Taking Photographs on a Sunny Afternoon
This post was first published in August 2020. I’ve edited the text a little here and there for a better read.
The sun warms my face while shallow waves lap the shore. The bottle of cold beer I reach for is sweating small beads of condensation as it sits on a table under the dappled shade of a palm tree.
Wait. Am I dreaming? I shake my head and refocus my eyes.
I'm sitting downstairs at my desk staring out of the window at a grey sky watching the leaves of a distant tree tremble in the breeze. My coffee cup is empty. The rest is keeping warm on the hob. The pandemic is still reaching out its long fingers around the world.
I see my family and friends from the UK through text messages, Instagram posts or video chat. I'm meeting a friend on Thursday morning. We'll walk our dogs together on a trail near my house. I'm so looking forward to seeing her I will want to give her a hug. I know I can't. Still, we will walk and chat and sit outside a cafe drinking coffee.
Messages of Safety
In New Zealand, a second lockdown has been lifted and in the UK a small picturesque village in the Cotswolds is being 'overrun' by staycation tourists desperate to look at something other than the four walls of their homes.
Here in British Colombia infections are rising again to a hundred a day. Nothing on a scale France has seen but the reports in the media are questioning whether it makes sense for kids to return to school when so many office workers are still working remotely.
Even the wonderful Dr Bonnie Henry is receiving criticism for an advert she takes part in. Watching it, I'm reminded of the health and safety infomercials of the 1970s and 80s. Back then, the messages concerned the dangers of a box of matches or strangers or crossing the road.
Now the message is how to keep safe in school. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Be kind. Take care. I find it hard not to feel weary of it all.
Back to Basics
Within this strange and unforgiving time, I find myself returning more and more to using my old film cameras. Something about a pre-digital time invites me to get back to basics to discover again what I enjoyed most about photography.
I find my 30-year-old Lubitel camera and two rolls of Lomo Potsdam I bought last year. I use an app on my phone to measure the light as no meter exists in the camera. I do have a separate light meter. I think I have three. The one I used to use most has an annoying design flaw where it can be switched on inadvertently when tucked into its case draining all its battery energy.
For years I took the battery out when it wasn’t being used but this has become too annoying and I now can't be bothered with it anymore. I find a light meter app for my phone. It seems to work pretty well.
I take my camera into the back garden. My kids are kicking a football together in the drive. They stop when I wander too close to them whether to protect me or move out of shot I'm not sure.
I have some pictures in mind. I'm looking for graphic shapes, a contrast in tone, images of the home we've rented for three years now. The twin lens of the Lubitel makes square pictures so I can fill each roll of film with up to 12 exposures. 12! I could snap a hundred pictures in five minutes using my phone. Even so, it doesn't take me long to shoot through both rolls putting them aside to process the following day.
Some Technical Details
Bathroom Film Processing
I can't find development times for Potsdam using the film developer I have so I hazard a guess. Seven minutes. Once I've processed the first film I hang the roll of exposures up in the shower, the only place I can think of where there won't be too much dust and neither the cat nor the dog can get to them.
I peer at the negative images as the film hangs and determine there are some nice highlights and shadows. I'm excited! I'd forgotten how much I love the magic of processing your own film.
DIY Digital Scanning
I use a Canon 60D with a 50mm lens to 'scan' the negs once they're dry, sandwiching the strips of film between a sheet of glass and a light pad. I shoot the negs on RAW which I find picks up a little more tonal range and a little more detail before I save them out as jpegs. A macro lens would be better but I don't have one so this is the best I can do right now.
In Photoshop I invert the negatives to positives and adjust the highlights and shadows to fill the histogram neatly. Fortunately it doesn’t take too much adjusting to see the images I have. I like the results. A lovely tonal range with good contrast. When the sun comes out again this week (due Thursday) I'll test drive some Ilford HP5 in my Mamiya 7ii. Nice big 6x7 negs.
In the meantime, here's an edited selection of those Lubitel pictures taken on a sunny pandemic afternoon.
All photos by Tanya Clarke 2020
