The first is the one that received the most likes on Flickr, the result of a walk through the woods while on holiday on the Isle of Wight (Just for the record, there are still golden leaves on some trees here, and it is December!

The picture is entitled “Blocked“, taken with my X-pan 2 camera using Silbersalz film, which is a film used for movie making. And here it is:

Of my film photographs, my personal favourite is quite different; it is a double exposure showing the inside of one building (The Church of Ireland Cathedral in Waterford) and the exterior of the adjacent building (The Medieval Museum). It is on Kodak Ektar 100 film captured as a double exposure using a Hasselblad Flexbody camera (a sort of architectural camera).

Of course, I am not a total Luddite; I use a digital camera too! Funnily enough, they are taken at the two extremes of the day and of the year. One, a photo of the moon was taken just before sunrise using a Fuji X Pro 3 camera and a VERY old (think 1970’s) Canon 500mm Reflex lens in December. The other is at sunset in the summer month of July.

Well, that wraps this post up, but not the year; tomorrow, I will be in Bournemouth taking test photographs of photographs artwork created by Bournemouth artist Henri RUff. Wish me luck!

Starting on a sunny Saturday, April 11^th, 2021, my journey began.  Today the journey isn’t quite over, but I hope, perhaps that midsummer will mark the end of the beginning.  I quickly saw this as an opportunity to try out all sorts of techniques and styles of photographs, some of which are “typical Michael” and some of which matured to define a new “typical Michael”.

The first photograph, “Explorers”, was taken on our gravel driveway with a wide-angle lens, which distorts the image of a Lego model of the Apollo 11 lunar lander.  The distortion creates a curve that looks like the curve of the surface of the moon.  This with a simple photographs trick and a witty title, we were on our way.

Before this, my photographs tended to have subjects of landscapes, architecture and cityscapes.  In particular panographic (typically wide-ratio images) and GigaPan images (typically wide and composing made up of 1 billion pixels).  My photographs were often expansive and highly detailed.  People were rarely included unless absolutely unavoidable or perhaps to give a sense of scale.  On day two, all of that fell apart.  A photograph for which I had clearly pre-visualised, capturing the texture and lines of a brick wall, just did not work for me….  I guess it was too perfect, too uniform too geometric.  Something was missing.  The missing ingredient?  A person.  On day two, a person had snuck into my photographs!  The photograph “Peeking” was created.  People, ranging from Lego astronauts to the Queen, appeared in six of the 18 shots taken in April.  My pick for April is without people and is the somewhat surreal and abstract image “Swirls”.

May is the month everything comes alive!  It was filled with experimentation ranging from freezing flowers in ice, fast photographs of falling drops of water, two self-portraits (only in the direst cases should you show photographers faces!) and breaking glass. And it goes on, sliced vegetables, and UV light through geometry and spirograph instruments.  My favourite?  My wife; throwing a glass of water at me, and thus we had “Splash”.

Explorers

Peeking

Swirls

Splash!

Plucked

Pictures at an exhibition

Trunk

Three Eggs

Discovered Light

Icarus

Capturing Red

The tree of dawn

2020 Quacking Up!

Shadow

In my style

Effervescence

Retro tech

Capturing Sunset

May’s flowers gave way to June’s experimentation and the beginning of experimental photographs, including ones taken without a camera.  Many product photographs appeared, an emerging style, in addition to abstract pictures, which I was finding to be inexplicably engaging and satisfying.  But, if I had to pick one, it was a simple picture of a whole poppy plant, root and all.  It was inspired by a Victorian book of prints about flowers which had seen in school.  And so, we had “Plucked”.

July saw the 100^th photograph, “Pictures at an Exhibition”, photographed inside a custom-built gallery.  A gallery created by my daughter, inside a shoebox!  The most popular of this month, of which several friends requested prints. I know they adorn the walls of at least two kitchens. It was a series of five cutlery photographs called “Kitchen Beauty”. My choice is Number 3, though others do not agree!

