Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow?
Monday, August 12, 2013
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| Greer Grimsley |
“Will all great Neptune's
ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The
multitudinous seas in incarnadine, Making the green one red."
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Baritone Greer Grimsley in Giuseppe Verdi’s
Macbeth
As I prepare myself for my Buenos Aires trip at the end of September in
which I will have many photographic projects of my liking I have been agonizing
on what equipment to take.
In one trip I made for a Toronto
magazine called Vista (when magazines paid
photographers to travel and paid them, handsomely for their photographs) I
decided I needed some sort of compact studio flash. These were the days before
9/11 when my only hassles were convincing Latin American airport security not
to X-ray my film.
In later trips abroad if I happened to pack
a tripod in my suitcase, the suitcase would be opened. Those were the days when
we locked them. The folks of US Homeland Security would forcibly open it, stick
a paper that they had done this and then they would tie (if you were lucky)
your suitcase with a rope or tape it.
Alas in my magazine paid trip to Argentina (and Uruguay)
my Norman 200B flash arrived at Buenos
Aires with a broken flash bulb. Finding a new
replacement for my unit in Argentina
was as difficult as purchasing there Canadian maple syrup.
On another trip to BA I was sandbagged from
the rear near the Retiro train station and much of what I owned was stolen
including my credit card which I had hidden inside my camera bag. Fortunately
the American Express ads are accurate and by the next day I had a new card but
fewer cameras.
Since then I have learned my lesson and I
am very careful. I have a black ballistic cotton shoulder bag that does not
look like a camera bag. In it I can pack rather nicely three 35mm cameras, one
light meter and four or five lenses. Since I shoot film, I pack it in clear
plastic bags and when I ask (very politely) airport security not to X-ray it
but to use visual (they use a special swab) I get my wish. Nowadays so few use
film that I get asked with smiles by the security all kinds of questions on why
I use film!
Since I believe in the idea that two
identical cameras, one loaded with colour film, and the other with b+w will
produce similar pictures but (yes!) different I must always travel with two
35mm Nikon FM-2. They are compact and they are fully mechanical and will
operate without batteries.
So in my planned trip to BA I am taking two
Nikons, a 24, a 35, a 50 and 85 mm lenses. But I have a really outstanding Pentax
20mm so I will have to take two Pentax MXs for that.
I just might pack the lenses and two of
those cameras in my hard luggage. Why? Because I am almost sure that I will
take my heavy 6x7 cm Mamiya RB-67, with one lens, the 90mm. Why? Because I want
to shoot Fuji Instant b+w film. I am very excited with the results I have been getting
with the scanning of the peeled negative.
My Rosemary has thrown a wrench into this
equation and will definitely scrap the two Pentaxes but certainly not the
Mamiya. Why? The wrench is that Rosemary has insisted and I have purchased a
Fuji X-E1 with an 15 to 55 zoom. Will I be comfortable enough with it by the
time I leave? Who knows? But I am excited as this camera with a $70 adapter
will accommodate all my Nikon lenses.
I find it fitting to explain why I have
placed here two images. One I took in 2006 with film that is not made anymore. The
photograph of baritone Greer Grimsley is the scan of a Polaroid 100ISO film. But
it is not of the print but of the peeled “negative” which rapidly darkens. With
Photoshop I am able to lighten it enough and I like the result, alas one that
is no more.
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| David MacGillivray |
The other snap is of my former photography
student David MacGillivray who came to visit me today (I am writing this August
10). I am way ahead in blogs. The picture is a scanned Fuji FP-3000B negative peel that I reversed in
Photoshop to get the strangely semi solarized effect. The Greer Grimsley is the
old and the David’s is my latest. Will all this be moot if I get excited over
the possibilities of the X-E1? Only time will tell.
As an afterthought I have decided to also include the Ektachrome 100G transparency of Greer Grimsley. Like Kodachrome, now Ekatachrome is a memory that will probably not make it into a song.
As an afterthought I have decided to also include the Ektachrome 100G transparency of Greer Grimsley. Like Kodachrome, now Ekatachrome is a memory that will probably not make it into a song.
