Translate

12 Nov 2015

Away

I'll soon be in India.S India.I have been to India before so I know what to expect.Colour.Heat.Dust.Grinding poverty.Children playing cricket everywhere.Beggars.Sad sights.Amazing sights.Photo opportunities everywhere.I won't be photographing unfortunate people. I am not a photojournalist. My photography is for fun.
I last went to India in 2000.Then I used a Leica M6 film camera. On a trip which lasted nearly 3 weeks I used 4 cassettes of 35mm Fuji Velvia slide film.That's 144 photos.I bought one unused film back. Most photographers today would easily take that number of photos in a day or perhaps even in an hour.I keep hearing stories from friends that they have taken 3000 or even 5000 photos on an three week overseas trip.Then they cannot organise them yet alone edit them-they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of photos.
I knew how to make each frame count back then.It's a habit I am intent on relearning.On this trip I will take my X1 and X Vario Leicas. I will only use one camera on a day. There is nothing more confusing than having two cameras around your neck or even in your bag. My objective is to come back with a dozen good photos.Any more will be a bonus.

A selection of photos from my previous passage to India. These are scans made 15 years ago with an early Canon film scanner. My current Epson scanner would do much better but I don't have the time this week to rescan them.Scanning is monk's work.
I used to think that there was still something magical about film compared with digital but that no longer applies. Advances in the last 3 years in sensors,processing "engines" in the cameras and in particular in image processing software ( Lightroom 4 onwards) means that digital photos can now surpass film photos in quality.












No comments:

Post a Comment