Fantasia

A little fantasia on a small, lovely clay vessel I received as a gift from a Japanese friend, many years ago. He made it himself. I took the pictures with the 5D on the dining room table, with a sheet of paper as a diffusor. 

Façades

I finally got down to transferring some images from the 5D. This one I shot yesterday from the train, just when it pulled into the Midi-tunnel. I have made an A3+ print of it and it looks impressive. Eerily perfect. With a negative you never get this kind of glossy perfection. The difference between analogue and digital images is very similar in feeling, I find, between analogue and digital sound. There is something mesmerising about these immaculately polished façades, but there's more life in a negative. Picture was taken with the Zeiss 35/1.4 wide open (hence the vignetting which I reinforced a little more in the post-processing).  

Fade

It seems we're going back in time. What is this? A faded daguerreotype? A charcoal drawing? Amazing! I am mesmerised. I look forward to further exploring.  

Midi Medley

Still experimenting with my fake "Holga" technique. These pictures were shot earlier this week, at Brussels-Midi station on the way back from London. Shot with the Konica Hexar and the 28mm Zeiss Distagon ZM, but given this particular image treatment that doesn't matter at all ...

Ha/gue

Same idea as in the previous posting. No this is not Havanna, but The Hague, just a few months ago. I kind of like this technique ... 

Serendipity

I wanted to make a digital contact sheet and ended up with this. Interesting atmosphere. Kind of a super-Holga effect. To be further explored ...

Meanwhile the 5D has arrived and the first trials with the Zeiss lenses are promising.

Killing Dragons

I'm hardly able to do some serious photo work these days. I've been churning out reports. Meanwhile lots of little things in the margins. In terms of photography, I received an invitation to exhibit my Capitals pictures in the Berlaymont building, where the European Commission is housed. More specifically, the pictures will be shown in the building's 12 elevators. Strange location perhaps, but definitely a place where all kinds of people - including the Commissioners and distinguished visitors - will see them on a daily basis. I think it is a very good opportunity. 

I'm also preparing my submission for Millennium Images. They accepted the test scans that Johan made on his Coolscan 9000 and now I have asked him to scan the full batch of 30 images. As soon as they are ready I can send them in and then I will be officially represented by London photo agency Millennium Images (wow!). 

In my spare time I'm now reading "Killing Dragons" by Fergus Fleming, an amusing and informative account of the early years of mountaineering. This led me to what I think is a pretty splendid idea: to have my "mountain portrait" project culminate in an exhaustive portrait of the most iconic, most over-photographed and yet irresistibly majestic mountain in the Alps (and beyond), the Matterhorn.It's the kind of project that fires my imagination: a subject persuasive in its geometric and topographical simplicity, a nice shopping list of summits to climb (including Matterhorn itself) and vantage points to conquer (I love ticking off lists ...).

Wouldn't it be fabulous to have the presentation of my Matterhorn portrait (preferably in the shape of a book) to coincide with the 150th anniversary of its very first ascent in 1865?Furthermore, in 2015 I will be exactly 50 years old (already!). In keeping with the spirit of the times I will photograph everything in 4x5". I don't want the portrait to be a rehash of the clichés we have been seeing all along. My aim is to combine the inimitable grandeur of Bradford Washburn's famous 1958 pictures of the mountain with the exactitude and objectivity of the Düsseldorf School.  Alpine Museums (Zermatt itself, but also Bern, Innsbruck, Munich and Turin) and Messner's collection of musems could be interested in this idea. Let's get down to work. 

Picture above is not the Matterhorn of course, but a scene in the Alpi Marittimi, taken last summer on Rollei IR film (Scale development) with the Contax Aria and the 135mm. 

Westcorner

Late in November I spent a weekend together with Jos Motmans, a friend and colleague of mine. Jos and I want to write a book together. But it's hard. Both of us have so many other commitments. So we decided to get away from it all for a few days to work on our book. Jos has access to a small cottage somewhere in the Westhoek, an area close to the sea. It's typical "polder"country: emphatically rural, flat as a billiard table, huge skies. I took my Fuji 645 with me although suffering from a cold I had little appetite for pictures those days. Anyway, I was scanning these negatives to see how large I might print these kinds of 6x4,5. With Johan's Coolscan 9000 or Hans' X1 I should be able to go to up to 100cm. That might be sufficient for what I have in mind for my Pakistan pictures. But I'd like to do a side by side comparison between, say, 6x4,5, 6x9 and 4x5" before I decide what to take on that trip. 

Pictures above (taken on a stray roll of Delta 100)  are not great, but it's the best I have these days. 

Zeiss-on-Canon

I borrowed Pol's Canon 5D for a moment earlier today to check how my manual Contax Zeiss lenses would perform by means of an adapter. The lenses do not couple so you can only work manually or via aperture priority. And when exposing, the viewfinder darkens as the diaphragm closes. Anyhow, it felt good to be able to give these old favourites (25/2.8, 35/1.4, 45/2.8, 50/1.4, 60/2.8 macro, 85/1.4, 135/2.8 and 200/3.5) a new lease on life. Now I'd like to get rid of the D80 and 4 lenses and buy a 5D instead. 

Image above must have been done with the 60mm macro. Not a great picture but shows how sharp these (relatively) old optics are and how nice the bokeh. 

Seascapes

A few more pictures from our pre-new year trip to the coast. Including a rare picture of my wife, Ann, who is convinced that she doesn't "take well on paper".  

Opale

Made a short trip to the Côte d'Opale, north of France last week. Boisterous wind, dramatic cloudscapes, empty beaches: nice way to end the year. Picture above was taken at Grand-Fort Philippe, close to Calais. I took the Mamiya 6 with the 50mm which remains one of my favourite cameras. This image is shot on Agfa APX100. Finetuning the final image has been greatly aided by a mini-tutorial on masking layers in Photoshop I received yesterday from Johan.