The Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) has a very interesting exhibition about “Bildberichterstatterinnen” - that’s how the Nazis called female photo journalists. The exhibition shows the work of Liselotte Purper between 1937 and 1944, depicting the Nazis’ view of the role and work of women. Unfortunately, the text of the exhibition is in German. But even if you don’t understand German you can still look at the photos which are very interesting in themselves (all the photos are thumbnails, click on them to see large versions).
Read more »

Kodak never was more stylish than this. (thru solipsistic)
Read more »

photojapan.com offers stock photography of everything and anything Japanese (incl. vintage photos). If you feel like simple browsing and looking at lots of photos go and have a look!
Read more »

The Empire That Was Russia contains colour images made from negatives produced around 100 years ago by Russian photographer Sergej Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. “We know that Prokudin-Gorskii intended his photographic images to be viewed in color because he developed an ingenious photographic technique in order for these images to be captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system [right] involving the same three filters.” (taken from the page which explains how it works).
Read more »

All you ever want to know (and much more) about jpg/jpeg compression can be found in this very cool article on photo.net.
Read more »

The Orange Scourge (Vietnam - the effects of “Agent Orange”) and A Depleted Generation (Iraq - before the latest war in which even more ammunition containing depleted uranium was used).
Read more »

Something in me tells me that getting a super-precise pinhole made with a laser takes away a little bit of the fun. However, if you’re looking for a place which can make you such a pinhole check out Lenox Laser’s website. (thru cold marble musings)
Read more »

I was curious what a Google search for photographic self portraits would result in. In the end, I didn’t find too many photos I liked. Sabina Spaldi’s ones are interesting (albeit too small to be really enjoyable). Gottfried Helnwein’s self portraits are as weird as you can possibly get. And I found some by famous photographers Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts (which I’m just including to show you that famous photographers can do pretty bad work, too), Helmut Newton, August Sander, and Imogen Cunningham.
Read more »

If you want b/w slides/transparencies the obvious option is to use Agfa’s Scala film which produces very nice results. However, there’s another option I came across by chance just today. Through a process called “dr5” David Wood managed to turn regular b/w film into transparencies. Check out this fairly enthusiastic article about it. Information about the process, how to treat the films and how to reachthe lab can be found under dr5.com. I’ll definitely want to test this process with Kodak’s (very low-speed) Technical Pan film (for which I couldn’t find a decent link).
Read more »

I just noticed that they put up my contribution on Images Against War. Unfortunately, they didn’t print my little statement so, I guess, nobody will ever get what the photo is about. The photo shows the window of a deserted coffee shop near “Ground Zero” in downtown Manhattan in December 2001. It’s cross-processed, hence the weird colours. I picked the photo as a sad reminder that those people who lost their lives in the “Twin Towers” are now only remembered for one purpose: To justify war, and thus more destruction.
Read more »

You can fake lots of things so why not fake taking photos with a Lomo? The obvious answer - true for many things you can fake - is: Because it’s no fun. But that’s a different story. (link thru thingsmagazine.net)
Read more »

“Everyone who values optical/mechanical perfection and robustness will love the LEICA MP. By means of the use of high-grade materials and complex fabrication processes, the MP is designed for extreme longevity. The MP is independent of batteries and all its operating elements are made of metal, so that it withstands heavy duty use under extreme conditions.” (link) If I still had the money I’d buy me one right away.
Read more »

The US Transportation Security Administration has just published guidelines about what to do with film on an airport. Excerpts: You should remove all film from your checked baggage and place it in your carry-on baggage. The X-ray machine that screens your carry-on baggage at the passenger security checkpoint will not affect undeveloped film under ASA/ISO 800. If the same role of film is exposed to X-ray inspections more than 5 times before it is developed, however, damage may occur. Protect your film by requesting a hand-inspection for your film if it has already passed through the carry-on baggage screening equipment (X-ray) more than 5 times. […] At the passenger security checkpoint, you should remove the following types of film from your carry-on baggage and ask for a hand inspection: Film with an ASA/ISO 800 or higher Highly sensitive X-ray or scientific films Film of any speed which is subjected to X-ray surveillance more than 5 times (the effect of X-ray screening is cumulative) Film that is or will be underexposed Film that you intend to “push process” Sheet film Large format film Medical film Scientific film Motion picture film Professional grade film
Read more »

an unblinking look?in words and images?at the reality of warfare
Read more »

