That's from the last roll of b&w I'm going to be using in a while.  I quite like the way it looks, though - it has a 1950s feel, which is appropriate to the anachronism of Marx and Engels standing there so proudly in rampantly capitalist Shanghai, 2011.

I used to love b&w, and I still do in old photos.  But for the times we live in, I've just gotten bored with it.  Bruce Gilden said, (in the youtube linked here)  that he thinks in black and white.  I don't.  I even dream in colour - and I certainly do think in colour.  And cross processing approximates to the way I do that - true colours just don't correlate with what I think we see in our imagination and in our dreams.

Nevertheless, I won't be using Fujichrome Velvia anymore.  I've tried overexposing somewhat, but I'm still getting too much red:



I like the way it's got the green of her bag, but the rest is just far too red.  I bought five rolls of 100iso Provia in London.  I used one there and that's in the Lomography shop in Shanghai getting developed.  I got five rolls because it's no good dotting around with all different films - cameras, ditto - I'm going to concentrate on the Holga and on Provia for the next several months, until I get the hang of them both. 

Meanwhile, my New Big Idea is for portraits where the subject holds the flash themselves.  I've taken a few and I'm starting to refine the concept.  The flash is too strong for 100iso.  But I'm going to ask the subject to put something over the flash - a bit of paper from their pocket, a handkerchief, or whatever.   The reason for that is that, like holding the flash, they're collaborating in the process, not sitting passively.  I'm also going to ask them to put their other hand in the frame, too.  What they do with it is up to them.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more

How many pallets can you fit in the back of a Fiat 500?

Image
At least 1. Maybe I could have got 3 altogether, at a pinch. Also 200+ gorse seeds, which have begun to look in danger of damping off, so I'm thinking they'll be better off at the allotment in the fresh air. I'm worried about slugs, snails and woodpigeons, though, so I put them in a wheelbarrow, covered with a net. Also this morning, planted a row of beetroot detroit.
Read more