The long days of summer start to shorten noticeably in August. The only real rainfall of the summer fell during my holidays.  Not a single person appeared in a single image in August.  But by now, I had learned to develop film, so the image “Trunk” was captured, processed and scanned from Ilford film.  But my choice for the “Image du mois” is three eggs on a Jerusalem stone floor.

September is the month of fading light.  And there is lots of experimenting with light.  Projecting through glass, coloured fluids and everything else!  I could not pick a single photograph to represent the month. But I got it down to two.  The first is morning light shining through a glass titled “Discovered Light”.  The second is of my son, shot as a single image using strobe lighting, spreading his wings: “Icarus” takes flight!

October saw the runs of colours, reds, navy, greens and blues.  Many abstracts and the 200^th image.  200!  My personal choice is taken looking into the viewfinder of a 1967 Yashica Mat camera, “Capturing Red”.

November brought the first ravages of winter’s storms.  Some compelling images (IMHO) as winter took hold, including the humorous, again IMHO, “2020: Quacking Up”.  But for all my efforts, nothing I did could match the beauty of a tree in the dawn “The tree of dawn”.

December brings the darkest days, the third lockdown, in effect, Christmas and a shortened holiday to Wales.  But the photograph I choose for December is probably not the best, but a wonderfully optimistic discovered image of carpet lint “Love”. A reminder that finding writing does not imply a human creator, but sometimes dumb luck!  December also had a book of 30 photographic challenges, which I was given.  A truly thoughtful gift.  The first photograph was a photo of my eldest son, “Shadow”.

With January comes the New Year, longer days and the official third lockdown across the nation.  It also brought the bulk of the 30-day challenge.  One of which was to be taken “In my style”.  What is that abstract, surreal, structural architecture or a portrait?  Why not combine them all into one “In my style”.  A close second was a complex self-portrait combining paper cutting, cyanotype printing and watercolour printing “Self-portrait”.

Creatively, February sees fantastic natural beauty, ice, flowers, sunrises and sunsets.  But the simple “Effervescence” wins my prize for the month.

March brings us spring and an improving national situation with vaccinations, reduced illness and the beginning of the easing of lockdown; if you are in the UK, you will know this!  Spring makes several appearances. Spring is joined by fruit and some lovely skies.  But for me, by a slim margin, it is a 43-year-old and still working calculator that wins the day, or rather the month. And so, to April, and the completion of the first year.  The month is far from complete, but I no doubt my favourite so far, which is the only photo taken away from home. It is the super colourful and super simple image of a pinhole camera capturing a sunset on the Surrey Hills.  There was a photo taken at home that day for the purists.  But I just love this simple photo, “Capturing Sunset”.

And so, we arrive at the 365^th photograph.  A whole year.  How to mark it?  It is an achievement and a body of work I am proud of.  But how to observe it?  I decided on two approaches. One is to create a sort of typographic montage for the day, similar to the one for the 200^th day.  But I really need to capture a photograph.  There are many competing ideas, abstract, nature, a portrait, something technical or even something funny.  After much thinking and debate within the household (where my models live), I decided to some something topical, and I think hopeful.  “Hope for the future”[1].  A future with vaccines to prevent the Covid and better treatments for those who succumb to Covid. Now onto year 2!

[1] No vaccine was used in making this photo!

Also, from Thursday I will experiment about sending you the pictures via a link, rather than sending the picture to your phone directly. This should save storage on your smartphone. If it does not work for you, let me know!

Finally, I am starting a new, parallel project. Of a roll of film a month. Each month I will pick a combination of a roll of film and a camera. Shoot the roll and share the results, good and bad with you. It will make for a sort of blog sequence. I would love to hear your feedback on that too.

Wish me luck!

When I was first challenged to do this, tame a picture each day from within my home, I knew it was not going to be easy and it was going to be quite long. At that point, we were hearing about how the first one mission doses of vaccine would be available by September. Well now we know better, and it is very clear that we are in for a long haul. I write this just after publishing the 200th picture in the series, “Cell Division”. In some ways, as Europe is reentering Lockdown, it feels like we are where we started, but of course, we know a lot more about the disease now and so there is new hope.

