stillPoint

Happy Birthday Liz

 

It's my ex-wife's birthday tomorrow. As usual I sort of forgot it because I always count out 31 days for February (and there's 28) and so (as usual) I missed her birthday. "You've got confused" she said on the phone yesterday...(don't worry, she's used to it...I believe it's called a "Senior Moment")

So I thought I'd dedicate this to Liz, who has been my photo-inspiration for approaching half a century. I took it with an Olympus digital 'compact' camera (the sort you can't see anything on the LCD screen in sunlight) - in 2006.

I was in Southend-on-Sea with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat...at the Cliffs Pavilion and I wandered into the car park behind the theatre - The sun hadn't quite set and the streetlamps were just warming up.

I was amazed how such a small light could eclipse the sun.

A bit like Liz really...

Don Partridge and Rosie

It was February (cold and wet) in 1968...

...I rounded the corner from Broadwick Street to Berwick St...and there he was, singing the song I had remembered from around three weeks before, when I saw him on (I think) a TV programme, hosted by Eamonn Andrews...the new singing sensation Don Partridge...'One Man Band'.

He was aware of me as I circled around him to get the best angle. Then there was 'the moment' a puff of steam from his breath..and the shot was made.

 

'Rosie' was issued on the Columbia label. reaching number 4 in the week ending 9th March 1968

After his follow-up "Blue Eyes' again managed number 4, Don soon left mainline pop and produced a 'happening' of buskers at the Royal Albert Hall...

...I next saw him busking outside the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, around 1994 - still in the rain.

...he still busks today...

http://www.longman-records.com/images/articles/20050301160242307_1.jpg

He was singing this song when I photographed him......

Don was known as 'Snakehips' in his youth. He started his career as a burglar but has since given it all back and more in the enjoyment he has given to countless bystanders.

I photographed him on 'Ilford HP3' (400asa) and uprated the film-stock to 1000asa, 'stewing' it for three times the normal development time. This had the effect of increasing the grain and also darkening the peripheral edges of the image details.

 

I was trying to get my work published, so just imagine my delight, when Cue magazine bought my first shot...it was only a thumbnail to accompany an article about his 'one man band' called (!) 'Henry' but it was my first published work and nothing can beat that feeling...

 

henry

Photographs and post (c) Henry Metcalfe ~ All rights reserved.

Note:The photos have been reduced to 500pix and would only produce a print of around 2" x 3" of acceptable quality. If you would like a full-size (2000+ pix) download, please contact me with details of intended use. Free permission is usual for none-commercial use, but a credit would be appreciated.

Technorati Tags: one man band,don partridge,rosie,black and white photography

The Betrayal of Bells

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This photo dates back to the late 60's...I had become obsessed with the idea of producing a front-cover shot for the Amateur Photographer and as I had acquired an early Miranda SLR, I had at last the means to produce a high-quality photograph, if not the ability to realise my full conception of what the photograph should finally look like.

The shot above is of Liz in front of a plain-paper background that was pinned to the wall. I used two light sources, one towards the lower right side of her face and the other from the upper left, which was angled to strike at the highest point of her forehead.

So far so good...the finished print was very bright and contrasty and the eyes were rather too dominant which caused the mouth to be somewhat overlooked on the final viewing. Not only that - the white paper background was crossed with shadows and Liz's hair seemed to be a little untidy...

...So I purchased a sachet of Farmer's Reducer, and mixed it into a solution as instructed (a wonderful lemony yellow sherbet smell)

I then set about painting out the shadows on the background and tidying up the hair...

The result was too stark. The background lacked any definition or sparkle because it was simply b

lank photo-paper. Farmer's Reducer bleaches quickly and tends to leave a faint yellow stain unless great care is applied...

...Well there was the slightest yellowing, but I was tired of all the darkroom hours I had spent and decided that I had printed (with all the dodging and shading and burning involved) the best result possible. I duly sent it off to the magazine, only for it to be returned some days later - together with a rejection slip.

 

(pause for 40 years)

 

 Last weekend on my Sunday break from rehearsals for Whistle Down the Wind, I decided to distract myself, by going through my 60's black and white collection which Liz has kept safely in a drawer since that time. Viewing the picture forty years on found me understanding why it had been rejected: I had overbleached, not only the background, but also the whites of the eyes. Liz suggested cropping in close, to remove my slipshod work on her hair, but even with that done, the portrait still looked stark and unreal. I promised to not blog it, but I could not follow her advice to leave it alone and get on with other things. That night I sat up late and tried everything I could, via Photoshop, to make the portrait look like it had done before my bleach experiment - without success.

 

It took a further two weeks work, in between rehearsals and late at night, to produce the result above:

 

I recropped the image on Photoshop CS3, then rendered the forehead in soft focus and the mouth and lower face sharp, using the 'soft-focus' tool in Picasa 3

I then used the brush and crosshatching effects in Photoshop to simplify the image and to give it a slight 'painterly' appearance.

I then tried the Picasa sepia effect, but found it too rich. The Photshop 'sepia' seemed too cold, but I eventually found the rose shade I wanted by using both photo-editing programmes and combining the effects.

The eyes were the greatest problem, but I eventually found a solution by removing the reflection of one of the light sources on the pupils of the eyes and then  extending the soft-focus effect over them. Usually a portrait requires sharp focus on the eyes, irrespective of the other features - this portrait was the exception.

