Sean Swatkowski Publication Design FINAL 2020

C a p t u r i n g L i f e . C r e at i n g A r t .

Issue No

March 2020

VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY Take A Trip To The Past With Our Showcase Of Vintage And Antique Film Cameras In Depth Reviews And Showcases Of Film Cameras From The Early 1900’s To Today

Learn Techniques From The Experts On The Basics Of Vintage Camera Operation, Printing And Film Types Articles Start On Page 15

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

COLOR/B&W FILM PHOTOGRAPHY

02

HARDWARE TUTORIALS

SOFTWARE TUTORIALS

EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE Capturing Life C r e at i n g A r t

E X P O S E

01

This Months Featured artist

06 Acraf Bazani

05

Pages 5-7 Experience the surreal imagination of photographer Acraf Bazani

Tutorials Page 10-11 Take your photography game to a new, unique level with our fisheye lense tutorial. Learn quick and easy tips on lense types, shot set up and editing.

10 Page 16-17 Learn everything you need to know about vintage 35mm cameras.

16 02

Articles

08 Pages 8-9 “Birds in Flight� Learn how one photographer captures birds ina a way never before seen.

20 Pages 20-21 Showcase of What vintage photographers used to look like.

Vintage Photography Pages 16-17 A Beginners Guide to 35mm Film Cameras. Learn the best camera types to capture different situations, buying tips for that perfect vintage camera and film development.

16

Pages 18-19 Some of the best vintage cameras for street photography. Learn the history behind them, specs and price to become a professional with 25 mm film photography.

E X P O S E

18

03

Monthly Artist Showcase E X P O S E

05

Between

Real

Achraf Bazani:

The world of surreal photography, in which Moroccan photographer and filmmaker Achraf Baznani has created through his photographs, have the photo world buzzing. His imaginative and wild surreal photography continues to inspire others and push their own creative exploration to its furthest depths. EXPOSE spoke with Baznani about his surreal photography and what inspires him to create such compelling images.

Can you describe to us your photography style?

We call it conceptual photography, which is first and foremost about the concept of the photo. A conceptual photographer is trying to bring various messages to the viewer, be it a political advert or a social commentary or an emotional outcry. There is some level of abstraction, thus, in a conceptual photo, the image is not a definite illustration of the original idea but a general representation of the idea. Conceptual photography makes healthy use of graphical symbols to represent ideas, movements, moods, anything and everything that the photographer might want to include in the message of their photograph.

Who are the photographers that have influenced you?

Photography has more than one source of learning; which ones are looked at depends on the person. Personally, I’m a big fan of Hungarian photographer Robert Capa, particularly his immortal piece The Falling Soldier. This shot is one of the most valuable images of war in the twentieth century. That’s exactly what made me experiment with surreal and fantasy art and creating images that the human mind doesn’t believe.

What advice can you give to emerging photographers?

Be realistic and truthful to yourself. Understand what and how much you’re willing to sacrifice, be it school, your career, a social life or your income. It’s never easy to succeed and sustain yourself in the beginning. It can take people anywhere between half a year to even a few. It’ll take dedication and luck but hard work and perseverance is the key. Never give up, no matter how hard it is. Nothing is impossible.

Can you tell us about the process of how you take photographs?

There are a variety of ways a concept falls into place, most often it starts with a spark of inspiration and grows from there. Whether it’s a person, design or story that needs to be told, it all starts with a single point. From there it becomes simple problem solving. I don’t spend very much time looking at what other people are doing. I like to stay aware and connected to what others are doing by following sites such as Flickr but beyond that, I spend my time meeting people, creating and living my life. I think the best way to become inspired is not by emulating others, but finding what inspires you. Capture and share that. I use Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 4. I use Lightroom to correct and change the colorimetry pictures. Then I go on to the most important part, Photoshop retouching. To learn how to master these tools, I spent hours in front of my computer studying the tutorials available on the internet.

“I think one of the most important things would be to always be yourself, and it is very important that you take things seriously.

