Like a Leica

For the past few months I've kept an extra camera slung over my shoulder alongside my go-to kit.  It's a Zorki 4K; a Russian rangefinder that I stumbled across in a vintage store at a price that made it good value as a bookend, let alone a functioning camera.  The Zorki 4K is a soviet-era copy of the Leica II produced by the KMZ factory (Krasnogorsk Mekanicheski Zavod, which translates as "Krasnogorst Mechanical Factory"), and even takes Leica L-mount lenses although it comes with the acclaimed Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 lens (a Zeiss-Sonnar clone).  It was introduced in 1973 as a successor to the Zorki 4 which had been produced since 1956 (featuring improvements such as a modern film advance lever rather than a knurled metal knob), and was widely exported to the west until production ceased in 1978.  The camera is fully manual and has no light meter, so I've been making a best guess every time I've used it over this past spring.  As was to be expected, a few of the frames from that first roll of film were slightly over-exposed although I think that might partially be down to it being quite difficult to accurately set the shutter speed on my camera (you have to lift a small knob, twist it to match the desired shutter speed and let it fall into place, which mine doesn't always do particularly convincingly), however I'm pleased with the sharpness of the photographs that I did expose correctly.  Below you'll find a selection of the best of those photographs from the first film through my Russian-rip-off-rangefinder.  I hope that you like them.

Monochromatic Mountains

In Winter the colours of nature are often desaturated.  The light can be flat and dull, as though your whole world has been placed inside a giant tupperware box.  To me, mountains are a wintery landscape with a colour palette limited to the white of snow and ice over the black of rock.  If the sky is not bright blue but neutral grey instead, then the whole scene appears to our eyes in black and white.  There aren't many occasions as a photographer when you get to compose an image on monochromatic film seeing it  through the viewfinder more or less as you will see it once the film is developed.  Sometimes it's nice to look at the natural world devoid of the distractions of colour and to simply absorb the beauty of tone and texture that become so obvious when we look at things in black, white and shades of grey.

Images from top to bottom:

• Towards Mount Adam
• Avalanche Valley, where I spent a week stranded waiting for the road to be declared safe to pass.
• The Tree Line
• The Southern Alps, South Island, New Zealand

The Doom Bar

The legend of The Mermaid of Padstow has it that, having been accidentally shot with a crossbow by a local man who was out hunting seals, a mermaid used her dying breath to place a curse upon the town. A storm raged for three days and nights, and when the townspeople awoke on the fourth day an enormous sand bar lay stretched across the mouth of the Camel Estuary, preventing ships from entering or leaving the harbour.

Over the course of the past 500 years the golden sands of the Doom Bar and the headlands and reefs on either side have seen the demise of over 300 ships.  Whilst you'd be forgiven for presuming that the treacherous nature of the mouth of the Camel Estuary gave rise to the name "Doom" Bar, it is actually derived from a corruption of the word "Dun", or dune, meaning sand.  
You see, there are few safe refuges for ships along the 75 miles or so of the North Cornish Coast between St Ives and Bideford, the majority of the coastline being high granite cliffs fronted by narrow beaches regularly pounded by the North Atlantic, and in a storm Padstow often appeared to mariners in distress as somewhat of a false friend.  With a shallow sand bar stretching across the mouth of the estuary and the large headlands of Stepper Point and Pentire Point both hemming in approaching vessels and providing shelter from the wind, many captains and their crews had to swim for, or lost, their lives having run aground.
These days the navigable channel to Padstow, which is dredged and maintained by the Harbour Commission, lies on the eastern side of the Estuary (the right hand side in the image above) however through much of the Eighteen hundreds it lay to the west, with the Doom Bar sitting on the Daymer Bay side.  This caused such difficulties to approaching vessels that a part of Stepper Point was quarried away (visible in the photograph) to allow ships to fill their sails and make a good run at the 220 metre wide channel.  There are still rusting capstans on the ledge under Stepper Point that were once used to winch ships alongside and in to safety after the pilot gigs had rowed out to offer them a line..

Such a lot of stories for such a small patch of water, encircled by the sea, sand and slate.  On a calm summers day when walking the low tide beaches on either side of the estuary it's hard to imagine that such a huge number of ship's skeletons lie buried beneath your feet.  

The Golden Rule Is The Golden Hour

Following on from last week's stunning set of images by Chris Burkard by going back to the An Tor Orth An Mor's default setting of my own photography strikes me as setting myself a pretty tall order. Big shoes to fill huh. So what I'm going to do is try to transition back to standard service by picking up on one of the points that I mentioned last week and running with it.

