Entering into the world of hipster photography – first images from the Sprocket Rocket camera

What’s old is new again. Even though I have a pro 5D Canon digital I’ve been nostalgic for film. I’ve experimented with “Holga” 120 and the 35mm “black slim devil” in the past couple of years and decided to try out the “Sprocket rocket”, another “toy” 35mm camera that features the ability to expose the entire area of the film, including the sprocket holes. The Sprocket rocket is being marketed by the “Lomography” company. The camera’s primary characteristics are 1 shutter speed 1/100 sec plus blub, two f stops (16 and 11). Panoramic. Plastic lens (great for crafty lens aberrations!). The film counter is a little white dot that’s hard for old eyes to see. Focusing is done by rotating the front of the lens with a minimal scale (.6m to infinity).

On a sunny 16 day, I went  for an urban hike in an industrial section of Atlanta close to the railroad tracks. I stumbled my way to the King Plow Arts Center, an interesting selection of art studios and businesses. The following pictures are from the art center and close-by locations.

Click on any picture to see in high res/full frame splendor on my zenfolio site.

View from the West Marietta Street Bridge, Atlanta, Georgia

Don’t think, just shoot!  Lomography is both a company and a type of photography. As they say on the logography website, “dedicated to analogue photography”.

Rooftop with Barbed wire, W. Marietta Street Bridge, Atlanta, GA

10 Rules of Lomography

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don’t think (William Firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don’t worry about any rules

King Plow, Atlanta, Georgia

Lomography gets its name from the Leningrad Optical Mechanical Amalgamation (nicknamed LOMO) that has been a manufacturer of cameras, optics, medical equipment, etc. Read more here.

Winged statue outside of King Plow Arts Center

Like the look of lomography but still a slave to digital? Try the free “Lomography effect” photoshop action at the adobe site. Click here.

Winged statue outside of King Plow Arts Center, Atlanta, GA

Double exposure of Radio tower - Atlanta, GA

I like using the “action grip” on light cameras like the sprocket rocket. Makes for a steadier picture and is more natural to hold. I got the grip originally to hold a flash for my twins lens reflex (mamiya c220). Below

The mighty Sprocket rocket with action grip

Now where’s that beret?

Leap day evening well spent in Woodstock – Art car phone pix and naked ladies!

I finally retired my Motorola cellphone camera – click here for my previous “Motofoto” posting. I decided I needed more than 65 awesome KBs of an image. Here are several “leap day edition” photos taken with my new 3 MB (!!)  Samsung phone. In addition to still photos it does a passable job on videos. Definitely not iPhone quality but pretty fair. I’ll probably post some of those if inspired.  I happened to be attending a life drawing session in Woodstock GA and afterwards I couldn’t help but notice the car parked next to mine. Click on any image to view on my zenfolio site – order prints! The perfect gift for your inner hipster.

Art Car, Woodstock, GA

OK – that got my attention so I got busy.

Peace Love Art Car

Art Car - Athletic barbie

Art Car - Girlie Girl Barbie

Art Car - I am an Artist...what's your excuse?

Art Car - Lizard detail

As I mentioned I spent the evening at Kristina Laurendi Havens’ studio at her Figure drawing workshop. Kristina is a terrific figurative artist — check out her blog (click here)! Here are a couple of drawings from the class. Click the drawings to view in high res splendor on my zenfolio site.

Maureen, Leap day drawing #1, 2/29/12 - pencil 14" x 17" bristol

Maureen, Leap day drawing #1, 2/29/12 - pencil 14" x 17" bristol

Old Woodstock – Van Morrison

Fun with Infrared Photography (special thanks to Joe, Tom and Frank)

These are from recently found 35mm infrared color slides that I shot when I first arrived at Emory & Henry College, in Southwest Virginia, in the Spring of 1973. Scanned into Photoshop, I have pumped up the color a bit but it remains reasonably true to the original. There was also some fading from time as well. I was originally put off by the sprocket holes that probably occurred from my lack of loading or unloading skills.  Infrared film must be handled in total darkness when loading or unloading the film! But I now find the sprocket holes charming as I appreciate the sloppy, happy accidents that can happen in film photography. The film was Kodak Infrared color with an E-6 process. Kodak discontinued the film in 2007. I’ve heard that color infrared is still available from a small German manufacturer in 120 format. These images were shot with either a Canon 35mm FTB or TLB. Filters? Beats me!

Click on any photo to view it on my zenfolio site in full-screen, high-res splendor

Joe in the Graveyard 1

I’m not sure what Joe was doing here (sampling pine needles…mmm!) but we were great pals and he was always a willing photo subject. More shots of Joe to be found on my zenfolio site in the “rogue’s gallery”. Click any photo to get to the site and navigate to the gallery of rogues.

Joe in the Graveyard 2

Campus Swan

Love the color of the Swan’s beak…non photoshopped!

