Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

No, it's not a post about some Danse Macabre stuff....these were just my thoughts when we took a visit to Helmut Newton's grave in Berlin, back in May. First we took a mandatory visit to his museum on Jebensstrasse which is pretty easy to find, just behind the (in)famous Zoo Station. There, at the museum, you can really get a grasp of his life and work, glamorous and controversial, but also about more intimate aspects. And it takes a while to get through all three museum floors, too. Diametrically opposite is the impression when you visit his grave, unnoticeable and humble, just a few meters away from Marlene Dietrich (it was his wish to be buried there). We were lucky enough to meet two graveyard employees, so the quest was relatively short. I am not saying I was expecting a mausoleum or something, but realizing that one of the greatest photographers (his ashes, actually) is buried there, being visited only by a bunch of visitors, here and there, made me a bit sad. On the contrary, Marlene's grave gets much more visits (if you compare the stones put on the gravestone).

Helmut Netown's grave in Berlin.

Bottom line: take care of yourself and of your dearest here and now. It won't really matter after.

Helmut is buried in the Städtischer Friedhof III cemetery, not really a "high point" of Berlin. Sadly, even many locals are not aware of the cemetery itself, let alone of Helmut's grave. Hint: it improves your chances to get in the right direction if you ask where is the cemetery where Marlene Dietrich is buried, but it's not necessarily 100% proof (that's our experience).
Mitja

Random Quote

"In my experience I've learnt that they make an ordinary scene interesting and an interesting scene ordinary", Tim Hixson on plastic cameras. More about here.

Cottage Tip: Keeping Humidity under Control- Part 1

Humidity is one the worst enemies of your cameras and lenses! We all know that under prolonged humid conditions, especially if stored in the dark, fungal growth can begin inside your beloved lenses! The best cure is, of course, keeping your equiment in constant use (fungal growth is quite sensitive to light). But most of the time, our beloved toys reside in a bag or a case, in the dark. Unless you live in an arid environment, we need to make sure there is not enough moisture inside to initiate the growth of the evil fungi! Fortunately, fungal growth is quite a slow process, and won't happen overnight! Many photographers just put (intuitively) inside a bag or two of silicagel they recycled from a shoe box or other purchased goods. The problem is, this silicagel is probably already exhausted, so it has no capacity left to absorb the moisture. Plus, it usually has no color indication whether is exhausted or not. Most of the people just put inside these little bags and forget about them for good! Fourtunately, most people don't have problems with fungi, but some of them do, sadly. 

This is all you need: fresh silicagel, a film canister and a sharp tool (e.g. scissors). Rightmost: a bag of exhausted silicagel.

This is how a punched canister looks like.

Left: film canister with fresh silicagel. Right: canister with exhausted silicagel, notice the color change.

 The real solution to the problem is to buy silicagel beads with color indicator in bulk-you can buy half a kilo or so for little money online. As the silicagel gets too wet, it turns its color from orange to dark blue (it looks like caviar-before and after-salmon before, beluga caviar after J). So, buy silicagel in bulk, and you can regenerate it many times by (re)heating it! Next problem is the container; I simply use a (translucent) film canister, finely punched along its surface. Pour the dry silicagel inside and close the lid. A canister or two will do their job for a few weeks or months inside the bag (or case), but not forever! Moisture penetrates more than you can imagine inside your bags and cases (unless you have everything sealed with plastics-not really practical), so a regular check is advisable. When it comes to regenerate, simply put the silicagel in a shallow (glass or metal) container or pan inside the kitchen oven for an hour or so around 100 °C. When it turns back orange in color, you're done! When not in use, keep your silicagel well sealed against moisture. The humidity in your closet or drawer, where you keep your gear, is also important. We'll cover this in the second part.

A note of caution: with time, some fine dust will occur, due to silicagel's self-abrasion. Do not breathe the dust, it's not friendly to your lungs!

