Brighton by Instax

Sometime last year, I bought a Fujifilm Instax Mini camera, the Neo 90 Classic. Although the camera in itself comes with a number of seductive features (double exposure, timer...), the small, if not to say tiny, size of the photos made me look upon the camera as not much more than a gimmick. As such, I used it for taking snapshots and souvenirs. I did take it with me to Brighton earlier this year, however, and as I quite like some of the resulting shots, I decided to post them. 

Much like its big brother, the Instax Wide camera, it is very good at rendering colours and for shooting in low-light situations. The images are not quite as sharp though, which in some instances actually works towards their advantage. Anyway, it proves that a camera designed for the Instagram age, i.e. for capturing food, pets, selfies and party guests, has indeed a few surprises up its sleeve...

So, here it is, Brighton by Instax Mini. Enjoy...

Urban Geometry: Perspectives and Planes

Last summer, I put together a series of Polaroid photos which focused on the geometry of Berlin's (post-)modern architecture. Throughout this winter, I undertook a similar project with the Fujifilm X30 camera, again capturing 20th and 21st century architecture in Berlin, the result of which I recently uploaded in a new set entitled Urban Geometry: Perspectives and Planes.

Although they have a common theme, the two sets are still very much different. These differences are defined by the medium (analog instant vs. digital), by the format (square vs. mostly 16:9 ratio) and most importantly, by the respective camera's lens and the approach that it allows. Using the Polaroid SX-70, I worked with the camera's fixed lense to focus on excerpts of buildings. The X30's zoom range, however, allowed me to capture buildings in their entirety, or even sets of buildings as depicted in the photo above. It also allowed me to zoom in on particular details if required. This, coupled with the chosen 16:9 ratio,  led the focus away from  the representation of the geometrical shapes of things. Instead, what came to the foreground were the lines, be they frames, pillars, beams or decorative patterns, horizontal or perpendicular or anything in between. 

Now I've said this elsewhere, but Berlin's architecture is basically an angular,

rectangular one, and you are hard pressed to find other shapes and forms - but they do exist. There are some great Bauhaus buildings around which make much use of curves (such as the Shell House), and even in the past years, some architects have managed to slip unusual designs by the stern gaze of  Berlin's conservative building authorities who so love their rectangular designs and orderly structures. The federal government buildings near the central train station consist of a weird amalgam of geometrical shapes of all sorts. And close by, in the model "Hansaviertel" neighbourhood, whose buildings date back to the 1950s, renowned architects such as Oscar Niemeyer forfitted traditional shapes and arrangements for more daring ones. In other words, the buildings I photographed for this project oftentimes go beyond the rectangular and angular.  

The buildings I concentrated on mostly date from the last 70 years. This includes public and office buildings as well as private housings and a couple of industrial buildings (one of which dates back to the late 19th century). The pictures feature buildings by architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Renzo Piano, Oscar Niemeyer, Walter Gropius, Hans Kollhoff and Hans Scharoun.

All photos are in black and white, and as mentioned above, have been taken with the Fujifilm X30 camera.

Links:

- Urban Geometry: Perspectives and Planes

- Urban Geometry (Polaroids)

- more urban Berlin photography

- New Horizons: wide-angle urban London photographs

Instant Lab Portraits: From Digital to Analog and Back Again

A couple of years ago, Impossible Project, the makers of polaroid-compatible instant film, began producing a device they call the Instant Lab, which allows you to transfer digital images from a smartphone or tablet to instant film prints. Some call the device a printer, but Impossible Project calls it a camera, and I tend to agree with the latter. Now, Impossible Project are not the only ones manufacturing these type of devices, there exist similar ones by Fujifilm and Lomography which produce prints using Fujifilm Instax Mini film. 

The success of these devices (as well as on demand print books etc.), and the increasing demand for instant film cameras overall, obviously points to a demand for a return to tangible, physical images; not as a replacement of but existing alongside the possibilities which the digital age has to offer in terms of capturing and presenting photos. 

As interesting as that may be, I am more intrigued by another facet of this: the continuous blurring of the lines between analog and digital. Analog photos obviously also exist in the digital sphere, they are scanned (from a negative or a positive) then presented and shared online. The physical copy of the image may not even exist beyond the negative. When scanning analog photos, the results are sometimes digitally manipulated, and even if not, the very act of scanning oftentimes alters the image. Additionally, viewing a photo on a backlit screen is a very different experience from viewing a print. 

In other words, photos shot on analog equipment already lead a hermaphrodite type of existence. 

Now the Instant Lab actually keeps blurring the distinction even more. Transferring a digital image to the instant film is not a copy/paste process, the result is never a 1:1 transfer. Depending on the film used, or the exposure time, or a number of other variables, the result is different in one way or another from the original. You can even do double exposures. Like any camera, you need to get the hang of it to produce optimum results. 

And of course, all that happens after you manipulate a photo on the smartphone, sometimes more, sometimes less so.

And finally, of course, you scan the physical picture and the process has come full circle. 

I have been using the Instant Lab since 2013, and presented a good number of results on my site. I have now put together a set that showcases all the portrait and street photography images that I put through the Instant Lab. The set includes straight transfers of iPhone photos to instant film, but it also includes double exposures done with the instant lab as well as copies of manipulations I did with the pics and the iPhone. It even includes an image I created when I accidentally cracked the screen of my iPhone. 

