Saturday 29 January 2011
Thursday 27 January 2011
Monday 24 January 2011
marylebone high street, 1964
Sunday 23 January 2011
Saturday 22 January 2011
taking photographs
I’m beginning to feel I must have been interested in photography in my most recent previous life. I remember when I was going to be awarded a prize in my Elementary School I asked for a camera. They gave me a Kodak Hawkeye 620 Major – and exhibited some of my holiday snapshots at the beginning of the following term.
I’ve just gone on from there. That Hawkeye served me very well through my secondary school days – and the Art Master in Caerphilly set us up with a darkroom under the stage in the hall. I made my first enlargement there. (Reversed the image through not knowing any better.)
Back in London, a regular visitor worked for Kodak. He was a Contax man. How I admired that splendid machine. I couldn’t afford one for myself. The nearest I could get to it was a 35mm Paxette from a secondhand shop. But the bug was there. I soon set up my own darkroom in the basement and watched the enlargements ‘coming up’ in the solutions under the safe light.
A colleague steered me toward a Rolleiflex. That did wonders for me. And then came the day when I was able to trade in my trusty Paxette for a very much pre-used Leica. The ‘C’ model. Yes, you guessed it. The next thing was buying additional lenses. A 128 tele which needed an additional viewfinder. A 35mm I bought from a Jewish shop in New York on Good Friday 1965.
And so it went on. A decent job meant I could afford better equipment. I succumbed to the Leica M1, though I didn’t like it all that much. Then came the first Leica SLR and that really did measure up to all I could desire. Until, of course, that beautiful SL2 came out. I still think of it as probably the best camera Leitz ever made. The agency in Sydney sold me a demonstration model and that served me on many a long trip for many a distant year.
When the R8 came out I persuaded myself it was something I must have. Prices were very good at the time. But I never made all that much of it. It was far too heavy for the quick and instant response of the kind of photography I did. On a rock steady stand it was fine. Buildings don’t move. People do. I still have the R8 – and an RE – and half-a dozen lenses to go with them. But most of my wants are fully satisfied with a little Lumix digital. It’s not much bigger than a box of Swan Vesta and when I’m back home it’s only a matter of minutes before I can see the results big time on the screen.
Someone asked me once why I took photographs. I told him they were the substance of a visual diary. Now I think it’s rather more than that. Most of all it’s the sheer joy of actually taking the photos.
And I do my best to keep them safe. I’ve spent most of today transforming black and white negatives into digital images stored on the hard disk. Images I’ve not seen as positives before. They remind me of people and places from the early 60s when I was doing quite nicely thank you as a freelance professional musician in London.
francis cameron, oxford, 22 january 2011
Frank Wright conducts
Frank Wright conducting the Boys Brigade Band at the Royal Albert Hall, November 1962
Friday 21 January 2011
crossing the line 1968
Not a very well exposed photograph but enough here to bring back memories of crossing the line on the iberia.