Mitja

About Cottage Tips

Dear Readers,

As already promised, we'll feature a series of technical contributions, and among them there will be the so-called Cottage Tips. Essentially, it will be a »how-to« series of short (or longer) posts, dealing with various inexpensive technical solutions for improving your photo-gear, upgrading on a tight budget, or even making a piece of equipment not available in the stores. Not necessarily all contributions will be strictly dedicated to film photography, but also for general photographic usage. I am sure some of the contributions you'll find very basic or redundant, something you've been knowing about for ages, but most of them not. We also need to keep in mind the newcomers to (film) photography; they need all the information we can give them. On the long run, I am sure with these tips we can make our photographic endeavours a little bit more comfortable, easier, and hopefully cheaper, too.

silver regards

Mitja

Portfolio of the Week: Martina Woll

Dear Readers,

This week we feature a German photographer, Martina Woll. Martina is an autodidact photographer from Saarbrücken. She works in 35 mm (Canon EOS 3, Minolta SR-T 101, Yashica Electro 35GTN and others) and 6x6 (Mamiya C330S), as well as with Fuji Instax and Holga cameras, with available light as her primary lighting source. Her preferred films are Kodak Tri-X 400 and Agfa APX 100. She develops BW films by herself, usually with Caffenol-C. Her photographic work and interests range widely, very widely; from portraits to still life, to a variety of vehicles, vessels (aircrafts), and other subjects. She also loves the imperfections film has to offer: lightleaks, fluff, blur etc. Most of her inspiration comes from the web, since there is a great deal of talented photographers' work to be seen online, as she states. And she's right! Thus, she has no rigid or exemplar rules about. She has already been featured in a number of publications, including Playboy USA. Besides her portfolio, I personally like very much her Smoking series of photos.

Untitled 13. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 18. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 7. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 64. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 33. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 6. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 31. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 99. Copyright: Martina Woll

Untitled 100. Copyright: Martina Woll

Kell. Copyright: Martina Woll

 

Martina's work can be seen on her website, her photostream on Flickr and Facebook. Enjoy the photos!

silver regards

Mitja

SAD MAG goes digital-free!

The quarterly, Vancouver-based SAD magazine decided to source their images only from analog photos, by this year. While I applaud such a decision, I must admit I didn't fully understand the explanation Kevin Kerr gave about that decision in this article. It 's somehow an alchemistic point of view, in my view (sorry for the pun). But a good point about that decision, in my opinion, is this: "I think a cer­tain amount of sat­is­fac­tion of knowing that Sad Mag is going to be return­ing to film is imag­in­ing the qual­ity of the expe­ri­ence of not only the viewer, but of the pho­tog­ra­pher." Good point, Kevin! Considering the magazine is dedicated to young artists, that will be a good way to nurture the appreciation for film.

The basics

Dear readers!

I'm for now the second contributing autor to this blog, witch it is, you allready know this, dedicated to film and analogue photography. To be clear. I'm not hard core film or analogue photographer. Mitja already wrote that I started as a so called “digital” photographer, at the dawn of commercial digital photography. I’m still am today. I steadily learned the basics and then I started to discover the basics of photography with old all manual analogue cameras found at home. More about this in some post in the future. I was attracted into the classical film and manual cameras (older they are the better) and the aesthetics of analogue image, and the feeling of authenticity that only film photography can give you. I quickly learned to develop a BW film and make my own prints in the darkroom. Then I started to discover the history of photography and now alternative techniques to get the picture. Then I started to look at the masters of photography. I’m still learning the aesthetics and inherent meaning of their photographs. Then the next logical step was to go to photographic school to get the new insight about the photography. 

In the future I want to live from the thing I love to do, photographing. No matter if it is analogue or digital. But I also want to learn the old techniques of making photographs (ultimate goal for me is Daguerreotype) and master the language of the old masters of photography. I embrace many possibly contradicting poles of photography simply from the love of the photography. No doubt that I will remain a “digital” photographer it’s so more practical. But when we are talking about the soul of photography it is no doubly analogue.

 

me, pinhole - 2010

Now let’s talk about the basics. The picture is pinhole self portrait. Exposition was 16 min! I was at the lunch break at my, at that time regular job. What’s basic about that?  The pinhole camera from a cardboard box. That’s the real basic of photography. The camera obscura (the box with a pinhole), the light and the time. That’s all you need.

Matjaž