Photography – Page 43 – a sibilant intake of breath

Oxford from above

As a recent comment proves, there is at least one thing Microsoft does better than Google: display aerial views of Oxford.

Compare Google Maps, centred on Wadham College, with the Windows Live equivalent: enormously superior.

Here, you can see:

The Department of Politics and International Relations
2 Church Walk, my present abode
Christ Church, main quad
Radcliffe Square

Those pointed out, I should return to the overly loud MCR freshers party, and stop worrying about my ongoing student loan appeal dialogue. People should feel encouraged to list more nice Oxford locations in the comments (with links to Live Local photos).

Clever way to protect cameras on planes

Blatantly stolen from Bruce Schneier’s blog (he stole it from Matt Brandon’s blog), this idea seems really clever. If you are travelling in the States with expensive camera gear, put a starter pistol in the locked box in which the camera equipment is to be transported, then register it as a weapon.

The airline safety people will then treat the luggage as though it contains a dangerous weapon, and you can be more certain they will not lose or blatantly mistreat it. A very neat way to make security procedures work for you. Of course, you can be quite sure they will x-ray it, so this doesn’t help with the problem of transporting film on ever-more-jittery airlines.

HD disparu

There is a short story by Orson Scott Card about a beleaguered group of photographers sinking into depression as film becomes completely unavailable in a digital age. While that is a distant prospect, if it is ever to come about, I am nonetheless feeling some sympathy towards those hapless fellows. It seems that Kodak has decided to discontinue my favourite colour film: their High Definition series, formerly called Royal Gold. Impossible to find in England or Ireland, it is now no longer stocked by any of the Vancouver photography stores that I have dropped into to talk shop with the employees.

After a period of time, a film becomes very familiar to you – even friendly. You know what conditions are likely to make the sky blow out; you know when a portrait really needs a bit warmer light; you know how complex patterns will be rendered on the film grain. While I certainly cannot claim to have mastery of any film, HD100 and HD400 were certainly the colour emulsions I understood best. All my colour photos from the trip to Europe with Meghan Mathieson and company were shot on it; likewise, all my colour shots from the Arizona Road Trip, Prague, Malta, and many other places.

The High Definition films were versatile, reliable, and attractive. Their passing will be lamented by me, among many others.

The photographic future

I had an odd philosophical post written, but it was far better to blast it to some obscure part of the RAM of this computer, to be utterly erased when I next reboot it, than to put it online somewhere. Instead, I should write about photography.

On the basis of some books I have read, it seems reasonable to conclude that photography did not emerge too long before the start of the 20th century. To begin with, it was an awkward, delicate sort of thing to do. You needed lots of black velvet cloth, heavy glass plates, finicky chemicals, and expertise. Over the next seventy or eighty years, photography went from something that a British Lord might do as a hobby to something that people all over the world did all the time. Where once the coronation of a Queen might be worth photographing, suddenly the first steps of every child were, if someone had a camera handy. I personally salute Alfred Stieglitz as perhaps the most important single person in the establishment of photography as an art form. Of course, if he hadn’t done so, it would have been someone else. I suspect they would not have done so as elegantly. At least a few of my photos are direct ripoffs of Stieglitz.

With the advent of digital sensors and – perhaps more importantly – the internet, further democratization has taken place. When the cost of photography is reduced to the bother involved in pushing a button or two, transferring a file to a computer, and then moving the same onto someone else’s website there is really very little reason not to do a great deal of it. Very soon, the biggest associated cost becomes time.

I hope I get a digital camera, eventually, which is comparable to my best film camera in terms of versatility, ease of use, and quality of output.

Even in the age of the CCD, there’s a tender place in my heart for film

From a nice hostel in Galway, let me write for a moment about film before I head off to find some dinner. People in Canadian cities that include a Lens & Shutter location (just Vancouver and Victoria, I think) should feel rather lucky, as they stock my two favourite films at excellent prices. While Kodak High Definition 400 is simply unavailable in the British Isles, their black and white T-Max 100 and 400 films are only available here for about ten Euros a roll, plus the unusually high cost of processing an ‘unusual’ emulsion.

If you’ve never given much thought to the kind of film you use or where you get it processed, you might find it worthwhile to spend less than $10 on a roll of one of the films mentioned above. For that price, at Lens & Shutter, you also get processing and either a CD of scanned images or a set of 4×6″ prints. All my photos from Europe in 2004 were shot on one or the other kind of film, and I am clearly fond enough of them that I have been hunting for somewhere that stocks them since I arrived here. I had my mother bring a batch of each for the Malta trip (though many of those photos were taken on my point and shoot digital camera).

Perhaps next year I should join some kind of photo club in Oxford and start doing my own developing and printing. The danger, of course, is darkroom hypnosis; once, when I was in tenth grade, I found myself leaving the Handsworth darkroom after 2:00am, not realizing at all how much time had passed since I wandered in after a quick dinner of Coke and Gobstoppers.

I suspect I will do better than that in Galway tonight.

Manuscripts, horses, and Evensong

Another great day has passed, in and around Dublin. After Brunch at Gruel (see the earlier entry where I describe it), I went to Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library. You rarely see such an excellent free museum: packed with venerable and beautiful manuscripts, and boasting an attractive roof garden. It provided welcome solace from the driving rain.

