I like film...(open thread)

[stray cat]

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These 1965 pictures are in Turkanaland in north-west Kenya, probably near Lodwar, at that time a very small town. I was driving alone, back from Lake Turkana, in a VW Beetle, not on roads, but on tracks in the scrub desert, until I reached the Uganda trunk road from Nairobi to Kampala. The distance from Lake Turkana to Kampala is shown on the web as 670 km and 13 hours. As I recall, it took me 12 hours and I got back home at midnight, driving as fast on the highway as the Beetle would go and crashing into a dog that raced across the unlit road a half an hour before reaching Kampala.

 

The Turkana, a Nilotic people with language and culture that have similarities to the Maasai and Samburu in Kenya and the Karamojong in Uganda were, and still are, nomadic pastoralists, with cattle at the core of their culture. They remain one of the poorest ethnic groups in Kenya. I recall a friend, Ford Foundation representative for East Africa, who I was meeting at Lake Turkana telling me that the lake was teeming with fish, and that the Turkana, often near starvation, could vastly improve their lives if they fished and ate fish. 

 

In a web search, I just found the the Norwegian aid agency invested US$22 million in the late-1970s in a huge fish-freezing plant aimed at the Turkana exploiting the lake’s fish stocks; it failed soon after startup. The Turkana, like other semi-nomadic pastoralists live off the milk, blood and meat of their herds. Also, the cost of electricity to operate the giant freezers and the demand for clean water in the desert environment were too high.

 

As for the pictures themselves, these are low contrast negatives shot on Adox KB17 (Leica IIIc and Summarit 50) and have a muddy tonal palette that I was never able to print well in the darkroom. I digitalized them recently and got the same muddy tonal palette, which I processed in a variety of ways: some of the versions I made dark, in one effort bringing out a brooding black cloud; but that took away from the desolation of the huts and people. Finally, I went for the high-key look here, which best reflects what I saw. However, I didn’t post these pictures until I saw a similar tonality in a photograph in David Vestal’s The Craft Photography, showing tractors in what looks like Iowa farmland (page 328). I found I could download this book free from archive.com.

 

Please let me have your reaction to these pictures, but don’t click “Thanks” if you only like the back story — I’d like to know the reactions to the pictures themselves.

 

I think the pictures are superb. When pictures are this good (and I'll be honest - the back story supports my reaction to them) then I don't think the technical quality of the prints has so much bearing on our reaction to them. It does have some, of course, and in the instance of these pictures as presented I get the impression of newspaper photojournalism from maybe the 1960s - which is of course exactly the era they're from and where they might well have ended up. They are genuine, honest pictures - much like the work done by Sebastião Salgado in the Sahara a little later. In fact a recurring criticism of Salgado's work (one that I don't personally share) is that his pictures are too "beautiful" to adequately convey the horror of what was going on in front of his lens. Yours does convey that by subsuming the human figures into the landscape as just shadows - much like the shadows that were all that were of humans that remained on steps and remnants of wall in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Powerful work in which, in my opinion, the subject and the presentation of the picture are in harmony.


[stray cat]

In Mongolia, 1993

 

Velvia BW conversion Pentax K 1000

 

 

on the road by JM__, on Flickr

 

This is absolutely superb, Jean-Marc. It is all about film (Velvia - really? Looks like Koudelka's Tri-X!) and grit and movement, travel and long days without too many creature comforts. It is a photograph that oozes character and atmosphere and becomes its own story (potentially totally divorced from what the actuality of the situation might have been). 


Edited September 4, 2017 by stray cat

[christoph_d]

Adam/Michael/Jean-Marc/John/Chtistoh - Thanks for commenting on the Turkana pictures. I must have made a dozen versions, going the full range from dark to light tonality and various degrees of contrast and "clarity" or "structure". After all these years, although I remember hurriedly pressing the shutter for these two shots, before the people would move into another configuration because I had stopped my car on the track and gone out to take the picture, I don't remember how the light was. It's clear, however, that I underexposed by at least 1½ stops. 

 

As I said, I have never been able to print these negatives in the darkroom. Adox KB17 (ISO 40) film, one the first thin layer films produced, was reputed to have good resolution; but, as I see it, these negatives have neither the latitude nor acutance of Tri-X, which now I wish I had shot. In this overall context, I found these two to be the best version, by letting the bodies go black, without detail.

_________________

Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine

Just a thought: Lith-printing may be a way to explore the look you have shown for your pictures in the darkroom.

 

Rgds

 

C.

[edwardkaraa]

Luang Prabang, Laos.

 

M7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

M7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

M7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

[Guest JMF]

This is absolutely superb, Jean-Marc. It is all about film (Velvia - really? Looks like Koudelka's Tri-X!) and grit and movement, travel and long days without too many creature comforts. It is a photograph that oozes character and atmosphere and becomes its own story (potentially totally divorced from what the actuality of the situation might have been). 


 

 

Thanks, it may have been Kodachrome 100 EC actually.

 

It was close to reflecting  our reality then, a low budget film crew travelling off road by minus 25 celcius :-)

 

In 1992 Mongolia had just ridden of the long control of the USSR and opened its frontiers to visitors.

 

This one was shot a few weeks  earlier on TriX and a SLR

 

Untitled by JM__, on Flickr

 

Our bus eventually broke and we had to hitch hike a ride ...

 

on Kodachrome 100 EC:

 

Truck ride by JM__, on Flickr

 

 

Cheers, JM

[greg_may_]

An excellent capture, really made me happy.  

 

 

 

[Paul Verrips]

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In Mongolia, 1993

 

Velvia BW conversion Pentax K 1000

 

on the road by JM__, on Flickr

Excellent image!