You may need to make some sacrifices in order to succeed, and you have to be as realistic as possible so as to set goals and work to achieve them…”

06

and

Imaginary

“I believe that with my photos I can have people think outside the box, and with normal things we find around us every day, I still manage to convey a special message. With surrealism I can take a break from reality.�

E X P O S E

07

How One Photographer Captures the Glory of Birds in Flight

An otherworldly look at a familiar sight.

By Winnie Lee

Dark, sinuous lines float in a blue sky. It seems straight out of sci-fi or fantasy—a fantastical spacecraft transitioning into its cloaking shield, or a mythical beast in flight. In reality, it is cranes at Gallocanta Lake in Spain, dozens of them, traveling between where they feed in the fields and where they sleep in the water. It is many frames, compressed to a single moment.

Catalan photographer Xavi Bou is fascinated with birds and the challenge of making their flight patterns visible. He has combined his passions for nature, art, and technology to create these images which he calls “ornitography,” from the Greek ornitho- (“bird”) and graphe (“drawing”).

Ornitography #97

The photographer learned to appreciate nature from childhood walks with his grandfather in the town Prat del Llobregat, where Bou grew up. It is located in the Llobregat Delta, one of the most important wetland zones in the region around Barcelona, and a key spot along bird migration routes. “He made me look at how to differentiate them [the birds],” Bou writes, about his grandfather, in an email, “how they were not the same throughout the year.”

08

Ornitography #34

An an adult, “One day I wondered what types of trails the birds would leave in the sky if that were possible,” he says.

“That is when I imagined those lines that would appear in the sky. I thought it might be interesting to make them visible.”

He made his first test images in 2012, and the project has changed his life so much that he stopped his professional work as a postproduction artist and has dedicated himself exclusively to his ornitography work for the last five years.

Creating these images is a slow process. He might spend a couple of days at a site recording video footage. Then it can take a week to 10 days to process the images in low resolution, and then another week to create a high-resolution final image. “To be able to show a period of time in a single image and not do it through a long exposure,” he says, “what I discovered is that I had to take many images per second and merge them into one. I shoot between 30 and 120 frames per second, so I use high-resolution movie cameras and shoot most of the time in slow motion … Then I merge the sequence into a single image.”

Initially, Bou focused on the flight of a single bird , against the background of a colorful landscape. Over time he’s been drawn to groups of birds against the flat backdrop of the sky. “It is a more abstract result,” he says, “but for me, it is much more powerful…. It goes beyond the simple ‘beauty.’”

In some cases they can resemble Asian calligraphy (Ornitography #123) or frantic knots of scribbles (Ornitography #169).

A particular favorite subject of Bou’s is starling flocks, because of their unpredictable flight patterns. One image (Ornitography #130) shows beautifully soft and amorphic abstract shapes—but depicts a life-and-death drama of hunter with prey. According to Bou, the voids in the middle of the image were produced by hawks attacking the flock. “I am passionate about the idea of how a sculptor, the hawk, shapes the shapes of starling clouds,” he says. Atlas Obscura has a selection of Xavi Bou’s images, which are on view at the University of Rennes in France until January 15, 2020.

Ornitography #62

E X P O S E

09

Fisheye lens camera Tips: get great shots with a fisheye lens for Canon and more

By James Artaius Whether you’re using a fisheye lens for Canon, Nikon or any other camera manufacturer, fisheye photography is a fantastic way to capture a unique perspective on the world. But, how can you get the best out of this fun technique? Follow our fisheye lens camera tips to get the most effective use out of this unusual lens effect.

It can be hard to see past the “fisheye” of a fisheye lens, and subsequently easy to fall into the common trap of shooting lots of similar, gimmicky shots – and then leave the lens gathering dust on your shelf, because you think that’s all it can do.

However, like any other lens, a fisheye is a tool. But, where most lenses are tools for very specific purposes – a portrait lens is for shooting portraiture, a tilt-shift lens is for taking architectural shots and so on – a fisheye lens’ specific purpose isn’t a genre, but simply creativity.