The truth I realised was that constraint is good for creativity. My photography, and I suspect my outlook is better as a consequence fo this challenge. And so, as we realistically face into the next 200 days I have the opportunity to remind myself that this situation will be what I make of it. I will, in the coming days, looks for new opportunities for development and creativity and you can probably expect to see mini projects within this one. I am looking forward to see what I discover next!

Michael,

Woking, 29th October 2020

What have I been doing? I started by creating a spirograph pattern with an ink pencil. Then spraying it with water and dragging a dry brush over it. I really liked the result. It formed the 196th image in the sequence.

I liked that simple image, but it was not really what I wanted to create, what I wanted to do was interweave layers of different images created in different ways. That leads to experiment number 2. This image was a drawing of the lighthouse at Hook Head Lighthouse in Co. Wexford, Ireland. The drawing was in pencil. To this page, I added watercolour and ink swatches, including painting a band of the lighthouse in a pinkish hue! Possibly unfairly. Once dried all of this was treated to a good layer of the light-sensitive cyanotype solution and left to dry again.

Once dried the paper was mounted under glass with the two dried alliums and exposed to about 20 minutes of mail late-autumn sunlight. Then taken in and washed for about 15 minutes and hung to dry. The result is the image below:

The image has a charm to my eye at least, and even though it is just an experimental piece it is nice. If you look carefully at the upper left quadrant you will see the drawing of the lighthouse. There is a smaller drawing to the upper right, and those pencils have oil in them, which did not take the cyanotype solution.

The bottom left is swatches in ink and the bottom right in watercolours. Where the image in blue you can make them out, as darker shades, which is an interesting effect, but where the image is light, the colours come through clearly. So now, on these foundations, I continue my experimentation! Look out for more.

Pleased with Experiment No. 3 I wondered what would happen if it was done the other way around? Experiment No. 3 is a pair of small cyanotypes which were then watercoloured. This I really liked and the final images are shown below. They were produced on two different paper types, which is a learning point, as they have different shades.

What makes it so different from other Hasselblad cameras is almost everything, except the quality of the design and manufacture.  The XPan series of cameras take 35mm film.  They can switch aspect ratio mid-roll.  Each comes with an excellent TTL light meter and incredible lenses.  All of this lives in a titanium body.  Focusing is manual using a bright viewfinder, and the aperture is manual.  Don’t think it is old school; it isn’t.  It is a late model 35mm camera and so will happily read the DX codes on your film.  It will wind and rewind your film and set the exposure for you.

This blog isn’t a review of the XPan, as such, this blog is about what it is like to use and what type of photographs you can expect to produce, or more honestly, what kind of images I can create! A better photographer will produce better images. And while I am being open, I should also add, I have very few regrets in life, but not buying an XPan sooner is one of them!

In use, the XPan weighs in at 955 g.  So, you will notice you have a camera, but it is not very heavy.  It has excellent build quality which is comparable to a Leica M camera.  Some people think it is equal, some not so, I am not going to venture an opinion on that question!  The titanium body makes it sturdy and light.  The downside of this is that the paint does not adhere well to the titanium body; thus, these cameras often look very battered, even when they are actually in perfect condition.

Loading film is easy, open the catch on the left-hand side, insert the canister and pull the leader across to the green indicator line and close the cover.  The camera will then pull all the film onto the take-up reel.  The effect of this is twofold, which means that the images are rolled back into the canister as they are taken, which means they are safe in the film canister. Secondly, the photos are in “reverse order” on the negatives.  The last picture taken is in position number one on the negative.

With film loaded, the camera is simple to use, but it has to be said it is going to feel different from any other camera you have used before.  You will notice that the minute you look through the viewfinder.  The rangefinder itself is quite large and very bright.  But what will feel unusual is the shape.  It is, of course, panoramic, and that means composition will be a different experience.  I won’t say it will be a negative experience, just that it will be a different experience.  Composition in this format is a different process.  Some people find it hard to find a good composition. If that is a problem, a quick change in the panoramic/standard switch will offer you a regular image size and corresponding guidelines.  I have never done this!

