|
I enjoy a lot, to see that color negative after 25 year come to life, with high quality. I mean, I've never seen them really. Other than color contact sheets i had developed after every film i exposed back in the days. Only few of them ever got enlarged.
And then it took like ages until the quality of scanning color images was worth to write home about.
White Masks
I suggested Claus, a very close friend of mine, that we would head out with white colored faces and make images near the place where he lives in SW Stockholm. So we headed out into the winter City landscape, with the big bulky Mamiya RZ 67 on a tripod, loaded with tungsten color film (Fujicolor NPL 160), and took portraits.
Like in the photo above. Originally a 6x7 negative, but i cut it into fitting the classic 6x6 format, since I am at it right now. But the original shows an even larger view.
I remember it was snowing, and setting focus at night with a medium format camera, really isn't easy at all. Several times i missed the focus. The candle light was actually meant as a helper in the darkness, to set focus. Naturally, the exposure times resulted into a shutter speed of several seconds.
But... I love those images
I really do. I think many of the images I made 25-35 years ago, grow on me. I look at them with different eyes. Not as critical, as i can see the simple beauty in it. Back then, I was all about technically "perfect" images.
Today, i am a bit more relaxed. After all, these are personal photos, and the spot light of the world is so tiny, that we all live in our little, tiny bubbles. So, no photographic master has risen out of me - but I made a LOT of very good stuff nevertheless.
I don't have to be the "best".
But I need to honest with myself. It's one of those fundamental things... Without makeup beliefs and whatever. That doesn't mean i like sloppiness in photography. I think we people in general have become very sloppy in terms of how we deal with photography. Digital photography, especially since the introduction of iPhone photography, has made many people far more sloppy. |
