Photography

VSCO cam and VSCO film (and VSCO Grid)

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I find myself in a funny predicament - I had shot very little film as a young boy (I loved taking pictures when my parents and I went to Thailand which was absolutely great) and I love film now - I've been shooting more and more since April when I got my M7 and what strikes me with film is how wonderful the feeling is to know that the image is crafted - not just made but crafter: I load the film myself, I carefully choose what to shoot, I rewind the film myself, I develop the film myself, and only then do I enter the more digital world of scanning. The development of the film is a pleasure like no other - loading it in the spool blindfolded, mixing the chemicals in the magical movement of stirring every minute (as if one brews a potion), and then pulling out the negative and looking at the pictures for the first time - it is like magic indeed. And every time, the film comes out to life with a passion - with a soul.

This is what a lot of digital photography isn't about - it tends to be about quick shooting of many pictures, and the plastic-ifying of colours and textures. And this is where some digital software comes into play to create effects that mimic the dynamics, the imperfections, and the colours of film. VSCO (Visual Supply) is a company that has been creating digital tools for the photographers who want to instill soul into their work. One of their more unusual products (VSCO Keys, which I am yet to try) is quite different from other digital tools in that it enables one to get closer to the grafting of the filme with their hands - with movements and typing - it is reminiscent of writing in which the real tool are the fingers and not the keyboard on which it is written. 

But it is not about VSCO Keys that I want to talk about but about their presets. In fact, not even about that, nor about VSCO Cam (Reloaded - which is an extraordinary deprture from other camera apps). I want to talk about their ambitious goal - to create beautiful things and to share them with the world - their VSCO Grid.

Their presupposition - when we were kids crafting - is what fills me with emotions - because photography for me is indeed about celebrating both the "beautiful" and the "broken" in life. Because we can be cynical but when we were kids, we were ballerinas - pure, elegant, spontaneous, playful ... - and that's what I aim for with my photography - to campture not the cynicism but the idealism, to encapsulate movement and dance without chains and restrictions, to translate darkness into light, to bend the borders of reality through a blend of realism and imagination, and to liberate the child hidden behind the mask of adulthood. To be pure. Thank you, VSCO!

You can visit my VSCO Grid at Traveller Between Spaces.

 

Lent festival, Maribor

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For more than a week, the street festival Lent has been collecting the crowds here in Maribor and although I made a few short visits through the week, I spent a more meaningful amount of time there only today. Leaving the house, I was equiped with a Leica M7 and its smaller companion. The roll of fill still needs to be developed but the few pictures with the digital are already here. The lightness of being able to take quick pictures with an uncomplicated camera cannot be understated in this case. When one deals with lots of action, and especially with children, it is difficult to predict the movements they are going to make, or the direction in which they are going to sprint to. They were such a joy watching that I wanted to reach out to those soap balloons and play with them myself (admirably, I restrained myself). And then walking around looking for those balloon hearts, I felt the thrilled every time I saw one across the field and pounced. 

Love Parade, Vienna 2013

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Sometimes, I am just cursing my luck - I would go out, camera in hand with the great anticipation to take a picture, and another one, and another one, and another one - that fervent thrill of clicking the shutter and knowing that you've captured a moment in someone's like - a moment in one's own life - a moment. And then luck strikes out - streets are empty, streets are lifeless, streets are abandoned - because you've forgotten to check the event calendar of the city, or because the weather has decided to turn sour, or because you have simply decided to go to the wrong city. 

And then, there are those times when luck not simply smiles but shows you its multi-coloured rainbow teeth - when you have a camera, when you are in the right set of mind, and when the streets are full - because there is a parade. I happened upon such a parade in Vienna - a love parade - where even the police officers had abandoned their typical gloomy black uniforms for a touch of colour on the lapels or a flower in the hair; where the austerity of the elegance was replaced by the frivolous nature of the topless divas; where the children had decided that they will give up trying to understand the whole discussion between the left and the right and they simply joined the side of "love and happiness" ("what is inequality, daddy?"). 

Shooting film along digital in Venice

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A couple of months ago, I was in Paris. I walked smiling hand in hand with my darling. And we were loving the air - it was chilly but the sun was out and we happened upon a Leica boutique. The romantic idea of shooting film has been in my mind for months. I wouldn't have wanted to trade camera systems or to use a different approach when photographing - I just wanted to try the medium - to take away the temptation to check out the picture immediately after taking it, and to remove the thought of sharpness and picture quality that has been plaguing me. In other words *i* wanted to create my images - not leaving the job to my camera.

The Leica store had a number of second-hand cameras and among them was a relatively beat-up M7. I was assured it was fully functional and ready to go. And so the next couple of days in Paris were documented with it. It was a risky decision - I had never shot film (as a kid I did but we all this then - I hadn't shot film since I took up photography with the enthusiasm of a hobbyist), and I was clueless about its behavior and interaction with light. But I knew the camera system and the 35 mm Summicron was something I felt right at home with. The first 36 or so frames felt awkward - I didn't know what to do with the rewind knob, I had not acquired the muscle memory of rewinding after each shot, and I often felt surprised at how quiet the shutter was. The first film I used was Ilford FP4 and it took me some time to switch to the black-and-white mental mode but this wasn't such a foreign part considering I've shot with cameras with the black-and-white preview function on. And I enjoyed the process - when I got those pictures from the lab, I was excited like a kid - I rushed to my darling to show her our pictures.

Several weeks down, and a few more rolls, I am now also equipped to develop my own black-and-white film at home. And I was ready when we were planning a trip to Venice again. Arriving in Venice, I couldn't wait to leave the suitcase at the hotel. My girlfriend had the digital and I had the film. Parallel to that, I also had of course my iPhone. And there were a few pictures that I took both with the film and with the phone. The black-and-white pictures below were scans made with a dedicated film scanner (quite poor) with some additional noise applied to get rid of the artifacts from the poor scan; the color pictures are the iPhone pictures with a VSCO film preset.

Looking at those color pictures, I am transported into the context by the realism of the digital pictures - the sharpness creates flatness, the realistic color plunge us in the context, the composition does not drive the eye in any particular direction, the sunshine is tangible, and my memory is triggered. I have a sentimental connection to those color pictures - I am thrilled that they are realistic, that they can tell me where I took the picture, they can tell me the settings under which it was taken, they are a correct recording of my visual experience. But ...

And here's the "but" - when I took the film picture, I took it because I had an emotional attachment to the moment - I was screaming with happiness, I was internally experiencing tickle all over my sensory pleasure centers, I was seeing the world not through my eyes but through my mind - I lifted the camera and took a picture during a blink not because I wanted to take a picture but because I wanted to capture the feeling *i* was having - you can't capture a feeling on a two-dimensional silver-decorated plastic but that film picture is so removed from the reality that it becomes an abstraction - and it is an abstraction of my feeling in that moment:

The sharpness of the grains is like acceleration through space and time, the lack of color grinds the context to graphite abstraction, the composition draws the eye through stacks of lines, the sunshine is pure white distinguishing the hairs and the cracks through shades, and my memory... - I am experiencing the warmth of the sunshine, the smell of the sea weed, and the calls of the gondoliers. And I am there - hand in hand with my smiling darling.