Absorbed

When I took an evening class in black and white photography I shot my kids as an assignment. (Sounds funny saying it like that, but I was using a camera, so it’s okay!) One of the things the tutor noticed about my photos was that the kids weren’t looking at the camera.

There were two reasons for this. Firstly, I was using my camera a lot in those days, and the kids were less conscious of being in front of the lens. Course, now it’s more ‘Dad’s got his camera out, run for your lives!’. The second reason is that I would wait until they were distracted – absorbed with what they were doing.

I don’t use my camera as much these days, so if the kids do decide they’ll let me take their picture, they’ll pose, and I miss the shot I was going for. Sometimes though, I get lucky, like the shot above.

I much prefer these types of portraits because you see a person in their natural way, doing what they do. Some would say that looking into someone’s eyes let’s you catch a glimpse of their soul, and there are times when that approach is the best, but my favourite portraits of the kids are moments like these, when they don’t even know they’ve been caught on camera.

As an aside, it’s been a busy old time again, with a lot of changes, but more about that later.

The Hundred Greatest Cameras – sort of

A certain magazine has put together a list of the hundred greatest cameras ever made. Interestingly, the Sony NEX-7 is sitting pretty at number 78, which I find interesting since it’s not available yet. What’s that all about?

Now I may have missed them, but there were some notable cameras missing. Most notable absentees were the EOS film range. Not a 3, 5, 50E, 30 or 1 in sight. I find that truly odd as the EOS 3 was widely considered to be about the finest film auto-focus SLR ever. I would have had that in my top 100, even my top 10.

My personal favourite though will always be the Pentax MZ-5n. I loved this camera and without doubt is the best Pentax I ever owned. Pentax made some lousy auto-focus cameras, but the MZ-5n wasn’t one of them. Reliable metering, reliable (if noisy) auto-focus and a shutter speed dial all wrapped up in a lightweight and compact body. It was a joy to use and never failed to produce the goods. For me, that makes it a great camera.

Everyone has their preference and everyone will have their favourite, but the fact that so many digital cameras were in the list is quite telling. Could it be that we already have a generation of photographers who have never used film? Who have never manually focused a prime lens? Never used a thumb wind?

So what would be your greatest camera?

Favourite Locations: Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire

Everyone has a style of photography that suits them, or subjects that they love to shoot time after time. For me, I love ruins. Ruins provide a plethora of shapes, textures and a fair bit of play between shadow and light. I’m very fortunate to live not too far from some spectacular Abbey’s, of which Fountains Abbey is my absolute favourite.
I’ve only been to Fountains twice, but now that I find it on my doorstep, I have the luxury of being able to go back more often.
My first visit was back when I was shooting film, and insanely carrying around a full 35mm setup and a Pentax 645 setup. (How my back coped with that I’ll never know.) By this time, I was shooting monochrome as part of a college course and was well on the way to ditching colour film. It was also the first real time shooting medium format and an excuse to try two new films – Fuji Acros 100 and Ilford Delta 100.
Fountains Abbey sits in a large estate with a variety of gardens and structures, yet I never ventured far from the Abbey itself. The stand out feature of Fountains is the Cellarium, a large vaulted chamber that is remarkably complete and awe inspiring. I set up my tripod and spent about half an hour taking shots, changing lenses and taking more shots. It was almost surreal standing there. I chose a side of the Cellarium that had a cross located at the end and it seemed that no one else had noticed it as people were taking photos elsewhere. It gave me an unobstructed view and plenty of time.

The Cellarium Fountains Abbey — The Cellarium at Fountains Abbey

The stand out shot was taken on Fuji Acros with a Pentax 645. It is the only negative I printed to 16 x 20 and kept – it still hangs in the living room, spoiled only by a streak where the fixer has started to turn brown. The detail captured by the negative is staggering; you don’t really get the full impact of that from the scan.
Several years later, we moved closer to Fountains and we took a family trip. This time I was shooting digital and had far less gear to carry around, but again, I was drawn to the Cellarium. No tripod and four kids running around, the atmosphere was totally different, and so was the way I made the shots. ISO 800 with a Nikon 18-105 DX lens and hand held, plus shooting in colour.
I decided to try and get more of the Cellarium into the shot and tried to get the kids in there as well. There was one stand out image and that was the one below. My youngest son was overjoyed to be out of the pushchair and running around. The presence of the toddler and his wandering toward the cross lend the image an atmosphere that is missing from the first image.

That said, neither really captures the full impact of standing there. A third visit is definitely on the cards and an opportunity to try capture the place in yet another way.