The interesting aspect is that the device allows for a different range of images than is possible with standard Polaroid cameras. Besides the aforementioned image manipulations, this includes photos taken in situations for which the Polaroid cameras are not well suited for, interiors (if you don't like flash) or street photography (Polaroid cameras tend to be a bit too obvious for discrete shots) for example. Some results are due to accidents: my instant lab has recently developed a flaw, damaging the exposure. Strangely enough, the damage often works in favour of the image, somehow accentuating the subject in the photo (Impossible Project has offered to replace the device, I should add).

Links:

Instant Lab Portraits

More portrait works

More instant film photos

Instant Lab by Impossible Project

Wide-Angle Urban Poetry, Vol. 2: London & Brighton

For the second year running I spent New Year's in Brighton, and same as last year I followed that vacation up with a stay in London. And same as last year, I brought back a number of photographs.

Last year I had taken the analog Lomo Belair panoramic camera with me. This year I decided to go digital and took the Fujifilm X30. I took it primarily because I was expecting bad weather and low light, which normally hampers the use of lo-fi analog cameras. However, luckily bad weather wasn't the norm, so that I ended up with a number of splendid colour photographs as well as black and white ones.

I'm particularly happy with many of the photos which I brought back from

London, especially the ones which I shot in and around the Barbican. I visited the Barbican Centre to see an exhibition, Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age; a show which I thought quite brilliant, both for the theme and for the large number of exceptional photos on display. At the same time, the Barbican complex is in itself a highly photogenic urban jungle, bordering on the ever growing architectural frenzy (some would say mess) that is London's East End. Certainly it was no coincidence that the Barbican was putting on a show with this kind of theme, and so it was not necessarily a coincidence either that I ended up with a number of shots reflecting the theme of the show. 

The photographs which I took this year with the Fujifilm X30 in many ways compliment the panoramic pictures which I took last year with the Belair camera, so I combined the two in a common set, adding also a number of Polaroids which fit the theme of urban panoramas, as well as a couple of 'Holgaramas' from 2008, and a collage which I did in 2004 of Saint Paul's as seen from the Tate Modern. Altogether they also illustrate how fast London's skyline keeps changing, for better and for worse. Additionally, the photos illustrate another facet of London which I always found fascinating: here, the various epochs of London's long history do not so much co-exist side by side, but seem to pile up on top of each other. The picture above is a good example as it shows tiers of buildings from various centuries, combining the medieval church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate with buildings from the 19th, 20th and 21st century high rises into a very crowded skyline.

Links:

- Wide-Angle Urban Poetry: London Panoramas

- Wide-Angle Urban Poetry: Berlin (blog entry)

- Brighton in Winter

- More UK photographs

- Review of the Constructing World exhibition in Time Out London

Signs of the Times

Last year I published a set of instant photos entitled Fragments: Signs of the Times, which I just updated with a selection of photos taken throughout 2014. Fragments is a collection of images depicting public art, graffiti, posters and other symbols (both permanent and temporary) which epitomise Berlin at a certain instant in time. The permanent structures tend to reflect much of Berlin's late 20th century history, especially its division, as they symbolise, and sometimes directly address, the tastes, affiliations and beliefs typical of West and East Berlin respectively - not just pre- but also post-fall-of-the-wall. The more temporary displays - graffiti, posters etc. - on the other hand reflect moods, tastes and opinions of the moment in time when the pictures were taken - current then, but history a couple of weeks, months, years down the line.

All the photos except one were taken with Polaroid cameras and a variety of Impossible Project films, both colour and black and white. 

[Click here to view]

Berlin Digital

It's been a while since I posted any exclusively digital sets, obviously because I have more than ever been concentrating on analog photography for the past two years. I still enjoy shooting on the iPhone, though, and recently I put together two collections of images which I shot around Berlin on the iPhone. 

The first one is called Angular Designs and is basically a collection of architectural photographs focusing on the indeed very angular approach to designing buildings in Berlin. Whether it's down to regulations, cost restrictions or architects' lack of imagination, many if not most of the buildimgs built from the middle of the 20th century until today rely heavily on a purely angular form.  Curves are a stylistic element found few and far between, and although notable exceptions exist - Sony Center, Haus der Kulturen etc. - there doesn't seem to be as much architectural diversity found in Berlin as in other cities - nor as much extravagance. Which doesn't mean that it has to be all boring. It isn't... but you get the feeling that with all the building going on, there should be so many more buildings with a distinctive 'wow' effect factor. Put that down to Prussian bureaucracy and desire for order, going so far as to actually stipulate the ratio of glass to stone that can exist in a building's façade...

I guess if I want to put together a collection of curves and round shapes in architecture, I will need to look abroad mostly.....

The second set I added is simply a collection of black and white photos from the last four years or so. Some of the photos are presented as they were taken, but on a number of them, I also applied a fair amount of post-processing using various apps on the iPhone. The set also includes a short series of night shots which I entitled Night Hawks, a theme I may want to explore further in the near future.

Links:

Angular Designs

Berlin in Black And White

Places > Berlin > Berlin Digital

India Travelogue Updates

I have updated the Travelogue section on India, with sets of new images from Odisha, including the video posted in the previous blog post; Idols by the Sea, a set on the last day of the Durga Pujas on Juhu Beach in Mumbai, and an expanded section on Kolkata. The sets include a number of the Holga and Polaroid shots from those sets I posted earlier, but there are also a number of iPhone shots as well, as ever most of them taken using the trusted Hipstamatic app. 

This should be the last posting on India then, at least for a while..., ;)