“When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.“ (George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons) A red star may not be bleeding above the sky, and given the intensity of summer heat in Western New York, darkness …
The Fujifilm Professional TX-2 (its sister Hasselblad XPan I/II or the older Fuji TX) is one of those cameras which you lust after, and when you get it, open the packaging and have it in your hands at last, you marvel at the build quality, the heft and solidity, the beauty of the workmanship and the lens as you handle the jewel like thing and attach it to the body. You then oooh and aaaah as you lift it and put it to your eye and are blown away by the clear bright finder which is very wide and large indeed! You then want to go out and shoot with it so you insert the batteries and then the film – which is as easy to load as a point and shoot
In the summer of 2022 I experienced some health issues that needed time and attention, so I applied for a treatment. There was a waiting period. So in the middle of November I finally arrived in a small spa town in Northern Germany where I was to stay until Christmas. I had time on my hands in between the treatments . My condition allowed for walks, in fact I was encouraged to go out. The weather, however, had decided not to cooperate with this medical advice. It displayed all the characteristics of the Northern German winter. It is possible to love the Northern German winter if you watch it unfold from, say, the Bahamas. Any view point closer than that is not advised. Grey, cold, rain and misery will last until they run out of steam and are then replaced by fresh grey, rain, cold and misery, just more of it this time.
“We get into the same river and yet not into the same river, we are and we are not [the same].”
Heraclitus
I have a new book of images of water available. Following the success of The Still Dynamic last year (in the sense that it thankfully sold out rather quickly in its limited edition print), this new volume pictures from some of my favourite places in the UK and Switzerland including, of course, the Mallerstang Valley in Cumbria that I has photographed for 25 years now. The images include some that are that old and taken on a Mamiya 6, but also more recent pictures taken on Fujifilm digital cameras.
Painting landscapes with a TLR camera from the 1950s has become the main activity in recent months. No wonder, as it seems that I need a photographic project related to the landscape genre at least once a year. In 2020, I presented you a series of black-and-white images of agricultural sceneries. Then, in 2021, I came up with some long-time exposures of the same topic. And this time, it is my much appreciated Rolleiflex that let me discover the rural space again.
In this post, I’m going to talk about a variety of subject matters – how I got inspired by Dutch landscape painters from the 17th century, the joy of using my Rolleiflex and why I like expired films. Therefore, I came up with the title “painting landscapes”. So please lean back and expect a bunch of images to look at!
