Berlin in Black & White

These past months I've been heavily shooting black and white instant films. One of my favourite films has turned out to be Impossible Project's new 'Hard Color' film with its solid colour frames and stark contrasts, a combination I really like; but I've also been using that other favourite film of my, the black framed one.

I've put together the best of the urban-themed photos which I shot around Berlin in a new set entitled 'City Polaroids: Berlin in Black & White' [Click here to view]. I've always loved black and white photography for its seemingly time-bending quality, that is, the fact that it couples memories of old classic photos with contemporary realities such as (post-)modern architecture and contemporary urban scenes. Or alternatively, how it evokes a sense of a lost past when photographing historic places or old buildings, a theme I explored in an earlier set, Another Time [read the blog entry here].

Enjoy...

[City Polaroids: Berlin in Black & White]

[More Berlin Polaroids]

[More Instant Film photographs]

Wide Angle Bucharest and London

I recently uploaded a series of photos from London and Bucharest (Romania), all of them taken with the Lomography Belair x 6-12 camera and using a 58mm lens. Contrary to the Berlin set posted earlier, I used the camera primarily to shoot buildings and vistas rather than the more intimate street scenes I captured in Berlin (see my earlier blog post here).

Here is the link: Wide Urban Angles

More of my Belair photos can be found [here].

Wide-Angle Urban Poetry

I recently uploaded the second batch of photographs taken with the new Lomography Belair x 6-12 camera. Unlike with the first batch, the Brighton pics, I had with these rolls figured out how to hold the camera to properly format the images, which, guess what, vastly improves the results.

All of the photos were taken in Berlin between January and April, 2014. My first approach to shooting with the camera was to take advantage of the camera's ability to shoot panoramic 6x12mm and 6x8mm exposures, and the 58mm lens' wide-angle capacity, to take wide panoramic cityscape pictures. Later, I changed tactics: rather than take more panorama shots, I went for close-ups, thus being able to take in complete scenes and/or objects from close proximity, which allows both for a certain intimacy while providing the 'big picture' at the same time. Coupled with both the camera's and the lens' inherent distortions, the results are to, for lack of a better word, poetic...

Overall I'm vey pleased with the Belair, despite some technical, or rather mechanical, issues. Of these I plan to write later as I'm yet to write up a review of the camera. 

Here then is the link: Wide-Angle Urban Poetry

See also Brighton Winter for more Belair shots. 

Brighton by Belair

I spent this New Year's in Brighton in South England. I had just before gotten me a new camera, the Lomography Belair x 6-12 camera. It's a medium format camera, using 120 film. It comes with exchangeable lenses and settings that allows one to shoot either 6x6, 6x8 or 6x12 exposures. I did not have a chance to test the camera before leaving for Brighton, so the films I shot there were pretty much my test run. I decided to use the 58mm lens and either the 6x8 or 6x12 mm size settings to take full advantage of the camera's panorama abilities.

My experiences with the camera are mixed, and I will be posting a review later to explain. Suffice to say at this moment though is that overall I'm happy with the results, especially considering the less than perfect weather for most of my stay there. Some of the images are formatted not quite right as the shift between what you see in the visor and the result is quite considerable. Also a couple of rolls did not roll up properly, so there is some light leakage on the last exposures on those roll.

Having said all that, here then is a selection of the best Belair pics from a few moody, wintry days in Brighton: click here to view. 

Another Time: Berlin in Black & White Polaroids

I think I wrote about this already in an earlier post: I believe that today's Polaroid photography has two distinct faces - colour and black & white. Colour polaroids, especially Impossible Project's new Color Protection film, are vibrant, and for me very much 'today' (to avoid the term 'modern'), and personally I do not associate them with the images from the 60s or 70s, the heyday of colour polaroid photography.

But for black and white polaroids, I find this to be different. The 'Silver Shade' film stock produces results which to me are very much reminiscent of old photographs; thanks mostly to the light leaks and the other imperfections, and the sepia sheen that the photos take on if not stored in a dry place for a while shortly after being taken. David Sylvian, in the liner notes to the catalogue for his Impossible Project exhibition, Glowing Enigmas, called this "the look of something long lost, redeemed from memory, another time and place." 

Thus when I decided on a project involving black and white film (i.e. Impossible Project's Silver Shade films), I figured that combining images of Berlin's historic buildings (and other old landmarks) with the vintage look and feel of the Silver Shade films made perfect sense. So over these past two, mostly cold and grey, months, I was out with the Polaroid cameras, capturing not only the better known historic landmarks in the center of Berlin, but also a number of older industrial buildings throughout the city. As always, there are some exceptions to the rule - so not every building I captured in the series is old or historic.  The industrial buildings by the way I found fascinating enough to want to devote a whole series to them in the near-ish future.

