grebeman
Old Codgers Group
- Name
- Barrie
Just why do so many of us seem to acquire more and more "gear" in pursuit of photographs?
Lets just look at one of my favourite photographers, James Ravilious. Although he studied at art school (under an assumed name since he was the son of a famous engraver Eric Ravilious) he was a self taught photographer. Between 1972 and 1991 he worked part time as a photographer for the Beaford Art Centre in north Devon mainly working on a project to document the life of rural communities within about a 20 mile radius of the Arts Centre. During that time he amassed some 80,000 negatives that have become a priceless record of a now all but vanished way of life. They show rural people at work and at play, farm labourers, village fetes, farm animals, lambing, hedging, you name it he photographed it. Like Cartier Bresson he preferred to frame his images in camera and always left a black border created by the enlarger light around his prints.
He published 5 books as author or co-author, illustrated 12 books for other authors and had 18 photographic exhibitions including the Royal Photographic Society (twice), The Photographers Gallery in London, The Curwen Gallery in London, The Leica Gallery in New York, 2 in France and most of the rest in South West England, either resident or traveling.
His life was cut short by illness and he died aged 60 in 1999. Whilst in the last couple of years of his life he started to use larger format cameras and in particular settled on a 6 x 9 negative size, for the rural project he used a Leica M3 and the following lenses, 28mm f/6.3 Hektor, 35mm f/3.5 Elmar, 50mm f/3.5 Elmar, 50mm f?2.8 Elmar and 90mm f/4 Elmar. He framed his images with a Viooh external viewfinder. I hope you'll agree that that's a rather modest kit but if you see the results they're superlative. He almost exclusively worked in monochrome and many of his images show a beautiful understanding and use of light, many are contrejour but retain excellent shadow detail. His very limited kit and deep understanding of it enabled him to concentrate on the essentials of the image.
How many of us can say we do that?
Barrie
Lets just look at one of my favourite photographers, James Ravilious. Although he studied at art school (under an assumed name since he was the son of a famous engraver Eric Ravilious) he was a self taught photographer. Between 1972 and 1991 he worked part time as a photographer for the Beaford Art Centre in north Devon mainly working on a project to document the life of rural communities within about a 20 mile radius of the Arts Centre. During that time he amassed some 80,000 negatives that have become a priceless record of a now all but vanished way of life. They show rural people at work and at play, farm labourers, village fetes, farm animals, lambing, hedging, you name it he photographed it. Like Cartier Bresson he preferred to frame his images in camera and always left a black border created by the enlarger light around his prints.
He published 5 books as author or co-author, illustrated 12 books for other authors and had 18 photographic exhibitions including the Royal Photographic Society (twice), The Photographers Gallery in London, The Curwen Gallery in London, The Leica Gallery in New York, 2 in France and most of the rest in South West England, either resident or traveling.
His life was cut short by illness and he died aged 60 in 1999. Whilst in the last couple of years of his life he started to use larger format cameras and in particular settled on a 6 x 9 negative size, for the rural project he used a Leica M3 and the following lenses, 28mm f/6.3 Hektor, 35mm f/3.5 Elmar, 50mm f/3.5 Elmar, 50mm f?2.8 Elmar and 90mm f/4 Elmar. He framed his images with a Viooh external viewfinder. I hope you'll agree that that's a rather modest kit but if you see the results they're superlative. He almost exclusively worked in monochrome and many of his images show a beautiful understanding and use of light, many are contrejour but retain excellent shadow detail. His very limited kit and deep understanding of it enabled him to concentrate on the essentials of the image.
How many of us can say we do that?
Barrie