Chippie the wonderdog

Our official dorm dog. When his owner Steve graduated, Chippie wore a little cap and walked with Steve to pick up his diploma and got the largest applause of all graduates.

Hippies on the roof

Claytor Greybeal and myself on the roof of McKenney House dorm playing to the birds. Clay is playing my Gibson ES-175 that I still play. Photo by Joe perhaps?

John Thompson in a pensive mood

Primarily blue from window light.

My brother, Thomas Cox, also a photographer, actually knows what he is doing with digital black and white photography. He uses a Digital IR Sigma SD14 w/IR filter. Click on the image to see a slideshow of his B/W digital infrared photography (also located at zenfolio, link to his site also located in my blogroll).

Boston North End Graveyard by Thomas Cox

I think my original interest in Infrared color came from it’s use in various album art at the time. The cover of Zappa’s Hot Rats is my all-time favorite infrared shot.

Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats 1969

Photo by Ed Caraeff, who has taken many classic photos of rock and roll greats. Album design by Cal Schenkel. I found some info online with recollections by Cal Schenkel who said the woman in the picture was Christine Frka, a member of the GTOs (Girls together outrageously, occasionally, etc) produced by FZ. Christine also babysat for the Zappas. Cal states that she died of an overdose sometime in the 70′s. The setting for the picture was a lilypond in a burnt out Beverly Hills mansion.

 

Here’s another great example of infrared photography in the Rock world…

Are you Experienced Cover photo by Karl Ferris

According to Wikipedia, Karl was the man in demand for British Rock “psychedelic” photography. He also did cover photos for Donovan, Cream and others. In the mid-60′s Infrared was then only used for specialized aerial photography. Kodak wanted to broaden its market and noticed Karl’s work and had him use infrared film and were so pleased with the results that they gave him a one man show at their London gallery.

Other resources

Film/supplies : Freestyle photographic. Mailorder greats. Good selection of films (including infrared B/W), chemistry, tech notes, Holgas, inspiration and more.

Unintentional Double Exposures

Remember film cameras? I do. This is what happens when film cameras misbehave, film sprockets get lazy or the photographer forgets to wind the advance! But sometimes the camera justs “knows” better and introduces a bit of spontaneity into a photo.

Click on the images to view in my zenfolio site where you can purchase or view the image full frame.

Buzzard tree and DC Building: I found a creepy old tree close to colonial “Evan’s Farm” restaurant in McLean, Virginia where dozens of buzzards were hanging out — they heard the food was THAT good! At about the same time there was an anti-KKK rally in DC. I think the buildings are from that event.  This is what happens when you don’t rewind the film completely into the film cassette after shooting.

Buzzard tree and DC Building 11/1982

The next two images are from a roll of 120 TMAX I shot on my last trip to Paris in 1997. I don’t know what my major malfunction was, perhaps due to changing lenses on my Mamiya C220.  I particularly like this first one that married two images; one of the beer glass in a bistro outside of the Pompidou Centre and the other from inside the Picasso museum. I couldn’t have done it better if I planned it that way.

Picasso museum and Wine glass at an outside bistro - Paris, 6/97

Priest parade and Notre Dame - Paris - 6/97

The next one comes from a portion of a 35mm b/w negative of friends Richard Gans (seated), Marty Harvey (pants in upper left corner) and myself (hands).

RM Gans, Marty Harvey (MLH3) and me 7/81

And here’s an interesting one I recently unearthed from a stack of unfiled negs. Good pal and ever-willing model Joe Lawson from college days at Emory and Henry. This is when my old Yashica 635 twin lens was in its death throes.

Joe Lawson gets a Pepsi - Emory, VA 1974

Closing notes

I’ve been threatening to do some film photography and “intentional” doubles might be a fun project. I’ll post if I do.

I’m doing a bit of spring cleaning on my zenfolio site. Click on one of the images above to get there — and leave a comment or two should  you be inspired to do so.

Happy (late) Birthday to Chuck Berry

Happy late birthday to Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry (born October 18, 1926).

Chuck Berry Fixes a Hot Dog, San Diego 1970

This is a photo I took when I was 16 or so at the San Diego Civic Center’s Rock n Roll revival show circa 1970. Chuck Berry played with the Coasters, Bill Haley and the Comets and Bo Diddley who I would later meet at the Atlanta airport — more friendly than Chuck!
Anyway, I took a break from the show and saw Chuck Berry fixing a hot dog. Frickin’ Chuck Berry! So I asked him if I could take his picture and he grunted something possibly profane and I took his picture. One shot. With my old Yashica twin lens 645.

Tales of the Floating World – Kibyôshi

Kibyôshi - two books side by side - Attributed to Utagawa Kunisada (1786 - 1865).

This posting is a bit of a departure from the “photoblog” theme, but being the old ex-Art major that I am I’ll probably venture into non-photographic excursions from time to time.

