As mentioned in my first post on film photography a couple of weeks back, I am, for sure, an absolute beginner when it comes to the craft. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that the two recent rolls of film I dropped into the great folks at Conns Cameras were my fourth and fifth rolls of film respectively to have been developed. Ever. That’s where I’m at folks, yes. Rolls four and five. I’m as green as a green bean.
For this post I’m going to show you some of the shots from roll four, which was a standard Fuji Film Colour 200. Now, I’m not one for posting inspiring quotes, but the other week I came across a Faulkner one (or at least one attributed to him) on writing, which I’ve come to apply to taking shots on my Pentax K1000:
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
Like I wrote in my recent post on writers struggling to finish a first draft, you should simply get it down. Who knows what will happen from there…
Paraphrasing a portrait
That approach can be applied to film photography. It’s what I was reminding myself of when I got out most recently to take a few shots around Dublin. Some fine and much-cooler-than-me folks allowed me to snap them too. One of them was Lefah, who makes and sells handmade bogolan mudcloth from Mali from his spot in George’s Street Arcade. Another was Shane (snap), who has become one of Ireland’s most omnipresent and respected visual artists, with his work now part of the permanent collections at both The National Gallery and Áras an Uachtaráin.
Getting back to that Faulkner quote: Sure, you may not be able to “rewrite” the film photograph like you can a paragraph in a Word doc; it’s not that easy, and it’s certainly far more expensive (unless you wanna play around with your digitized film shots). Yes, film photography is indeed pricey. Which is why I really should pick up a cheap digital camera to practice on. Working on that. Anyway, like Faulkner opined, you should get it down (take photographs), take chances (experiment with the camera). Of course, I don’t say this with any degree of authority or confidence in my abilities: I’m still an absolute novice; figuring out the craft, how to best utilise light, position my subjects, etc.. Like the person learning how to play the guitar, I still don’t fully know my way around the instrument, understand my way along the fretboard, how to tune it down one half or whole step. But I’m hoping that will all come to me as I go, and as I read more about the craft. It’s just that going out and shooting feels right. Getting it down feels good, even if the results aren’t always amazing.
Another aspect of what I’m enjoying about rambling and taking photographs is going to sound like a bit of a cliché… The social aspect of it. Meeting Lefah and chatting about his own craft and his store (as well as the cool music recommendations he gave me) elevates the action of doing photography to a much more communal affair. For someone who is used to sitting alone in a room for literally thousands of hours for their craft (novels, short stories, screenplays), this is very much a welcome, more conversational change (at least with photography I’m conversing with real people, not my fictive creations).
Someone else who was kind enough to let me point my camera at them was Darran, aka Dr. Dublin; another multitalented artist whose work can be found around the city (and the world), and whose art and furniture shop Treasure Traders (formerly Decor) can be found on Wexford Street. In fact, one of Darran’s paintings from his series The Psychology of Colour was the first piece of original art Maria and I bought for our new home.
Looking at Shane’s and Darran’s shots specifically, I do know that — were they paragraphs in a doc — I’d be hitting “backspace” and rewriting them. The framing isn’t right; the space above them too great (at least it seems that way to me). But they are their own little creations; brought to life by the chemical reaction of particles of light hitting the film when a shot was taken; that’s what’s so appealing to me about film photography -vs- digital; these aren’t just pieces of digital data. They’re physical, tangible things.
Unfortunately, the names of the two ladies above has been buried in my mind; names I’m hoping will be unearthed with time. I was walking back from town — had just taken Darran’s photo actually — and I asked the lady on the left selling flowers if I could take a photo of her. “Of course!” she said, and she beckoned her friend to be a part of it. Hence the name of the shot. They both possessed a genuine warmth, which I hope comes across in the shot itself.
Scenes from a singing city
Sometimes the art of photography is a furtive, stealthy, even invasive one. I personally find Bruce Gilden’s work to be amazing, but his method of shooting people without their permission — literally pushing the camera in the unsuspecting subject’s face — isn’t without its critics. I did, however, go ahead and take some snaps around Dublin without seeking permission. It’s a fine line (including a legal one – eek) but I think that if photographers can’t capture their city and its denizens organically without legal ramifications, it’s a sad day for the arts. For my shot below “Under Construction”, I knew exactly what I wanted to capture…
When I saw the construction worker enjoying a ciggie on his break, he seemed lost in thought, and the board against which he leaned was so busy that it almost represented the messiness of our minds; those conflicting thoughts always vying for our attention.
Take a look again: The posters, the art, the patterns, the ‘Zs’, the graffiti, the swirling, fuzzy white ball just below his elbow, “ACCIDENTS, DEFECTS, SNAGS!“… I thought of this colourful and complicated background as the worker’s own thought bubble — his thoughts being “under construction” until he arrived at a satisfactory conclusion; until the building his mind was assembling was finished. Perhaps that building in his mind was a date at a restaurant later that evening, or a trip to the cinema, or maybe even the job that he was returning to once he’d finished his cigarette, like he’d finished the coffee in his visible hand. Is all of that a bit of a stretch? Probably. Does it comes across in the shot? You tell me. Regardless, I do like it; the image is about more than the subject himself.
Another thing about organic (i.e. “permissionless”) street photography is the expressions you capture. While it’s not the most well-composed shot, there’s so much going on in the image above which I named “Taking a chance on a glance”. Just look at those expressions; the raised eyebrow of the balding man, his sideways glace; behind him the man leaning forward, elbows rested on the rail, engaged in what seems to be a discussion we’d all enjoy. But the majority of the faces seem somewhat skeptical, inquisitive, perhaps untrusting. I think the guy on the left with the smoke between his fingers is certainly suspicious of the man holding the camera, at least.
I owe the title of the shot above to my writer/filmmaker chum, Numa. After I had sent him the photo, he replied tersely: Always one. Always Jesus. I laughed, but there’s certainly truth in the observation, and there’s most definitely a deeper truth beyond the observation as well. I also love that the girl closest to us is looking directly into the lens, almost mischievously. Since there’s a religious element to this one, when I look at the shot and I see the people either side of the man holding the sign — movement all around him — I can’t help but think of the Red Sea parting, of Moses standing there with the flowing water either side of him, the Staff of God in his raised hand. Always one…
So there are a few snaps from the recent colour roll of film; roll number four, to be precise. Number five is a black and white one, and I’ll post a few of those snaps in the next installment of The Pentax Files.
Before we wrap up… For those of you reading on the actual blog in your browser, who can see the feature image: I’ve no idea who the cool guys being photographed next to the Phil Lynnot statue are; I’m certain they’re in a band who were playing the city that night, or maybe the night before. Maybe they were supporting Pearl Jam or Rammstein who were playing the same weekend (which is the one just gone). Anyway, they looked like rock stars, so I just had to get a shot of them, even if I felt I needed to be a little covert about it.
P.S. Like the first installment of The Pentax Files, I borrowed a song title for the name of this post. Can you name the artist without help from your preferred search engine?
S.J. COULES 