The weather was so bad when I finally left that I decided to scrap my plan to go to Howth. Instead, I went into the nearby Christ Church Cathedral for an Evensong ceremony. This, I will admit, was quite uncharacteristic of me. Aside from one wedding and one first communion, this was the only time I ever attended a church during a religious function. Even though the hymns were entirely unfamiliar to me, it was a worthwhile and rather beautiful experience. Knowing how Claire is now part of an Oxford choir, I thought of her during much of it. Despite the size of the cathedral, the number of people in attendance was less than the number of people in the choir. Perhaps that related to how most of the church was closed for a television taping.

As I left the Cathedral, there were rays of sunshine hitting Dublin pavements. Despite it being after 6:00, I decided to take the half-hour train to Howth. It would prove a very wise move. The ride itself, in the evening light, offered an attractive transition from urban centre to countryside. Once I arrived, I walked a photogenic arc out one of the stone and concrete arms enclosing the harbour, pausing beside a small lighthouse to watch the birds floating like kites as they pushed against the incoming wind.

The hills overlooking the town seemed a good place to visit, to I took to trekking up road by road as far as I could make it. A man who I asked for directions when I reached the top of one such proved much more helpful than could possibly have been expected. Named Jim Kilroy, he is a retired architect, and he owns some of the land in the area I was exploring. He told me a bit about the history of the place, showed me his three beautiful horses, and directed me to a cliffside trail that follows the circumference of Howth (which is a kind of bulb-shaped peninsula). Further evidence of how open and friendly the people of Ireland are.

By the time I reached the much larger lighthouse a few kilometres around winding cliffs, it had become full dark. Another stranger who I asked for directions proved exceptionally helpful. She said that she was heading in the direction of the train station that was eluding me and offered me a lift. I am glad I accepted, because it was a much longer and more complex journey than my crude understanding of the layout of the place suggested. She is a veterinarian, specializing in horses, and apparently knows Mr. Kilroy. I expect that’s normal, in such a small community.

Now back in Dublin, I am to meet Mark Cummins from the Walking Club at some later point. I should be mindful, of course, of the early morning bus ride tomorrow and the low probability of a good night’s sleep tonight. That said, three hours on the bus will offer a bit of time for recovery.

I think I can say with confidence that Ireland is the friendliest place I have ever been. While it isn’t fair to compare with places where I don’t speak the language, the sheer number of strangers who have engaged with me and treated me with kindness here is staggering. Nowhere in North American or English-speaking Europe has been comparable. I even got into a conversation with a young woman from Dublin who happened to sit beside me on the train back from Howth. This is a country that I need to visit again and, next time I meet an Irish person somewhere else in the world, I will do my best to help them however I can.

Sasha and I, photo of the day

In this photo from 2001, my brother Sasha has been correctly labeled: “Property of Alison.” While some might be despondent after being thus assigned to the possession of another human being, he actually seems rather pleased.

Scotland Velvia photos

I got the Velvia that I shot in Scotland back today. Velvia is a kind of slide film much praised by photographers for its ability to reproduce colour vividly. Above all, the shots I got back demonstrate how challenging it can be to use film with such a narrow exposure lattitude effectively. Even photos with overcast skies tend to include broad sheets of pure white pixels – though that seems to be much worse on the scans I had done than on the slides themselves. Also, the textures of rock and grass look like screen rips from the original Doom: even when the files are viewed at the original scan resolution. I suspect that something went wrong in the scanning process. If someone (Tristan?) cares to confirm my diagnosis, I will happily send a 30MB archive of all the original files.

The three photos that it seemed worthwhile to put on Photo.net are here, here, and here. Despite the lacklustre results, I remain thankful to Tristan for sending me the film in the first instance.

Does anybody know of somewhere in Oxford where I could gain access to a slide projector? Looking at the slides on top of a piece of white paper up against the MCR window is clearly not ideal and, as I said before, it looks as though the slides themselves came out rather better than the scans.
Due to a mistake on my part, the first roll of Velvia I shot was a comprehensive failure. That was a particular shame, since they were taken of some of the most photogenic things I know: the campus of UBC and Meghan Mathieson. For a better photo of each, see this and this.
People considering using DLab7.com for photo processing might appreciate knowing that their ‘8MB’ scans are actually only 700k or so. The jpg files are 2072×1390. Though the files are of comparable size and resolution to those produced by my A510, they are dramatically less sharp.

Scotland 2006 photos: third batch

Taken over the course of all three days of hiking, these photos show a few more aspects of Scotland.

Weather in Scotland changes rapidly and dramatically, especially at altitude. I was literally holding on to my hat on a lot of these peaks and ridgelines.

There was a wedding happening in this castle which several members of the group were able to briefly crash before being escorted out by men in kilts.

You get a better sense of the scales involve when there are people in the photos.

Brief periods of proper blue sky were much appreciated. Along this ridge, I shot a good portion of my roll of Velvia.

Not a Monroe, this was the last peak we climbed before going home. By this point, my legs were so sore they became difficult to move if I stopped for more than five seconds.

Scotland 2006 photos: second batch

All taken during our first big hike on Friday, this series of photos shows a bit of the majesty of the Scottish highlands.

There is really no mistaking the glacial origins of these mountains, though the erosion patterns of the rocks look quite unusual to someone used to mountains in British Columbia.

These are three of the five peaks we climbed on Friday, including at least one of the three Munros.

While requiring less exertion, descents were often rather more daunting than ascents.

Continuity of hats is an important element of hiking trips.

From left to right: Milan, Mark, Helen, Kathleen, Dengli, Chris, and Bruno. Photo taken by Andrew or Roman.

With tutorials tomorrow, I need to get some sleep. More photos and descriptions of the trip should come online tomorrow.