Some people insist that you can’t use a fisheye for a number of areas of photography – that you shouldn’t shoot portraits with it, for example, or wildlife. And while it’s true that you can’t take traditional shots with a fisheye, if you know the lens’s strengths and weaknesses you can use it to take creative shots in almost any situation. Especially the ones that you’re not supposed to!

Here are some of ours tips on how to make the best use of your fisheye lens to take impactful, creative shots that prove your lens can be more than a one-trick fish. Let’s start with a very simple shot that makes use of the fisheye’s unique perspective and massive field of view…

10

01 Choosing your fisheye lens

There are many fisheye lenses that you can choose from, but here we’re using Canon’s EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM with a 180-degree angle of view that enables you to create circular fisheye images, as well as shots with full-frame coverage.

02 Make the most of your large depth of field

Fisheye lenses enable you to achieve a large depth of field.

So we’re going to shoot with an aperture of f/8, to maximise this, and use the ISO and shutter speed to control the brightness of our exposures.

03 Get low to the ground

With its enormous field of view, we can get down and close to the subject, exaggerating the perspective. This achieves a low angle that wouldn’t be possible with a normal lens unless we dug a hole in the ground!

Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM at BHPhoto for $1,249

04 A background can make or break your shot

With a portrait lens and/or a shallow depth of field, you can disguise almost any background – but with a fisheye, you’re going to see everything. As this image shows, a bad background can ruin your shot.

05 Expose for the sky

Shooting at f/8 severely limits the light – especially at dusk, to get that sunburst. Expose for the sky, as that’s tricky to recover in post, and ensure that you’re shooting Raw so there’s max file data to work with.

E X P O S E

06 Fixing the exposure

We got the highlights correct at the point of capture, so we need to recover shadows. Use the Shadows slider to bring detail back, then tinker with the Contrast and Clarity to add punch.

11

Made Of Your Greatest Adventures...

Vintage Photography Photographs Open Doors Into The Past, But They Allow A Look Into The Future.

-Sally Mann

E X P O S E

15

A Beginners Guide to 35mm Film Cameras

By: Nick Pope

Chances are you have a mate who carries a vintage camera at all times. Spends each weekend wandering aimlessly around the Barbican, photographing leaves and balconies.

Would defend their Instagram ‘aesthetic’ with their lives, if it came down to it. Still, what an Instagram it is! And they’re not alone in their obsession. Driven by a desire to stand out from the brunch crowd and grow their follower count, millions of people have dived into the world of #35mm cameras over the past few years – and needless to say, you want in too. Well, It’s not as simple as you might think. But who better to start you on your journey than John Wade, author of Retro Cameras: The Collector’s Guide to Vintage Film Photography? No one, that’s who...

Buying “There’s bags of stuff on eBay, and that’s probably the first place to start,” says John. “A 35mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera would be your best bet.”

Opt for a model from one of the big five brands from back in seventies: Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus or Pentax. They’re all basic, hardwearing, top quality and shouldn’t come at too much cost. 35mm film cassettes can also be bought cheaply on Amazon. “You can pick a classic, pre-owned Canon A1 up for around £80, or an AE-1 Program for slightly more, and they can do everything. But any camera with a program mode is good for a beginner.” Program is an exposure function that does all the hard work for you, until you feel ready to manually alter your shots.

Famed for bridging the gap between photographers and hobbyists in the seventies, both Canon cameras come fitted with ‘shutter priority’, which means “you can choose your shutter speed, and your camera will automatically choose an aperture” (that’s the hole in the lens which dictates how much light travels through the camera body). Other great options include the (almost) indestructible Pentax K1000 and the Olympus OM-1. If you want to get your hands on the camera before you buy, then check out vintage markets – but without the safety net of eBay or Amazon, you have to know what to look out for. “As you pick them up, go through all the shutter speeds and make sure they’re not sticking - that is, opening but not closing. That’s your first port of call.”