Photos taken with various “toy” cameras
Read more »

“Neat Image is a digital filter application designed to reduce visible noise in digital photographic images. It is a tool for owners of digital cameras, flatbed and slide scanners; and is for use by both professional photographers, and digital image processing enthusiasts.” Of course, you can do all that with Photoshop but Neat Image just looks somewhat easier to use. I’ll have to do more tests to see how good it really is but the tests I did looked all very promising.
Read more »

I refused to participate in the [journalists’] pool system. I was in the Gulf for many weeks as the build-up of troops took place, and then sat out the ‘air war’, and flew from Paris to Riyadh as soon as the ground war began. I arrived at the ‘mile of death’ the morning the day the war stopped. It was very early in the morning and few other journalists were present. When I arrived at the scene of this incredible carnage, strewn all over on this mile stretch were cars and trucks with wheels still turning, radios still playing, and there were bodies scattered along the road. Many people have asked the question ‘how many people died’ during the war with Iraq and the question has never been well answered. That first morning, I saw and photographed a U.S. Military ‘graves detail’ bury in large graves many bodies. Journalist Peter Turnley in the introduction to a grisly series of photos from the first Gulf War.
Read more »

It is a matter of personal taste - as pretty much anything related to photography - but Polaroid transfers are probably the watercolours of photography. And this is not necessarily meant to be a compliment. Done well, Polaroid transfers are … well, let’s say interesting. Take, for example, Melinda Carvalho’s gallery. Those are some very good examples of Polaroid transfers. It’s easier to find plenty of not-so-good ones. One of the main problems of Polaroid transfers could be that most people seem to be too interested in the technique itself rather than in the actual result. Means they show you some Polaroid transfer and expect a “Wow! Cool!” - regardless of the actual photographic merit of the photo. It’s like seeing the usual beach-lighthouse watercolour. But maybe I’m being unfair, maybe you could say that about many artistic techniques. Anyway, this is not to deny that Polaroid transfers are actually quite tricky to do. It’s a steep and expensive learning curve. If you want to do your own check out Holly Dupre’s (free) online manual (downloadable as pdf file).
Read more »

Alternativephotography.com has all about cyanotypes and other “alternative” types of photography and/or photo development. It’s a very cool site with lots of examples and also some pages with tutorials.
Read more »

Most people have probably never heard of Polaroid’s Instant Slide Film. Thing is most people will also probably never hear of it because I heard it is not being produced any longer now that Polaroid is heading for bankruptcy. It’s a pity! By chance, I found the little processing “darkroom” for those slides at a local thrift store. I started looking into the film doing a Google search. I found a very nice page about the film by Mark Meyer. I also found a few dealers which claim they (still) sell the film. I think what I’ll do is to try to get some film while it’s still around and play with it.
Read more »

It’s a bad time for professional and especially semi-professional photographers - unless you’re well known already and have clients. The other day, I mentioned how I had talked to a local gallery owner who told me how slow business was. A couple of days later, I read a story in The Economist (the British semi-official organ of the Republican/Tory Party) about the advertizing industry which isn’t doing too well. Business is slow, and nobody knows when money is coming back. And yesterday, I received an update from Desert Doplhin. Business is slow, sluggish, you name it. It seems even the big agencies are having troubles. The good thing about the guys at DD is that they’re not gouging their photographers like certain other very big agencies. So I think I’m actually fairly lucky - despite non-existing sales. And I have no intention to explore other roads. I’m not going to prostitute myself as a photographer. There are way too many talented photographers out there doing “glamour” photography or related stuff (btw, RIP, Herb Ritts, I wish you hadn’t wasted your talent the way you did it). But can you blame them? I don’t know. People will always tell you how you need to make some money etc. so why not do those commercial assignments which add no value whatsoever to your portfolio? Well, I guess, it’s everybody’s personal choice. And the question of artistic integrity is a tricky one anyway. I’m fairly lucky I have my day job - which I really enjoy - and maybe some day there’ll be some money made from photography. This is I’m not in it for the money. I actually wouldn’t mind showing my photos in a gallery and not selling a single photo. Oh well, I’m rambling… Time to stop.
Read more »

