COBBLER'S PAGE

By Brian Asquith (Librarian)

Winter draws to a close (we hope) and the daffodils begin to flower: this is the time we think about warm, sunny days to come, and to plan our Summer Holidays. If you are anything like me photography takes place in the darkroom in the winter and the camera is relegated to the Studio night at the Camera Club. I cannot raise the same enthusiasm to dash around in the cold as I once did, trying to capture the essence of winter in a snow picture. So, more and more, my pictures are taken on holidays. Having just spent three weeks in India I thought a lot on why I, or we, take pictures at all. I know it is a fascinating hobby having been involved in it for fifty years. Over that time I have accumulated hundreds of mounted exhibition prints which fill a number of cupboards in our large house, as well as thousands of slides which are only occasionally looked at. What drives me to take three cameras, assorted lenses and filters, and stacks of film everytime we go on holiday? Thereby adding even more material to the bursting storage space and making the finding of a particular slide a days job since none of it is catalogued.

Needless to say our fifth journey to India saw us laden with the usual array of photographic gear and films and with the firm resolve to take mainly colour negatives, the odd colour slide (ten Konica films just in case), and two black and white 120`s. It was a struggle to find anything for the black and white but with the colours in India so vibrant we used all the slide film easily and returned with 10 x36 mostly useable pictures but what use will they be? Well we do have an AV Club and a Camera Club to support so some are taken with material for sequences in mind; entries for exhibition/competition at Club level, as well as the postal folios we enter. Some pictures will remind us of our holiday in years to come, if we take the trouble to dig them out - put the projector up, etc, and if we can remember where they were taken. The task of sorting and cataloguing, though half attempted, is getting beyond coping with as new material joins the pile. So, why keep adding to it? I suppose it is a kind of addiction. An ego trip, a compulsion to produce the perfect picture, a way to express ourselves. In most places you can buy excellent postcards or sets of slides of the scene or interior you are struggling to capture in the adverse conditions which always seem to prevail when you are there jostling with the crowds to take your picture of the Taj Mahal, the canal scene in Venice, or Ashness Bridge (you must have heard of Ashness Bridge), nearly knocking over the lady with the camcorder, or heaven forbid, being part of their camcording. Why do we do it?

We asked ourselves this question when, for what must have been the twentieth time we were asked to pose with yet another group of Indian men to have a picture taken. Why do they want to be photographed with two elderly white people they met only a moment ago and will never meet again? We were accustomed in our previous visits to be asked to take pictures of groups or individuals on a holiday outing and then given an address to send copies to on our return. But how, with more cameras being carried around, it is us in the middle of the group. We have visions of our faces on view all over India just as we view some of them in our AV sequences or club competitions. At least at all times we were asked. 9.

I have been in places where photography was banned and been embarrassed when a small group were asked not to photograph a village which was overlooked by the fort we were being shown around. The houses had courtyards which could only be seen into from the fort - a private place where people expected their privacy to be respected and not to be spied on, literally, when their request was ignored. I suppose this is all small stuff when compared to the tabloid press invasion of privacy. With long lenses it is so easy. All this gets me no nearer to the reason I take pictures on holiday other than that I enjoy the taking.

Of course there is more to photography than holiday pictures. The latest "Darkroom User" magazine Spring `95 (available from CRC Library) contains some good articles both technical and general. There is one on the new Multigrade paper, another on the use of Pyro developing agent, and a splendid letter on the CRC Club by Peter Guy. I like his quote ` like witches huddled round a cauldron with hubble bubble etc!.

Speaking for myself, I often feel like a witch when mixing brews in the darkroom.

On my return from India I mixed the Club formula, processed a short length as a test and got a slight pink in the highlights. I looked at the pH, too low in the colour developer, adjusted it. Second test very faint image hardly any colour. Disaster. With such results I would suspect the first developer overdeveloping but gave it up; lack of time and films too valuable, i`m not likely to get to India again. It takes ones confidence away when you cannot pinpoint the error. So for the time being, until time permits, they go to Peak Processing.

Incidentally, the colours and density of the blacks on the Konica are excellent - comparable with Kodachrome 200 exposed at the same time.

I N F R A - R E D F I L M

A friend could not understand why on exposing HP5+ (black and white film) through a deep red filter he did not get results comparable to infra-red film. Indeed he did not get an image at all despite the automatic exposure. He concluded that the film was not sensitive to red light. I suggested her was totally wrong to,

(a) expect results to be the same as infra-red because the film would not react to other light in proportion even even when coming through the red filter as the emulsion was made to do so. Whereas infra-red is made only to be sensitive to the red end of the spectrum ie infra-red;

(b) If he doubted the ability of the film to register red he would soon find out if he exposed a length to a red safe light as used in a darkroom. What would you have said?