Friday, September 30, 2011
Afternoon in the woods.
With the sun out on Wednesday and some time to spare, I went to the fishponds to look for some more images.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Indian Summer
The weather has been warm and sunny today. This evening I went down to the prom to see if there were any images to be found.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Lawrence Shove
Part of the ongoing editing and sorting of archives is throwing up a few odds and ends that I had forgotten about. This picture was a very underexposed 6x4.5 transparency.
I can remember him stopping several times, at my Grandparents house, with his Austin A40 Farina full of tape machines, parabolic reflectors, stands and all his other equipment. The main reason was his search for the Capercaillie. From memory it took him several visits to the Highlands before he was successful in getting a recording of the mating call.
In the early 1970's he became manager of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, when the work of running the theatre became too much for Rowena Cade, the theatres creator, to manage on her own. It was here that I got to know him the most as I visited over a few summers, helping out in the theatre, during my holidays.
His funeral was the most memorable that I have attended. He is buried in the village on the edge of Dartmoor where he lived most of his life. The funeral was on one of those first sunny days of early spring, just when the flowers were starting to bloom. His coffin was decorated with a posy of spring flowers picked from the hedgerows by children from the village school. The church was full with people standing at the back and spilling out into the churchyard of the small village church.
I am glad that I did not discard this bit of film 30 years ago. I also wonder what other images I will find and be able to resurrect.
Too dark to do anything worthwhile with on film but when scanned and tweaked with in Photoshop it produced an acceptable result.
The subject was Lawrence Shove, a very old family friend, and was taken in 1980 in his office at Minack House, Porthcurno. While he was manager at the Minack Theatre.
In his life he had been many things. Farming and working with heavy horses, his love of nature took him into the world of birdsong recording. These recordings are now in the National Sound Archive,
"the Shove collection of British wildlife on 243 reels of tape. The late Lawrence Shove was one of the first contributors to the wildlife collections in 1969 (wildlife recording reference number 00001 is his taping of a Bittern Botaurus stellaris at Hickling Broad, Norfolk). NSA recently acquired his complete collection."
I can remember him stopping several times, at my Grandparents house, with his Austin A40 Farina full of tape machines, parabolic reflectors, stands and all his other equipment. The main reason was his search for the Capercaillie. From memory it took him several visits to the Highlands before he was successful in getting a recording of the mating call.
In the early 1970's he became manager of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, when the work of running the theatre became too much for Rowena Cade, the theatres creator, to manage on her own. It was here that I got to know him the most as I visited over a few summers, helping out in the theatre, during my holidays.
His funeral was the most memorable that I have attended. He is buried in the village on the edge of Dartmoor where he lived most of his life. The funeral was on one of those first sunny days of early spring, just when the flowers were starting to bloom. His coffin was decorated with a posy of spring flowers picked from the hedgerows by children from the village school. The church was full with people standing at the back and spilling out into the churchyard of the small village church.
I am glad that I did not discard this bit of film 30 years ago. I also wonder what other images I will find and be able to resurrect.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Night Station
I will be travelling through Stratford International for the foreseeable future and I know I will end up having a few waits for trains. The only camera I am likely to have is my iPhone so I will see what I can produce in the way of images.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Archives
It is now nearly ten years since I stopped shooting film. My archive of digital images has been sorted and is now stored on multiple hard drives in different locations. I described the process Here.
What this has left me with is my archive of film and prints. These are the commissioned images I shot for my business over twenty years, images taken for 'stock library' submission, and personal family shots. In addition I have become by default the family archivist so I have images from both sides of my family and my wife's family going back over 100 years As a very rough estimate I have between 400,000 and 500,000 images. There are B&W negatives, colour negatives and colour transparencies. There are also prints. Lots of the prints are from negatives that I still have, but many are images I made for companies that I worked for in the past, or are part of the family archive and so are unique.
There is also great mix of formats. I mainly shot 35mm, 6x6 cm and 5"x4" but mixed in are panoramic shots, Half plate, 6x4.5, 6x7 and 6x9 on roll film, 10"x8", 110, 126, APS also polaroid images, a roll of cine film and some video.
The storage of all these images has become a major problem, They are stored in folders and many archive boxes, plus I have an edited set of transparencies in suspension files in three filing cabinet drawers.
I have started to edit down what I keep. The easy boxes were the 'overs' from shoots. A set was delivered to the client and in most cases a negative also exists. Two archive boxes were reduced to one 10"x8" paper box everything else was shredded. The next step will be to start on the boxes of personal images and although most are 'seconds' it is still hard to destroy them.
I guess I now know what I am doing this winter.
What this has left me with is my archive of film and prints. These are the commissioned images I shot for my business over twenty years, images taken for 'stock library' submission, and personal family shots. In addition I have become by default the family archivist so I have images from both sides of my family and my wife's family going back over 100 years As a very rough estimate I have between 400,000 and 500,000 images. There are B&W negatives, colour negatives and colour transparencies. There are also prints. Lots of the prints are from negatives that I still have, but many are images I made for companies that I worked for in the past, or are part of the family archive and so are unique.
There is also great mix of formats. I mainly shot 35mm, 6x6 cm and 5"x4" but mixed in are panoramic shots, Half plate, 6x4.5, 6x7 and 6x9 on roll film, 10"x8", 110, 126, APS also polaroid images, a roll of cine film and some video.
The storage of all these images has become a major problem, They are stored in folders and many archive boxes, plus I have an edited set of transparencies in suspension files in three filing cabinet drawers.
I have started to edit down what I keep. The easy boxes were the 'overs' from shoots. A set was delivered to the client and in most cases a negative also exists. Two archive boxes were reduced to one 10"x8" paper box everything else was shredded. The next step will be to start on the boxes of personal images and although most are 'seconds' it is still hard to destroy them.
I guess I now know what I am doing this winter.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sratford International Station
Not had much time or energy to either make images or to post on this blog. After moving jobs its been three weeks of hard work and long hours to deliver the new store.
But now we have got through the opening few days I am finding time and energy to do some photography. Sunday night found me with time while waiting for my train.
All shot on the iPhone as that was all I had.
But now we have got through the opening few days I am finding time and energy to do some photography. Sunday night found me with time while waiting for my train.
All shot on the iPhone as that was all I had.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
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Part of the ongoing editing and sorting of archives is throwing up a few odds and ends that I had forgotten about. This picture was a very u... -
While waiting for the train today I got caught in a torrential downpour, just as the train was coming into the station. As this is the fi...