A note on the cropping:

The original print had the eyes placed exact centre, which further emphasised them and also made the composition seem oddly unbalanced. The original negative has long been lost and so I re-photographed the mounted print, re-cropping it with the eyes positioned to the right. This had the effect of drawing the right cheek and chin into emphasis; leading the eye down to her smile.

A mix of analogue and digital, the portrait now looks as I imagined it, forty-odd years ago.

 

                                                                                              (and I have permission to blog it!)

 

  "Thy eyes are the betrayal of bells, comprehended through incense" 

 

EE. Cummings

Technorati Tags: portrait,ee Cummings,monochrome,photo-retouching,photoshop,picasa,ph.black and white photography

At the Stillpoint

   At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is ~

T.S.Eliot.

I took this photograph quite a few years ago. I think I was in my second year with a company performing dance and mime for children in schools...so it must have been early 1964 - certainly the steam from the cup shows that it wasn't the middle of summer. We were having our tea-break and I noticed Liz sitting in a pool of light. I remember asking her to move her chair slightly so that I could get her shadow 'just right' in the outline of the window-frame.

Monochrome has always been my favourite medium; sometimes colour can distract from graphic impact. At the time I was experimenting with a 35mm monochrome reversal film that produced black and white slides. The tonal range as seen on-screen through a projector was fantastic, but sadly the original slide has gone - it may turn up someday, but I doubt it.

The picture stayed in slide format for a couple of years, until I took a lecturing job and stopped (for a while at least) the endless touring that goes hand in hand with theatre work. At last a had some stability and a base in which I could set up an enlarger and all the paraphernalia that went hand in hand with being a 'serious' photographer.

 

A 'serious' photographer I certainly was...I became more intolerant of burnt-out highlights and muddy shadows - each photo-opportunity became a struggle with the thought of 'would I take the shot' or would I indeed have to spend many hours in the darkroom, 'burning' and 'shading' with little pieces of cotton-wool or cardboard...or cut- rectangles of card, in order to bring all the extremes of tonal range within the capabilities of photographic paper.

 

So I stopped taking photographs 'just for the fun of it' and restricted my photo-sessions to subjects or subject-matter that I thought would be worth the time spent. In some ways it was good...I restricted the amount of shots I made  of each photo...if I could get the shot in three or even one 'click' so much the better. I do that now - and I do think it helps the standard of my work. Today's digital freedom to shoot as many frames as needed - irrespective of cost - has resulted in a spray-shot approach. Lets face it; it costs nothing to do 20, 30, or even 100 frames of one shot, in order to get 'the one' - in the 60's film was relatively expensive - not to mention photo-paper - so an economical approach was needed.

 

I loved the smell of developing solution...and the hypo-crystal 'fixer' that made the film or print secure against natural light. The red (or later, yellow) darkroom lamp had  all the excitement of Halloween - and I loved to emerge from my gloomy bathroom (Liz would have to knock on the door to go the the loo)  with the latest dripping photo-result.

 

So back to the photo...As I said, it was taken in monochrome, in 35mm slide format. Around that time, I found a supplier of photo-negative film; less sensitive than 'normal' stock but of very fine grain and I was able to sandwich my original frame of Liz with a piece of negative film, expose it to light and create a negative from which the final print was created. The print was done on Agfa paper and dry-mounted on a 10 " x 8" board...

...and there it stayed for 46 years until now. Using my 'advanced' technique of propping a photo on the dining-room table and shooting it afresh in digital, I re-recorded the photograph and reproduced it here. Even now I like it so much - perhaps because it holds so many good memories for me. Goodness knows how much better it would have looked if I had been able to work from the original, in which the pattern of the floor tiles were fully visible, in the brightest part of the  sunny patch.

best wishes

henry

 

PS: A word about 'grain' - photoshop tries, but nothing can really emulate 'grain', which is the visible trace of the chemical crystal formation of light-sensitive film. Some films were and are very 'fine-grain' and good for landscapes. Other film rated, '400' or '800' or indeed '1600' become very grainy at big enlargements - I loved it. I also regret the absence of tobacco-smoke. We might be a healthier world, but smoke-laden air was a photographic joy - the light became visible, thus making each shot so much more atmospheric. There is some smoke in the air in the photo above and I think it adds to the atmosphere...if not to the health of those in it. We have...for a time at least, passed the era of the smoky nightclub shots...I regret that - but everything has it's season.

 

However (and still on the subject of grain) digital photography has at least allowed me to enlarge sections of a print that I could not have afforded to do, back in the days of Elvis, Kennedy and Flower Power - and so I discovered a photograph within a photograph...

 

...which brings me back to Liz. Even then I saw a life within her that was very special. I find her so photographable and it was a joy to be able to enlarge the centre of the photograph and find a beautifully grainy, and previously unseen portrait...

not everything that is new is bad..

pps: I couldn't see Liz the first time I met her as my face was covered in Plaster of Paris, which was setting quickly - so I couldn't even respond to her giggling. But I liked her laugh and I wanted to know what she looked like. The Plaster of Paris was for a mask that was being created on me, for a Ballet we performed in - called "Stillpoint"

 

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