So here it is then, the outcome of my latest project, aptly named "Another Time: Berlin in Black & White". Enjoy. And let me know what you think.

More of my polaroid work can be found [here] and on [flickr]. 

Read my earlier post about David Sylvian's recent polaroid work [here].

The Baltic Sea in Autumn....

When earlier this year I migrated my site to a new look and feel, I left out a few of the older sets. For some reason I left out a collection of photos which I shot on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen about three years ago, and today I remedied that, so here I proudly present one of the few nature sets I ever shot, and will probably ever shoot [click here to view].

As you can probably tell by browsing through this blog, my work is almost all urban related, whether I capture people or buildings. That does not mean that I don't enjoy nature, 'cause I do, it's just that nature doesn't inspire me as much as a city does. Actually, one of the perks for me of being out of city is that I feel it quite relaxing to be in an environment where I don't feel the constant urge to push a trigger. But since for every rule there's got be some exceptions, this particular set is one. 

The photos were taken over an extended, partly sunny, partly stormy week-end on the island of Rügen, off Germany's Baltic Sea coast. I used the Diana+, a camera I haven't really used in a few years. The Diana+ was always my bad weather camera since it uses a shutter speed of 1/60, and I used it regularly during autumn and winter, but have sadly neglected it over the last years. Looking at these photos, I think that is a bit of a shame - the Diana magic comes out nicely in these pics. Well, it's never too late, because, as they say, winter will come....

Budapest Revisited

I was in Budapest at the end of June, but I only now got around to scanning and uploading the various photos. The set I put together is a rather unequal mix of polaroids, black & white Holga and (mostly) black & white Hipstamatic pics. I had been to Budapest before and shot a good many photos then (which I always liked since it was winter and the city was snowed in), so I felt less of an urge to go out and document the city, hence the photos in this set tend to be a bit more incidental in nature. I still hope you enjoy them.

Links:

• Budapest 2012
• Budapest New Year 2007/2008   

Christopher Street Day

Yesterday, the annual Christopher Street Day (i.e. Gay Pride) parade took place in Berlin. This year I skipped the main event and went to an alternative CSD which also takes place every year in Berlin's Kreuzberg district - off the main drag, so to speak (pardon the pun).  I wasn't going to take any photos, so I didn't take a camera along, only my iPhone - and ended up taking a whole bunch of pics with the iPhone; all of them in black & white. Here is the result. Enjoy. :)

Prague in (Almost) Black & White

I spent a few days in Prague earlier this month. It's a city that is charming enough but is a bit over-run by tourists - well, no wonder, it does have sights to spare. Here is an album of photos I shot there. Most of them are in black and white, which suited both the city and the weather. Like so many recent sets shot on recent trips, about half the photos were taken with an iPhone and the other half with a Holga.

Berlin Christopher Street Day 2011

Gallery with b&w and colour Holga photos from the recent Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin now up [click here].

Around Berlin 2009

I've uploaded a series of pictures taken throughout Berlin in the course of 2009; ranging from the few cold snowy days in January to the first snow in December. The colour photographs were taken using the Holga 120N and 120WPC cameras, and the black and white ones with the Diana+ camera.

The gallery can be accessed from the toy camera page by following the "Berlin Around Town 2009" link.

CSD 2009

The photographs from this year's Christopher Street Day, a.k.a. Gay Pride, are up now and available from the toycamera page. They are all black & white and shot with the Diana+ camera.

London under a Pale Winter Sun

Having spent New Year's in London this time around, I came back with a bunch of photos taken with the Diana+ using the new 110mm tele-objective, and with the Holga camera on those rare days where the sun was out. The result is a collection of sometimes rather gloomy photos which at times seem to stem from a different age. 

One of the rolls didn't roll up properly in the camera and a series of images came out with light leaks; another one ended up scratched. I still decided to put some of those damaged ones up.

[Click here to view]

Dresden in Winter

Dresden in winter can be a very gloomy place, and I've got the pictures to prove it. ;) Just uploaded a series of photos taken in Dresden on the last November week-end, using the Diana+ camera with a 110mm lens, which accounts for some of the gloominess.

The gallery is available from the Toy Camera page.

New Gallery: Autumn Passes (First Snow)

I've uploaded a series of photographs taken between October and December of 2008, from the last of the golden autumn days to the first snow for this year. The camera I used was the Diana+; for the colour photos I used a 38mm objective, for the black&white ones a 110mm objective. The latter gives the photos, taken mostly in the early morning, a very gloomy look indeed.

The link to the gallery is available both from the Toy Camera page and the Berlin page. Enjoy.