It’s also worth checking if replacement batteries are still available for your chosen camera. “Mercury sales were deemed a bit dangerous in the late eighties, so many batteries have been discontinued.” Give it a Google before you buy, just in case. One more thing: if you authentically want to pursuit film photography, then steer clear of Lomo cameras which produce those once-trendy but low-quality shots that took over Instagram a few years ago - the ones where colour bleeds into the edges of the frame. “A lot of people refer to all old film cameras as Lomo, but they’re not. Lomo cameras have got nasty old plastic lenses, and produce imperfect pictures. I spent my life trying to avoid taking shots like that!” Of course, if you’ve got some money to spend then you can get your hands on a brand new, top-spec camera. We recommend a model from the Leica M series.

16

Understanding your camera

If you want to move past automatic mode, then you’ll have to get your head around the shutter speed, aperture and focus functions. “For a picture to look natural, it needs to be correctly exposed,” says John.

The aperture controls the light let through the lens, and the shutter speed decides how much light is allowed to reach the film. According to John, different shots require different combinations of the two. “If you’re interested in photographing sport, for example, you’d want a fast shutter speed to capture the action - and that means you need a wide aperture. If you’re photographing landscape, you’ll rely on the aperture, and then compensate with a light shutter speed.” Fast shutter speeds freeze the action, while slow speeds can be used to blur movement.

Aperture settings are generally set on a ring around the camera lens, while shutter speeds can be found on the top plate dial (the opposite is the case in digital photography). Generally speaking, it’s always better to overexpose than underexposure your film, whether it’s black & white or colour.

But if it all sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry. The best results will come from experimenting with your camera, and finding what settings work for you. “Learn what the camera’s doing and start to do it yourself. You’ll have more fun.”

With that in mind, it’s probably best to use the shoot with the same film to begin with. Different brands offer different results, and you’ll find it harder to analyse and adapt your approach if there are too many variables at play. Start off with cheaper film and move up the ladder as your progress. Low ISO film (50-200) is better for sunny conditions, while higher ISO film (400+) suits dreary weather and indoor photography.

Developing your shots

Unless you plan on covering your bedroom windows with bin liners and creating your own dark room, you’re going to be splashing out on developing photos. “At one time it was dirt cheap, but the prices have just about tripled. You can develop colour film – 36 pictures – at Snappy Snaps for around £15.” The bin liners are sounding more appealing now, aren’t they? “Building your own dark room is a hell of a lot cheaper than it used to be,” says John. “Very few people want the equipment nowadays, so you can buy an enlarger for a few quid on eBay. There are companies which still specialise in the chemistry, too. We used to black out the downstairs toilet, so that nobody could get in.” Your housemates probably won’t approve of that, so stick with Snappy Snaps. They’ll even give you the shots back on a CD, so you won’t have to mess about with a scanner, or send them to you by email in a digital format. There are also a lot of programs that will allow you to digitalise your processed negatives without a dark room. VueScan, which is available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, will help you scan images so that you can tinker with them on software like Adobe Lightroom and photoshop.

Photography Tips

“When you look through the viewfinder of a camera, it’s very easy to to have tunnel vision,” warns John.

“You focus on the subject in the middle of the frame and nothing around it. Then you press the shutter, and your subject is small. Make sure to take in the whole image through the viewfinder.” When it comes to subjects, John believes it’s all in the details. “Strange patterns in brickwork, and that kind of thing.

Really start looking at things you’ve taken for granted in the past.” But ultimately, 35mm is best suited to snapshots of life. “If you look back at pictures that were taken fifty, hundred years ago, it’s not the lovely landscapes that are interesting – it’s the snapshots. Because you see life as it actually was, rather than an idealised version.” In this overly filtered social media age, perhaps that explains why the 35mm renaissance shows no sign of stopping yet.

Retro Cameras: The Collector’s Guide to Vintage Film Photography by John Wade is out now.

