Not Fading Away Gracefully
Thursday, November 28, 2013
In 1951 General Douglas MacArthur in a
farewell speech said:
I am closing my 52 years of military
service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was
the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over
many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and
dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the
most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that
"old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
And like the old soldier of that ballad, I
now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do
his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.
In many ways I think this also applies to
old photographers like this one. And the comparison seems to fit photographers
even better. We fade like a badly fixed photograph. They usually yellow and
develop spots and ultimately they are gone.
But like MacArthur, we might fade away,
slowly enough to make a bang here and there.
At age 71 I believe I am taking the best
photographs of my life. My film based photographs cannot be retro because I am
using film in a contemporary way. I make do with the best of two worlds by combining
my slides, transparencies, negatives and darkroom printed b+ws with my Epson
Perfection V700 Photo scanner. And on the rare occasion that the scanner will
not do I go to DISC Imaging in Vancouver
and Grant Simmons will expertly drum scan my stuff.
Working with both these worlds means that
while I can print beautiful 16x20 prints on very good photographic paper I can
also use digital files of my 6x7 cm transparencies (slides) to have DISC print
giclées that surpass even light jet prints (digital files projected on
photographic colour paper with a laser enlarger)in detail particularly in the
shadows. Until now conventional colour film (both negative and slide) had
awesome shadow detail that was limited in that they had to be printed in the
photographic products of their time.
But all the above does not mean I have
eschewed the use of digital camera. I have recently purchased a Fuji X-E1and I
am learning how to use it without allowing me to have it tell me what to do! This
camera has an available adaptor (which I purchased) which enables me to use all
my old style (non autofocusing) Nikon lenses. Until I can figure out this
camera’s eccentricities I use it just the way I use all my film cameras, with
an accurate Minolta flash/exposure meter.
Today, I was able to see my latest cover
for an arts weekly in Edmonton,
Alberta. I am particularly pleased
by the look that the designer gave to my photograph. This is, he did nothing to
it and kept it clean. In this age this is amazing.
For those who may be curious on how I
photographed singer/songwriter Art Bergmann here are the facts. I photographed
him in my studio (I had one then) in March 2009. I used a Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD and a 90mm lens. My
film was Ilford FP-4 which I rated at 100 ISO. I processed the film in Kodak
HC-110 dilution B.
For light I used a Profoto ring flash
modified to be plugged into a venerable (I purchased it in 1979) Norman 200B. I purposely
mounted my camera crooked within the hole of the ring flash so that the lens
would see the edge.