Hoax Photo Test for the snazzy readers of this weblog.
Read more »

I went online to find what aperture the Diana’s three settings correspond to and I even found them. They’re f16, f6.3, and f4.5. The shutter speed is variable, of course, it’s between around 1/30 and 1/200. PS: On another site, it said the apertures are f16, f11, and f8 with a shutter speed of around 1/45. Well, that agrees for the “sunny” setting but for the other ones it disagrees. PPS: I asked the experts on www.toycamera.com. Somebody said he used f16, f6.3, and f4.5. Of course, Dianas are no precision tools anyway so all this has to be taken with a thousand grains of salt. But it’s useful to know. I think what I might do for photography under very low light (planned for an upcoming trip to Durham [UK]) is to use the “sunny” setting and “B” plus that light meter I will have to bring to use my Leica. I know I’m gonna be the freak of the week when I use a light meter for my Diana but hey! If the results come out the way I want them to come out I just don’t care!
Read more »

Latest thrift shop find: An Agfa Isoflash Rapid, in its original box with the instruction manula and a box of unused film (expiration date: Nov 1968). It uses a film cassette format which I hadn’t seen before. The cassette have no spools and are a tad smaller than the 35mm cassettes everybody is used to today. Pretty much like in medium format photography you need two cassettes - one contains the unused film and the other one takes up the used film. This page has lots of details on the Rapid format. Apparently it’s some sort of competitor for Kodak’s 126 format which also went into oblivion. The funny thing is that Rapid cassettes contain standard 35mm film - which I found hard to believe until I took some 35mm film and found that it does fit into the camera. So there’s some potential of me using the camera. The negatives’ size is 24mm x 24mm which potentially is pretty cool. The only problem is that I don’t want to open the unused film box I have. That means I’ll either have to be creative - maybe fit the 35mm film into the camera without using a cassette - or I have to buy a second Rapid camera and use the empty cassette of that one. BTW, here is a cool subminiature photography website.
Read more »

It doesn’t happen too often that you find an unusual camera at a thrift store. Lately, we’ve had good luck finding stuff - I mentioned this before - but today, Karen found something unusual, something I haven’t seen before. It’s a Ricohmatic 35. From the fact that there’s no link you can already tell that I couldn’t find any information about it. The only snippet I got is that the Soviet Zorki 10 is a copy of the Ricohmatic 35. The Ricohmatic is slightly different even though its basic design is the same. The lever to cock the shutter is at the lower left side - Rollei 35 users will know something like this - and it has a coupled rangefinder. I haven’t figured out, yet, how it works in detail. It’s not trivial. It has a selenium light meter which is placed around the lens. Well, there is one page here which has pictures. It’s in Japanese, though. Anyway, that’s the kind of exciting find I like. Even if it’s not valuable I like it for the thrill.
Read more »

I admit I don’t know anything about Ansel Adams’ Zone System. That’s a shame. I guess. I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t. There’s an awful amount of literature about it available and as I’m stingy I tried to find something on the web. This page by Norman Koren is quite good I think. At least it’s short enough. I am under the impression that you have to be amazingly anal to be able to follow the Zone System.
Read more »

How does the technical evolution of photography change the way people take photos? The BBC has a more or less interesting article about it. If you read articles and opinions online it seems to me that in the fine art photography crowd there’s a certain snootiness in the making. Lots - fortunately not all - of fine art photographers dismiss digital photography as basically gimmickry without any value. The basic argument usually always boils down to claiming that what takes hours to achieve in the lab is necessarily of higher value than what everybody might be able to doon his/her computer. This confuses art for the process of making art or for the materials involved. But what can you do? As I noted (in a similar context) before most of those snooty art-ists would probably drop their artsy equipment in an instant if they had the money to buy high-tech high-quality digital equipment.
Read more »