E X P O S E

17

4 Great Vintage Street Practically any analog camera can be pressed into service as a street camera—the late great Weegee used a 4x5 Speed Graphic to expose the seamy and sentimental sides of New York City, and the incomparable Vivian Maier stalked the streets of Chicago with a twin-lens Rolleiflex. But when it comes to discreet shooting on the fly, nothing can quite match a 35mm rangefinder camera as proven by the timeless work of countless photojournalists over the past 90 years. I’ve shot with many of them myself, including each of the 8 Great Vintage Street Photography Cameras listed below, and I can commend them to anyone who enjoys capturing images of people being themselves. Needless to say, this list is not intended to be definitive, and if it inspires you to check out other great film cameras that fill the bill, by all means do.

18

1. Leica M4

2. Canon VI-T, VI-L

Any M-series Leica rangefinder, analog or digital, qualifies as a great street camera, but the classic M4’s combination of understated elegance, Spartan simplicity, quiet precision, and unsurpassed performance make it a top choice. Introduced in 1966, it combined the features of its predecessors the M3 and M2 and added a few of its own, all aimed at enhancing convenience and flexibility. Its superb 0.72x range/viewfinder provides projected, parallax-compensating frame lines for 35 mm, 50mm, 90mm and 135mm lenses and it has a more conveniently angled plastic-tipped film-wind lever, more contemporary looking self-timer and frame line-selector levers, and an ingenious angled film rewind crank in lieu of the traditional pullout knob on the M3 and M2. It also employs a fixed, 3-slotted take-up shaft instead of a removable spool that makes film loading quicker, more secure, and less fiddly. The Leica M4 is considered by many Leica aficionados to represent the high point in the evolution of the Leica M due to its exquisite range/ viewfinder design and its unsurpassed mechanical quality. Fitted with a superb (non-ASPH) 35mm f/2 Summicron-M or 35mm f/1.4 Summilux-M lens it’s a street shooter’s dream, but at 4-5 grand so equipped it’s not for the faint of wallet.

Introduced in 1959, this splendid pair of interchangeable-lens, rangefinder Canons are tops in terms of features and overall quality, and they’re superb street cameras, especially when fitted with fast, high-performance wide-angle lenses like the excellent 35mm f/1.8 Canon of the era. Both the trigger-wind VI-T (image above) and lever-wind VI-L (image at the top of this story) feature a three-position range/viewfinder showing the fields of 35mm and 50mm lenses plus a 1.5X setting for critical focusing, auto-parallax adjustment of shoe-mounted finders (!), titanium focal-plane shutter with speeds from 1-1/1000 sec plus T and B, folding rewind crank, and Leica-derived 39mm screw mount. To this magnificent mix, they added parallax-compensating finder frame lines for 50mm and 100mm lenses, a top-mounted, non-rotating shutter dial for setting all speeds 1-1/1000 sec plus B, X sync, a double lock on the hinged back, a self-zeroing frame counter, and back-mounted film type reminder dial. Most often found with 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/2.8 or 50mm f/1.2 Canon lens, they’re also premier user collectibles currently fetching $200-$400 (body only) depending on condition, on the used camera market.

Photography Cameras 3. Nikon SP

By: Jason Schneider

4. Zeiss Contax IIa/IIIa

The ultimate iteration of the classic, interchangeable-lens Nikon rangefinder camera and perhaps the most famous, the signature feature of the Nikon SP inrtroduced in 1957 is the distinctively shaped, wide window for the viewfinder, which includes projected, parallax-compensating framelines for focal lengths from 50-135mm and a separate built-in viewfinder for 28mm and 35mm lenses. The latter feature makes it an especially good chice for street shooters that favor wide-angle lenses such as the outstanding 35mm f/1.8 W-Nikkor.The SP was also compatible with an electric motor drive, popular among photojournalists and sports photographers. Features include: Single stroke film-wind lever, cloth focal-plane shutter with speeds of 1/1000 sec plus B, and self-timer. Most common normal lenses: 50mm f/1.4 or f/2 Nikkor. The Nikon SP is most often found in chrome finish, and really clean examples currently run about $1,000-$1,500 (body only). The later Nikon S3 and S4 (street price $900-$1,200, body only) also make great street cameras. Both have fixed, non-parallax-compensating viewfinder framelines, but this isn’t a major disadvantage in street photography.