Hokusai, The Great Wave

My sister in law has a good eye for art and a weakness for eBay. Fortunately for me! She shared some (ok a lot…thanks Melissa!) recently and a couple of antique Japanese comic books were included. These were printed by woodblock around 1850 in the genre called Ukiyo-e. The fellow she bought it from claims these to be by the artist Kunisada (who was generally irritated by my question when I contacted him — how dare I doubt him!). In my not-so-extensive Google research I found that Kunisada was a younger contemporary of Hokusai (1760-1849), the artist of the most famous Japanese woodblock print with the awesome as well as gnarly wave framing Mount Fujiama. In his time Kunisada was more popular than Hokusai.

Click here for Volume 1 (issuu - view)

Click here for Volume 2 (issuu - view)

I wanted to scan the documents to further study the fragile booklets. I found a great way to show the documents, using a service at issuu.com, that takes PDFs (and a couple of other formats too) and converts them to a very slick online document that simulates the page turning of an actual document. This functionality can be integrated into wordpress.org blogs, but alas, not the free wordpress.com blog such as this one. Regardless — click on the links to the side to check out. Once you click on the link you should also be able to fullscreen the view. It’s pretty intuitive. Let me know if you have any trouble viewing.

When I first saw these books I thought, “oh, early manga”, but most sources I found said otherwise.

Here are a couple of modern video takes on Ukiyo-e (the floating world), the tradition that these books come from. The first (sublime) a very well done montage of Ukiyo-e images, the second (ridiculous) of a pachinko game with Ukiyo-e imagery. Cheesy but fun!

Sublime

Ridiculous

References and more information

The Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III)

A History of Manga – by Matt Thorn

A History of Manga – Wikipedia style

issuu.com – A great free way to post and view documents.

Charm, Beauty and Creativity

Prooving once again that good things come in three are some different versions of the 3 graces. Based on the same version by Antonio Canova. All of these images are available in high-res splendor at http://vancecox.zenfolio.com/

This first image is one I took in Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. The original of this print had an interesting creation.  First I used a 35mm Canon F1 (F1s Rule!) and took a slide. Probably Ektachrome of some sort.

3 Graces - Maymont Park, Richmond, VA

Then I placed the slide in an Enlarger (remember those?) and created a paper negative on b/w paper, probably Ektalure — my all time favorite paper for the rich tonalities…but I digress! Then I made a contact print of that paper b/w print negative, again on Ektalure.  Super rich tonalities! Very dark and moody. In other words, just right. I’ve tried to approximate that effect using Photoshop and I think it’s quite good. Now, far be it from me to be simple with my approach to Photoshop, so this picture involved, scanning the original slide, color correcting so it looked pretty authentic. Then using a black and white filter and then tweeking so the sky was strong but not too much so.  A couple of other actions, then going “quadtone” with a warm touch.

3 Graces - Maymont Park, Richmond, VA

For the version above, I used an old — even by mid 80′s standards —  Speed Graphics 4 x 5 camera.  I really didn’t use the camera too much because it was plainly too much damn work.  But the greyscale tonalities are incredible, so here’s an example, again my favorite 3 models at the time, the 3 graces in nearby Maymont Park in Richmond.

Halfway around the globe (ok, maybe a third) I found the Chicks de Trois yet again in Stuttgard, Germany while stopping off on my way to Athens for some secret squirrel meetings that amounted to a really great excuse to visit to the Black Forest and nothing more.  Best waste of tax payer $$$ ever! I took these in an Art museum that I think has moved to another building.

3 Graces - Stuttgard, Germany

Here’s a shot of the girls from another standpoint in the courtyard of the museum. Looks like mom is keeping a watchful eye on them.

3 Graces (in background) - Stuttgard, Germany

Here’s the wikipedia short description of the 3 graces… “Charites, known in Greek mythology as The Three Graces, goddesses of such things as charm, beauty, and creativity. In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae. They are a huge theme in art and it was fun to see all the different versions online.

Resources

Original version in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg

The 3 graces, all sex and disco’ed up in an ad for jewelry.

3 Graces – Kate Ship, Music – Kumo: experimental film with some fun images. I like the busy beat!

Portrait of Joel Peter-Witkin

For a far-out version of the 3 graces by the photography world’s original outlaw badboy google “The three graces” and “Joel-Peter Witkin”. You might have to turn off those family friendly league of decency image filters. At least it looks like he’s using live models this time! For those of you familiar with Joel-Peter Witkin, he needs no introduction but for those who are not you should be forewarned — you are entering nightmare land. In a previous time he would have been burned at the stake or at least locked up. But there is great beauty in his images as well, that is, if you can distance yourself from the disturbing aspects of his work. A fiendishly clever aesthetic! Not for the squeamish!

Portrait of Aldous Huxley

Lastly,  Aldous Huxley had a short story by the name “Two or Three Graces”.