Operation mode is either aperture priority or fully manual.  Either way, you will need to take responsibility for focusing and setting the aperture yourself.  As this is a “modern” film camera, you are assisted by an accurate built-in light meter.

The lenses are manual medium format lenses.  They are small for medium format lenses, but what makes them really special is the sharpness and the colour rendition.  The colour is rich and vibrant.  Pop in some Velvia film, and you will see what I mean.  I have included images at the end of this post.  In addition to the colour rendition, the lenses are also wonderfully sharp. 

The XPan system supports three lenses, the most popular is the 45mm, there are two more lenses the 90mm and the prohibitively priced 30mm.  I have the first two but have never used the third, so I can not speak to that.  But the 45mm and 90mm will not disappoint.  And I hope one day to be able to say the same of the 30mm lens.

The result is a lightweight medium format camera that is excellent for landscape, cityscape and architectural work. 

The camera has proven to be useful as a street photography camera too.  In my opinion, there are a few reasons for this.  The main ones are the camera is small and not noticeable.  This is made all the better if you can master zone focusing, the art of pre-focusing the lens the camera can be used while still at waist level.  As mentioned earlier, the lenses are sharp too, even if fully open, allowing the street photographer plenty of latitude.  For me, and I have to be honest; I am not a street photographer; the real strength comes from the aspect ratio.  This works in two ways; the first is you can create a composition that encompasses the whole scene.  I can see that this might be a disadvantage for some photographers because they want to isolate the subject; it might be a double-edged sword.  The second advantage of the aspect ratio is that since it is wide people can be in the frame and not realise it.  You can appear to be taking a picture of a street sign and capture what is going on far to the left and right of it.  German Photographer Robin Schimko is a great exponent of this sort of technique, and some examples of his work can be found here.  He has also used his XPan camera for portrait work too.

Is this a perfect film camera?  It is almost perfect for me, but it has some drawbacks.  Let’s list them:

• The price:  A good condition XPan 2 camera, you will find yourself looking at a very high price tag.  How high?  Think £4000 to £6000, when you add import duty for a high-quality example from Japan or Hong Kong. 
• The camera has not been manufactured for years, and the result is sourcing parts and people with the skills to repair the camera can be a real challenge.
• The paint finish flakes, and so you will see many very battered-looking examples, which in truth is cosmetic, as they look battered, it does not mean they are battered.
• The 45mm lens does exhibit some vignetting.  This is not major and can be addressed either by using a graduated filter, which is expensive or in post-production.
• You probably need to use a spirit level in order to keep the horizon level.

There is one other upside to mention; the lenses can be fitted to most, if not all, mirrorless cameras, using an adaptor.  So even should the camera fail you still have beautiful lenses to use.

My conclusion, I have tried to give you a feel for just how simple this camera is in use, but I freely admit to being biased.  I love my Xpan 2.  That said it is costly but unique. It is superb quality, but it is electronic and could become a beautiful brick that can not be repaired if it fails.  So, if you have one, I say go out and use it and enjoy it, if you are considering one then you must decide is its uniqueness worth the price, for me it is.  I said at the start of the blog I said this was not a review of the camera as such but how it is to use.  In use, it is reliable and straightforward.  It allows you to capture scenes, panoramic scenes, in a single exposure. It is not taking multiple images. Not stitching them together, only to find the person has moved and appeared twice.  It excels at panoramic photography, landscapes, buildings and street scenes.

The following are example images taken on the XPan; more can be found here.

In spite of the low contract, I like this image very much it represents a return to the very origins of photography.

Two prints taken from the surplus print film, exposed onto Photographic paper, in daylight for approximately 24 hours! A photograph where the camera is just a sheet of glass. The film used is identical to the ones seen in Ghosts No. 1.