One of the truly great interchangeable-lens 35mm rangefinder cameras of the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the Contax IIa was an upgraded, improved version of the landmark Contax II of 1936. It retained its superb long base, combined range/viewfinder and top-mounted, non-rotating shutter-speed dial which sets the full range of shutter speeds from 1to 1/1250 sec plus B. The shutter release is conveniently and cleverly inset in the center of the wind knob, and there’s a conventional mechanical self-timer lever on the front. The classic Contax internal bayonet mount was retained, allowing full lens interchangeability between models, but outer bayonet lugs were added to provide a more stable platform for heavy telephoto lenses. Other classic Contax features include milled finger-wheel focusing, a simplified, more reliable version of the signature roller blind, vertical-travel metal focal-plane shutter, and a removable back with bottom-mounted twist lock. Besides being technologically advanced, the Contax IIa is an exquisitely made, high performance machine. The superb line of Zeiss lenses includes the 50mm f/1.5 Sonnar, and the 35mm f/2.8 Biogon, both favored by street photographers. A companion model, the Contax IIIa is basically a Contax IIa with builtin uncoupled selenium meter added. The only downside: Zeiss never got around to adding viewfinder frame lines to their magnificent creation, so you’ll have to add a separate shoemount viewfinder if you want to shoot in the street with wide-angle lenes. The upside: Nikon S rangefinder wide-angles fit and function perfectly.

E X P O S E

19

11 Vintage Photos of What Photography Used to Look Like By: Hanna Brooks Olsen

When you consider the scope of human history, it’s kind of incredible to think how far photography has come since its birth just a few hundred years ago. From the humble camera obscura to the ridiculously cool technology we all use to shoot now, it’s pretty amazing to look back on the history of photography itself and realize just how much has changed, and how much we take for granted. So, for Throwback Thursday, we went hunting for vintage photos…of vintage photographers!

20

This image has a lot of history, courtesy of the National Media Museum, who write: “Richard and Cherry Kearton introduced the ‘hide’ method of bird-watching and photography. Cherry stands on Richard’s shoulders to take a picture. The brothers were pioneers of wildlife photography, producing their book ‘With Nature and a Camera’ illustrated with a 160 photographs in 1899.

Richard Kearton (1862 – 1928) moved to London from Yorkshire in 1882 to work for Cassell’s publishing house; worked with his brother Cherry Kearton, their book ‘With Nature and a Camera’, was published in London by Cassell & Co in 1899, written by Richard with photographs by Cherry.

Cherry Kearton (1871 – 1940) was a photographer and documentary film maker of animals and nature; worked with his brother Richard Kearton, their book ‘With Nature and a Camera’, was published in London

by Cassell & Co in 1899, written by Richard with photographs by Cherry; film director; set up his own film company producing natural history and expedition films.”

Of this old-school selfie, the National Media Museum notes: “William R. Bland was an amateur pictorial photographer who worked as a banker throughout his life. He took up photography aged 40 and became an active part of the local photography community. He exhibited and judged competitions including for the Royal Photographic Society of which he was a fellow. His work was influenced by photographer J. Page Croft.”

Some of his portraits are also part of the collection, including this one.

This image of a bridge is one of his most wellknown. Bland, according to the New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, “took up photography at the age of 40, initially in order to instruct his son on the use of a camera, and subsequently joined and exhibited his work in local photography clubs.”

E X P O S E

21

22

Underwater photography is pretty easy now, but it didn’t used to be. This photo, from the LOC’s Bain News Service collection, featured a title written right on the negative, which read “Photo shows John Ernest Williamson (1881-1966), pioneer of undersea photography, entering his “photosphere.”

Williamson invented the photosphere as a way to capture underwater landscapes safely and without damage to his equipment. The son of a ship captain, he was already prone to interest in the deep sea, but needed a method for exploring it with a lens. The tube he used to go underwater was actually repurposed from boat repairs, which makes the whole thing a pretty creative feat.

The photosphere was used in popular entertainment, helping to film the underwater scenes from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

E X P O S E

23

The Modern Traveller