Alan Blacklock (1946-2010)

Kia ora tatou:

Last Wednesday night my good friend Alan Blacklock passed away, after a long battle with motor neuron disease.

Some of you will know him, and those of you who read the comments on the blog posts will have known him as the OSG. I can now safely reveal that OSG stood for Old Scots Git  (it was his idea!). His curmudgeonly comments were much appreciated.

I first met Alan on the initial Wedderburn Workshop in 2007, and we quickly became mates. OK, we smoked too much and drank too much single malt when we were together, and sometimes the truth seemed to slide conveniently by us, but that is what happens between friends. (more…)

Sony A900, ISO 100, 1/80 @f8, Zeiss ZA 24-70 @ 48mm

Working in a darkroom for 20 years can make you a little sensitive to black and white. I suppose all that time shuffling paper in trays of developer, smelling fixer, and inhaling selenium toner fumes, not to mention hanging out with Richard Poole, can lead to a certain constriction of the vision and a strengthening of the opinion. Or, put another way, to being old school and proud of it.

I don’t do darkroom any more. About seven years ago, after 20 years of sloshing chemistry and living in a dark space, my body finally told me it had had enough. This is not unusual. If you do this long enough, sooner or later your body is going to rebel at being in proximity to all those nasty chemicals. Mine certainly did, and the symptoms were a combination of swollen joints and a decidedly hung-over feeling. So I gave it away. Anyway, whatever darkroom nutters may say, it’s infinitely more civilised to sit there with a glass of wine and press the print key. So be it.

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Updated 18/12/2008

Kia ora tatou:

A number of you may remember a post where I drew attention to the fact that I had been challenged to pick up my film camera again.

The results were exciting and opened me to old/new possibilities in picture-making. I will restate that: it opened me to revisiting old school technologies and incorporating them into a new way of working. Can I try that again: it offered the opportunity to take old-school technologies and use old methodologies to make…O, forget it.

When I walked away from film some 3 years ago, I never thought I would return, and all that knowledge gathered over a 15-year stretch with fil would become redundant. For  some reason, I held on to my EOS 1vHS. Back then I could have got a reasonable amount for the camera. Today a camera (hardly-used) which cost me $4.5k to buy is worth, at best, $300 to trade. All that time it has sat there, forlorn and forgotten, in my gear safe. In the last few weeks, however, it has had more work than my 1DS Mk III.

And I am loving it (are you reading this, Doc? Stop sniggering). (more…)