Bring your giant medium format camera to work

A photographer is never really putting down his camera, no matter what crazy thing she or he is doing for a living or filling the days with. Since we are not living in an ideal world, most of us have to face the limitation of time and availability of light in our everyday life.

But limitations are not necessarily bad things! They teach us to utilize our possibilities more creatively by forcing us to see and think in ways we would normally not choose to. This, of course, influences our work as well as ourselves and vice-versa. Eventually this feedback loop can contribute our personal and photographic development similarly to the way the ever-changing environment influences life forms and pushing them towards evolution.

Currently, my job is to sit in an office and convince computers to obey to the needs of their human masters. Making their lives easier by sending them nice, well formed and most importantly correct invoices. As interesting as it sounds, but it is somewhat fulfilling to my geek side which likes to brain wrestler with abstract problems.

But it makes my photographer side starve because the current situation has a very little room for photography. Especially now when the winter is coming. Days are shorter and shorter, so more and more frequently I end up to spend most of the hours filled with natural light in between walls in my natural working environment.

To overcome this obvious contradiction, I decided to make occasionally a “bring your giant medium format camera to work day“.  I started to bug my colleges and taking portraits of them during lunch brakes or when I need to wait for my computer to finish a long-lasting blocking task.

The point is, you don’t need to stop being a photographer, just because the conditions are not ideal for the kind of photography you are normally up to. Try to get out the most of the situation and who knows this might drive you to completely unforeseen paths and discoveries.

Jogi, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Jogi is a musician besides being a software engineer and in my opinion, they are making pretty cool music.  Their website http://www.theflamingdugongs.at/  is not complete yet, but worth to have a look at.

Barbara, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F
Janez, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F
Kyrylo, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Kyrylo was so pleased with his portrait that he visited me at my desk (2 floors below his place) to shake my hands right after I sent it to him.

Hannes, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Fuji Across 100, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F
Marco, Pentacon Six TL, Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm, Ilford HP5, Kodak D76, Canoscan 9900F

Naturally, it is not my top priority to photograph at work, and I always make sure that this does not have any effect on my everyday responsibilities. It took me quite a while (about 2 months) to get these images. Though they are not perfect, I enjoyed taking them they are part of my journey.

Roll diary

Introduction

Being a camera addict I usually carry around at least 2-3 cameras of different kinds. Most of the time I have my actual favorite film camera in my bag plus a small compact for measuring the light. This set is mixed up with my medium format madness and the expectation of my family members of having good digital images about family occasions so I frequently bring my budget DSLR.

The fact that I always acting like a packman packed with cameras and lenses has 3 main consequences:

  1. I cannot easily write a “What is in my camera bag” type of post since my bag transforms every week. (Ok, I have 3-4 different setups I  used to carry around depending on my mood.)
  2. My bag is very often reaches the mass of a medium size star with a huge gravity field which attracts more cameras.
  3. I use many different kind of films and sensors so it is hard to select matching images to create unified looking set for a thematic series. It is also happening because I love casual shooting during pointless walks without a concept.

To overcome on the 3rd consequence I decided to use the images of my very last roll of film and present it as a diary recorded in photos. Even though there are different topics covered in this series and the photos were taken during several walks in the last couple of weeks, it has a quite unified look due to the same roll of film.

Diary details

  • Camera: Cosina CSM
  • Lens: Cosinon 55mm f/2.1
  • Film: Fomapan ISO100, 36
  • Developer: Kodak D76
  • Scanner: Canoscan 9900F
  • Period: 2012 Jan-Feb

Morning at the river

We are living very close to the biggest river of Hungary (Danube) and I like so much to have a walk early morning (before work) at the side of it. There is a tiny island I used to visit because it is really quite and peaceful at the mornings especially at this cold part of the year. You can hear an army of birds using twitter though. These shoots were taken on an extremely cold day at the temperature around -20 degrees Celsius.

Afternoon downtown

The place we live in is a quite lovely little town with a great history which I don’t even try to introduce here. It almost all the year filled with tourists and their cameras. Seriously, I could start the local …camerastyle.com site focusing on tourists’ equipment. (I do love these sites: tokyocamerastyle.com, saopaulocamerastyle, csmcamerastyle) Anyhow there are tremendous amount of photos  taken about the town every day so I don’t really feel like to shoot there as much. Still I always find a little detail worth to capture.

Business plate made of shadow 1.

Business plate made of shadow 2.

11

 Bus stops

Bus stops are great contrast against the downtown, they are regularly dirty, covered by graffiti and offensive adverts about products I will never buy (because I spend all my money on film of course).   These are places used by everyone but seemingly belongs to nobody and therefore nobody really cares the way they look like.

Cosina CSM, Cosinon 55mm f/2.1, Fomapan 100, Kodak D76

This photo is digital, taken with my Ricoh GR Digital camera. Please consider it as a “making of” photo.

Sunbath

Cosina CSM, Cosinon 55mm f/2.1, Fomapan 100, Kodak D76

The Tree project

A tree for me (and I believe for most of us) is a symbol of a couple of things such as life, constancy, yet cyclic renewal and for some reason wisdom. I have no any tree fetish, before you would think this further…

The crust of an old tree could tell a story of life-times and could be as expressive as a wrinkled portrait of an old man. Therefore I did this experiment of taking portraits of old trees, to see what effect and emotions could such photos trigger.
I also often wonder how it would be like to be a tree. Not completely of course, but would be great to see that limited fraction of space trough that extended window of time with but with human senses of perception. But I guess this will be another project to map this idea into pictures.