt and capture the beautiful architectural lines of a dam? Commercial, industrial, documentary, portraiture, war - Margaret could shoot it all. 

Life produced a great page to commemorate Margaret Bourke-White's birthday last week, featuring some of her best images including a number I'd never seen before. It also explains why she was called Maggie the Indestructible :) The excellent Margaret Bourke-White LIFE article and gallery can be found HERE

Eleven Year Career

Taking a quick look at the image above you may think that it's a great contempary portrait of a beautiful woman. It may come as a surprise to find out that the photograph was taken in 1864 and is of the actress Ellen Terry who was just 16 when the photograph was taken.

This image was taken by Julia Margaret Cameron who was a celebrated photographer during the Victorian era. As well as shooting her own work based on Arthurian and other legendary themes, Julia Margaret Cameron was also a celebrity photographer photographing such people as Charles Darwin and others. Incredibly Cameron's career only lasted 11 years, with the photographer only picking up a camera when she was 48.

I just love the timeless quality of the images - especially that of Ellen Terry. A great post by the Photography News website has further images by Julia Margaret Cameron. The Victoria and Albert Museum website also have a very informative page about the photographer worth checking out.

A Walk in the Park

A portrait of Rehman by Lana Slezic 

The image above comes from a superb series of portraits of Delhi street kids who all frequent an area of ground called 'the park'.

As the photographer Lana Slezic explains 'The street kids I photographed in Old Delhi call the place where they live “the park.” Not a strand of grass has the misfortune of growing there. The ground reeks of urine and burning rubbish. Sniffing glue is the center of this world. Shoeless children play happily in the scorched dirt, flicking marbles for money so they can eat, their tummies grumbling with hunger. This park bears no resemblance to that of my youth' 

What dignity is displayed in the faces of the children. They are tough... they have to be! Yet we sense the character and strength that they all possess is combined with a fragile quality. Many look confidently, almost defiantly at the camera. Overall though, you come away from viewing the images with a feeling of immense sadness. No child should have to live like this.

 Lana Slezic's excellent series of portraits titled 'A walk in the park' can be found HERE

Photographing Oil

Bonneville #1 Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA, 2008

The Guardian website recently featured a great gallery of work by the photographer Edward Burtynsky who has spent fifteen years working on a project looking at the complicated world of oil.

What didn't come across in the small selection of 16 images featured on the Guardian, was the sheer depth of the photography project. Burtynsky has divided the project into four distinct sections - Extraction and Refinement, Detroit Motor City, Transportation and Motor culture (from which the above image is taken) and the end of oil. Virtually every aspect of our relationship, our dependence and our addiction to oil is covered in this extensive project. Even the design office of the Model T Ford has been photographed.

Shipbreaking #13 Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000

The impact on the environment seems a common theme thoughout the project. Images of the Oxford tire pile taken in California in 1999 gives us an uncomfortable reminder that there is a hefty price tag for consuming oil - often a price we choose to ignore.

Many images from the 'the end of oil' gallery have the distinct look of a post apocalyptic world, a landscape of waste not that far removed from scenery in the Mad Max film series. Mountains of waste litter the tire dump and a beach in Bangladesh is covered with the strange metal debris sculptures of scrapped ships.

Edward Bertynsky's photography provides a fascinating broad insight into the world of oil that we are all consuming in some shape or form.  The photographs provide a chilling visual record that we waste, destroy and contaminate huge amounts of our planet and its resources, just so we can fill up at the petrol pump. What's worse is that the demand for oil is growing daily.

Sadly there are no direct URL links to the various galleries, but you can find the oil series of images along with more great industry related photography projects in the works section of the photographer's website.

Edward Bertynsky's photography can be found on his website at http://www.edwardburtynsky.com

Insights into Photojournalism

If you have any interest in photojournalism, then this discussion with Jamie Wellford is a essential listening!

The Old Life

If you enjoy documentary films, then a click over the Side TV website may be worth your while. It certainly has plenty on offer to watch.

Several documentary films, made during the turbulent years of change in the North East of England, are available to watch there. Especially recommended are the films 'Launch' about the launch of an oil tanker called 'World Unicorn' in 1973 and  'Ship Tyne Main' which focuses in on a pub on Tyneside in 1967.

Launch captures the activity around a shipyard in Wallsend and features a marvelous scene with the oil tanker sliding out of view in a scene framed around a terraced street. People lived and worked under the shadow of these giant ships, so the launch was an important day for the community. Looking at the footage you realize that we have very few events these days, if any, that take place on a similar impressive scale.

Ship Tyne Main focusses in on The Ship Hotel pub on Tyneside on a somewhat dark and wet Sunday. The film beautifully captures the various characters who drink in the pub and the industrialized surroundings of the busy river Tyne. We see into a world that was starting to disappear as the industrial and economic decline started to take hold in the 1970's. Gritty it may be, but this is how many people lived at that time.

Both films give a brilliant insight into the communities and lives of people living in North East of England - a way of life that has long since vanished. As social documentary film making goes... you can't get much better. The films on offer change each month so make sure you catch both of these documentary gems before they vanish.

Side TV can be found at http://www.sidetv.net/

The Perfect Storm

Some moments you'll remember forever. You raise the camera to capture the shot, but you'll always remember the thrill of just being there and experiencing the moment. This photo always reminds me of that..

It was taken in 1999 during a very memorable couple of weeks in Norfolk. The weather was, for the whole time i was there, very predictable. Beautiful sunshine with blue skies until around 4 o'clock in the afternoon then the clouds would gather and all hell would break loose. For an hour or two, a storm would rage, throwing rain, noise and light all over the place. Then, it seemed to burn itself out; the sun and tranquillity would return and all would be well again. Nothing like a good storm to clear the air.

The photograph above was taken after a day out and about. I was having a wander around at a place called Burnham Deepdale just before heading back to base, when the clouds started gathering. Mother nature was going to put on a floor show. First of all you heard the sounds - deep rumbles could be heard coming nearer and nearer. As i watched i could see the storm make it's way along the coast, the flashes and deep rumbles giving you the sense of watching a moving floating battlefield that was making it's way towards you. It moved very slowly indeed and the whole display made you feel very small in the scheme of things.

Somehow being on the outskirts of a storm makes it seem more entertaining. You get to see the whole production play out before you.What surprised me most is how quickly they change direction - or at least appeared to change direction. I spent around ten minutes watching how things played out, got this shot using the TMAX 3200 loaded in my camera and then headed back to the car as the storm came closer. The rain came some five minutes later followed by the usual rumbles and flashes. I loved ever minute of it!

I've had a print of this photograph on my wall for around ten years or more. It's among the last photos i printed in my darkroom before switching to scanners and Photoshop. It could even be the very last photo to have hit the developer tray. There aren't many images that i can vividly remember taking , but this is certainly one photography moment that I'll remember for the rest of my life.

A framed version of this photograph can be purchased HERE