[Paul Verrips]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leica M6 / Summicron 35 asph / Kodak Tri-X 400

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

 

Excellent!

[philipus]

Thanks for the back story, which I found interesting. Forgive me for being the odd one out in terms of the images themselves, though. The high key contrasty look doesn't work, for me, more so in the second than the first because the second is also affected by a somewhat strange Lensbaby-ish lack of focus in the right half. I much prefer the first one because it is effectively a minimalist almost abstract photo of people managing to live in a very rough terrain. I'm also wondering about the palette and if it is due to some problems during development. A "rough" reportage-style photo can still be that without lacking in details. All this being said, though, it must have been fascinating to drive through those parts. 

 

Br

Philip 

 

These 1965 pictures are in Turkanaland in north-west Kenya, probably near Lodwar, at that time a very small town. I was driving alone, back from Lake Turkana, in a VW Beetle, not on roads, but on tracks in the scrub desert, until I reached the Uganda trunk road from Nairobi to Kampala. The distance from Lake Turkana to Kampala is shown on the web as 670 km and 13 hours. As I recall, it took me 12 hours and I got back home at midnight, driving as fast on the highway as the Beetle would go and crashing into a dog that raced across the unlit road a half an hour before reaching Kampala.

 

The Turkana, a Nilotic people with language and culture that have similarities to the Maasai and Samburu in Kenya and the Karamojong in Uganda were, and still are, nomadic pastoralists, with cattle at the core of their culture. They remain one of the poorest ethnic groups in Kenya. I recall a friend, Ford Foundation representative for East Africa, who I was meeting at Lake Turkana telling me that the lake was teeming with fish, and that the Turkana, often near starvation, could vastly improve their lives if they fished and ate fish. 

 

In a web search, I just found the the Norwegian aid agency invested US$22 million in the late-1970s in a huge fish-freezing plant aimed at the Turkana exploiting the lake’s fish stocks; it failed soon after startup. The Turkana, like other semi-nomadic pastoralists live off the milk, blood and meat of their herds. Also, the cost of electricity to operate the giant freezers and the demand for clean water in the desert environment were too high.

 

As for the pictures themselves, these are low contrast negatives shot on Adox KB17 (Leica IIIc and Summarit 50) and have a muddy tonal palette that I was never able to print well in the darkroom. I digitalized them recently and got the same muddy tonal palette, which I processed in a variety of ways: some of the versions I made dark, in one effort bringing out a brooding black cloud; but that took away from the desolation of the huts and people. Finally, I went for the high-key look here, which best reflects what I saw. However, I didn’t post these pictures until I saw a similar tonality in a photograph in David Vestal’s The Craft Photography, showing tractors in what looks like Iowa farmland (page 328). I found I could download this book free from archive.com.

 

Please let me have your reaction to these pictures, but don’t click “Thanks” if you only like the back story — I’d like to know the reactions to the pictures themselves.

 

Very nice Chris. I like this offset composition a lot.

 

F6, 28/1.4, XP2, HC-110, X1 scan:

Wallace by chrism229, on Flickr

 

C.

[edwardkaraa]

M7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

M7-Planar 2/50 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

M7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

[AntonioF]

An excellent capture, really made me happy.

Thanks a lot!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Wayne]

Thank you Wayne. There is a different apparent dimensionality to the colour version, now that you mention it - some of the reds in the timber and foliage come forward whereby they remain very much similar to the tonality of the greens in the monochrome version. And yet... and yet... it's insoluble, really. Perhaps it's really best to just stick with either black and white OR colour rather than confusing the situation!

There are times, e.g. viewing great art, when I believe, if you are not confused, you are not really paying attention.

 

 I relish the insoluble: I think it liberating.

 

 

Best

 

Wayne

[Wayne]

From Linhof Master Technica to Minox IIIs sub miniature. Processed in Minox daylight tank, using only 50ml of Rodinal 1/50, for 20 minutes. The processing with this equipment is somewhat difficult, but thought some might enjoy the results. Photo of two of my buddies from the local camera shop......Great guys.

 

img724 by W P_, on Flickr

[A miller]

Very interesting results with the Portra 800 indoors and with artificial light.  Thanks for sharing, Edward!

Luang Prabang, Laos.

 

7-Distagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

7-Disagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

stagon 1.4/35 ZM-Portra 800 by edward karaa, on Flickr

 

Great photo, Paul.

 

Leica M6 / Summicron 35 asph / Kodak Tri-X 400


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

 

Excellent!

 

[Guest JMF]

Shopping break by JM__, on Flickr

 

Shopping break by JM__, on Flickr

 

 

Portra 400 - M6 - 35 summilux pre asph v2

Edited September 4, 2017 by JMF

[A miller]

Shopping break by JM__, on Flickr

 

Portra 400 - M6 - 35 summilux pre asph v2

 

Looks more like a "Train Delay" :)

[chrism]

Very nice Chris. I like this offset composition a lot.

 

 

Rules are there to be broken! 

 

(Says the guy who just loaded his 10x8 photo paper backwards into a film holder and reduced a one minute exposure to an effective 2 seconds!)

[edwardkaraa]

Very interesting results with the Portra 800 indoors and with artificial light. Thanks for sharing, Edward!

 

 

Thanks Adam! I like the colors of this Portra though the Fuji equivalent is probably more fine grained.

[A miller]

Lots going on under the water!

The Dead Sea

Velvia 50

Hassy 503cw, 80mm Planar

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[christoph_d]

An early morning in Italy.

 

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M5, 40, Color Implosion, ns

 

Rgds

C.