Go there

Yes, yes, another arrow. December 2009 at Bahnhof Altona. From the, cough, single roll of film I shot with the XA so far.

Direction

Taken in Hamburg last year. I seem to like arrows.

Mailbox

Long time, no color... Well, here's one again, taken in Genoa in 2009. This is a picture that I sometimes like while at other times I think it is boring. Today, I obviously like it.

Another arrow, another parking garage

Picking up the arrow in parking garage motif, here's one from December 23 (my birthday), 2009 - taken at the Bahnhof Altona. The photo was cropped a bit.

The M4-P with the 35mm Summicron, Tri-X in Diafine.

Somewhere in Berlin

The first photo in this blog that I worked on with more sophisticated means than dust removal and the tone curve controls in Lightroom. I obviously shot directly into the sun, and although the Neopan 400 (souped in Rodinal) I used was able to capture a lot of the dynamic range of the original scene, I had a hard time regenerating the mood that I "saw" when I took the picture. I eventually masked individual parts of the image and applied separate curves to them. Probably not a big deal for someone who works with the likes of Photoshop every day, but for me it was new and kind of a paradigm shift.

This discussion of tones might also be a good chance to finally mention Paulo Nozolino. I dropped the names of quite a few photographers so far, but neglected to name the one that - together with Klavdij Sluban - had the most impact on me lately. His book Far Cry is one of the finest I've ever seen, and almost every photo I know from him touched me deeply. A lot of what fascinates me about his pictures is in their tones. They are very dark, but at the same time they somehow glow. Hard to explain, you have to see it yourself - preferably in high-quality reproductions like those done by Steidl.

Number 200, by the way.

Blurred Vespa

When I came back from Rome in November 1997, this was the first frame of all the Tri-X rolls I had filled with the Leica that I printed. I still like it. It somehow hits the right note with me, maybe because it captures how I perceived the Vespa-dominated traffic.

The familiar arrow

Due to my work, I've been in Cambridge, MA a lot in the last years. In January 2009, during what was probably my tenth stay there, I stood outside on a snowy and cold day to smoke a cigarette and suddenly decided to take this photo of a parking garage I had seen thousands of times already. I was pleasantly surprised when I eventually saw the developed picture with its nice tones and the arrow contrasting with the curved line of the lane.

I already had the M8.2 at that time but only had my M4-P with me. Film was Ilford XP2 which I had used for the first time in fifteen years.