One of the cameras I brought with me to Pittsburgh on the plane is my Diana - a plastic camera made in the 1960s (or so). I guess there are two main reasons why the Diana and its sister, the Holga, have become fairly popular. First, because of the fairly crappy lenses of those cameras the photos look… well… let’s just try to be neutral and say they look different. Depending on what you like about photography, they look either totally shitty or great. They’re somewhat soft-focused. What’s more, light tends to fall off *a lot* at the edges of the lenses. All this makes the Diana/Holga a good camera for fine arts photography - provided you manage to get those light leaks under control. Second, the Diana and Holga are fairly cheap. The Diana isn’t produced any longer so you either get them at yard sales for really cheap (if you’re lucky) or you buy them on Ebay for around US$25-40. The Holga is still being produced and you can get one for under $20. That makes those cameras perfect for aspiring and poor photo students. The majority of Diana/Holga fanatics would probably throw their Diana/Holga out of the window if only they had the money to buy an expensive camera but, of course, that’s just me being cynical. It’s probably not too cynical, though, to claim that the number of photographers who really know how to get good photos with a Diana/Holga is *much* smaller than the number of Diana/Holga users. But I guess you can say that about any camera. What makes the Diana/Holga people so irritating is the fervour with which so many of them proclaim how much they love their Diana/Holga even though it’s completely obvious they’d rather use a Leica or some expensive SLR. If you don’t believe me check out those photo communities on Livejournal, say (try “toycamera” or “photophile”). BTW, if you want to check out some really good photography with that kind of camera have a look at Don Brice’s toy camera photography. Anyway, I brought my Diana to do architectural photography. I figured the camera’s “bad” optical properties would go fairly well with all those old and semi-decaying buildings here in Pittsburgh. One of the problems I ran into right away was that I didn’t know where to get the film processed. Dianas/Holgas use 120 film and photo shops usually send that out to Kodak - which means you have to wait for around two weeks to get fairly shoddy prints back. I might have found a good pro lab now but I have to take some bus there so I can’t drop off film that easily. And so far I haven’t processed my own film. This past weekend, I had an idea, though. Why not shoot digital Holga photos? Here’s how it might work. First, one would need to place a screen inside the camera at the position of the film. That should be relatively easy. Then, the camera’s shutter needs to be removed and the camera needs to be fit into a dark box. One could then use a normal digital camera to take photos of the images on the screen. I am planning on doing this once our new apartment is set up.
Read more »

Mike Ware has a nice page about “alternative” photographic processes such as cyanotypes.
Read more »

I don’t know what the future of Polaroid will be. They filed for bankruptcy a while ago. It’d be a total shame if they disappeared. It’s more obvious, though, what their past looks like. The Land List has pretty much all you’d ever want to know about old Polaroid cameras. Particularly useful if you found an old Polaroid camera at some yard sale or on Ebay and now want to know what film it takes. The good news is that for some of the old models there’s still film around. Karen (my wife) has been using old Polaroid cameras for a while and they’re fun to use. The film is pretty expensive but the results are cool. The peel-apart film’s development time depends on the temperature of your environment.
Read more »

Pencam.org is a site with photos taken exclusively with a little digital camera which is about the size of a pen. I actually own that kind of camera and I like it but I never took pretty pictures with it.
Read more »

Marcy Merrill got a huge site with what she calls junk store cameras. If you’re interested in toy cameras, old box cameras, just cheap old cameras, and the occasional gem (she dared to put a Rollei 35 on the page!) you should check out that site.
Read more »

All you would ever want to know about what’s now officially known as Ilfochrome but is generally still being called Cibachrome - a process to produce long-lasting photographic colour prints.
Read more »

There is something weird about Infrared Photography I think. First of all, the photos aren’t that spectacular really. Sure, stones and plants look a little bit different but that seems to be it. Plus, IR is an enormous hassle. Film is very expensive - if I remember correctly, that roll of film I have in my fridge cost me $13 - and extremely tricky to handle: You have to load the camera in total darkness. Exposure is very tricky, the best thing is to shoot an enormous number of bracket exposures. I can’t imagine what a hassle it must be to get the stuff properly developed - given that most (US) labs won’t even cross-process for you. And all that for some red (or white if you use b/w) trees? You can do the same thing using Photoshop in about five minutes. That doesn’t mean that I am an advocate of Photoshop. Quite on the contrary. But I have to admit that Photoshop has its advantages. It’s probably a question of what I’d call the hassle-result ratio: If the amount of hassle for a given result is way too big (IR photography) you might as well use an alternative process (Photoshop) where it’s much smaller.
Read more »