If you pick up any "how to" photography book you'll be bombarded with hints and tips about composition ratios, f-stops and light temperature. But the one that has always stuck with me is about the "Golden Hour"; that hour or so at the start of the day and again at the end when the sun is rising or setting. The rule goes as follows:

"Get up early. Stay out late."

The light just after dawn and just before dusk, especially in the mid-latitudes, is soft, warm and golden and casts long shadows. It's the best light to take photographs with. It's also the time of day when the most interesting stuff happens like animals feeding, market stalls opening up for the day and people taking a deep breath before or after a busy rotation of planet earth. Make sure you're there to capture it by setting an alarm and going out with your camera, then take the middle of the day to go surf or do whatever it is that you do before getting your camera out again in time for the sun to say so-long and sink into the horizon.

Big Sur

There are roads, and then there are roads.

I damn near drove off the edge of the cliff a few times along the Big Sur stretch of California's Pacific Highway 1 because I was trying to peer over the edge and take in the view the whole time instead of just being sensible and keeping my eyes on the road. This is looking south across Bixby Bridge (as featured in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur) in the late afternoon - beautiful light on a beautiful stretch of coast with a huge NW swell rolling in and throwing up loads of mist and spray.

Desert Island Discs

It’s a relatively simple idea: You’re to be castaway on a desert island, and you must choose the eight records that you can have with you to while away the hours lazing under a palm tree next to the lagoon. Assuming of course that you haven’t smuggled your i-life with you.
This is the format of Britain’s longest-running “celebrity” chat-show which has been on the airwaves for getting on for seventy years - although we’re talking celebrity in the traditional BBC sense of the word; politicians, authors, scientists and the like. BBC Radio 4 is normally the domain of round the clock news, politics, current affairs and the shipping forecast, all delivered in a clipped and controlled Queens English betraying no emotion and harking back to the days when invisible radio announcers nonetheless had to wear dinner jackets to read the news. However for an hour every Saturday it opens itself up to the nostalgic musical tastes of its subjects. It’s the only time you’re ever likely to hear Eminem on Radio 4 (choice of Sir Clive Woodward, former World Cup winning England rugby coach).

So you get eight pieces of music, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible and a luxury item washed up on the beach with you. Hell-raising actor Oliver Reed requested an inflatable doll, whilst American author Norman Mailer said he’d take a supply of marijuana. Surely you could grow your own on a tropical desert island though?
Pretty sure I’d take a surfboard, a 6’2”, just on the off-chance that there’d be a smoking reef pass on the edge of the lagoon, like the one in that Tom Hanks movie. I’d guess that there’d be nowhere to develop camera film on a desert island anyway.
Now there is no way I could settle on just eight pieces of music, in fact I reckon I’d struggle with selecting eight albums because I could guarantee that the next day my mood would change and I’d be hankering for Metallica rather than Miles Davis.
Eight memorable waves? Too tough.
Eight memorable sessions? Well, perhaps I could recall and compile a list of my top eight surfs, although surely it has to be a list of seven being that one would have to be your first ever surf; the one that got you hooked on this whole endeavour.
You never know, perhaps your island would have that little kink or gap in the reef that, combined with the prevailing swell direction and trade winds would combine to produce your dream wave. All to yourself. Perhaps seven sessions out there would populate the rest of your list?

It seems to me that surfing is a pursuit that fills our brains with incredible memories, often fleeting periods that are difficult to recall in all of their wonderment as we’re so wrapped up in the moment. Can you really recall that “best wave ever”, in the same stark clarity with which you experienced it, every crystalline detail, droplet and glint of light refracting off the inside of that barrel? It only lasted a few seconds, so why not?

I love lists, but compiling this one is just too hard.
Go on - give it a go yourselves.

WA transmission #2

A week later than advertised thanks to time zone changes, international flights and a 3 metre swell. It's been good to be back though; sunshine and more than a little bit of oomph behind the waves are just a couple of reasons why this all too short trip was a full box ticker.

These images are all archival ones from when I lived out here back in 2005 and 2006 - I got a load of films back from the lab this morning but give me a week to digitize them and sort the wheat from the chaff. On initial inspection there's a few keepers in amongst them, including an absolute drainer coming through at Gas Reef and some good action shots of my mates Mick and Scooter alongside Deano Adrian attacking lips Down South. Check back soon hey.

Until then, from the top on down:

The way home from work; Wise Winery, Eagle Bay, Dunsborough.

Rottnest Island, home to the funny little half rat/half kangaroo like Quokka, and some heaving slabs if you can get your mitts on a boat or ski.

"Every year Scarborough steals a load of our sand and calls it a surf spot..." Mick Jardine taking it home for Trigg Point Boardriders in the 2006 WA Surf League.

Karri trees, Boranup Forest, Margaret River.