Hello everyone. I’m afraid it’s a bit cobwebby here at the moment, but there’s lots of news and stuff coming so keep your eyes peeled.

A quick titbit to whet your appetite – I’ve got a piece in theprintspace‘s annual show in East London. The show, “Sample 12″ is curated by award-winning photographer Toby Smith and runs from Thursday 2nd February until the 28th. Check it out, there’s some great work on show!

Sample 12
theprintspace
74 Kingsland Road
E2 8DL

2nd February to 28th February 2012
Monday to Friday: 9am to 7pm

Nearest transport: Hoxton overground, Old Street underground, Bus route 243

If you’ve come here from the show, you’ll find more of my work on my Flickr page

More updates to come this week!

Previously I’d been shooting in the field and this stuff goes on the turn so quickly that by the time I was home and able to scan it, it was too late. You can peel the film apart to arrest the chemical reaction (I previously tried this here), but this time I wanted to capture the slide through sepia fog into darkness. This time I shot indoors in a controlled environment, a simple still-life, then scanned the print every couple of minutes. Here’s a short film clip I’ve put together to show the descent into shadow (press play):

Here are a couple of the images, caught at various stages of their chemical reactions:

"black & white i" - 1 minute after full development

"black & white i" - 10 minutes after full development

"milk" - after exposure

10 minutes after full development

20 minutes after full development

I also tried a wet peel technique to preserve the image – you wait for full development, peel the image apart, then wash it. Here’s the before:

"Persimmon" - after full development

…and here’s the image after peeling:

"Persimmon" - wet peel technique

Once the peeled image was dry, it was then just a case of scanning it in as if it was a slide.

The “Persimmon” image brings me neatly to the subject of print sales. Finally, after a wait of eons, my print shop is finally online! You will find an initial release of four limited editions (including “Persimmon”), plus a series of mini-prints (open edition). A new set of mini-prints will be released quarterly. To visit the shop, click the link below!

These were taken with my trusty Hasselblad after the first snowfall – when it was pure and exciting and the novelty was enough to make you forget your morning frozen toes (by day three the honeymoon is usually coming to a grubby, watery end). Image v was taken in Waterloo where there is some very pretty underfoot LED lighting. I was too late to find some virgin snow illuminated by the blue, but the footprints remind me of notes on a stave, so I’m not too unhappy.

The lightbox feature (where you click on an image and see it full screen) isn’t working at the moment (fixed!). To see them in all their pristine whiteness, visit the Flickr set here

I may produce some of these as fine art prints soon, so watch this space.

i

ii

iii

v

vii

Addendum: Titling all these images in Flickr teaches you how to spell rhythm pretty sharpish: Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move!

Seville Oranges

This week sees the launch of my first collection of prints for sale, in both signed limited editions, and unlimited signed mini-prints. These are fine-art giclée prints, professionally printed on heavyweight 308 gsm Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper using Ultrachrome K3 archival inks.
To be notified when the prints go on sale, follow me on twitter or send me an email.

The Mistress Of The Storm is published by David Fickling Books on 1st July 2010, and you can order it from Amazon here

“A wind-swept, salt-sprayed novel that will whisk you away . . .

Verity Gallant knows she’ll never be as pretty and popular as Poppy, her perfect little sister – she doesn’t quite fit in. But when a mysterious stranger hands her an ancient red book, everything changes.

Verity becomes embroiled in a tale of dark magic and intrigue; she uncovers old rivalries and discovers new friends. Together, she, Henry and Martha explore the secrets stirring in the ancient harbour town of Wellow.

But what will it take to stop a powerful witch hell-bent on revenge?”

For more news on the series, and to read some excerpts from the book, visit Melanie’s site here.

Tan SX70 Alpha 1

So…after realising that my black and silver SX70 Sonar was not going to be an easy repair job, I decided to bite the pillow and buy a replacement. I probably umm’ed and ahhh’d for a good two months. Firstly you have to wade through the many SX70 lots on eBay that are listed as “not sure if it works but it used to in 1978 when my Grandad used it last”…which seemed to be most of them. There were also a few lots which were re-listed with suspicious regularity; this suggested to me that a buyer received it only to discover it no longer worked and sent it back. I almost bought one from PolaPremium, but refuse to pay the inflated prices. In the end I bought a very pretty tan leather SX70 Alpha 1 (manual focus), deciding that a sonar autofocus model would add to the list of things that might go wrong with it.

Two design icons

It came with a very nice leather carrying case, the strap of which broke the moment I put it on. Luckily the camera wasn’t damaged in the drop. I tested it with the remaining film salvaged from the old Sonar:

Found Toy

Incidentally, I finally got around to scanning the last Polaroids that I managed to take with the old SX70. Briefly in August it started working again for a few hours, long enough to take some photos at Steve’s birthday party. When it came to taking my self portrait, the SX70 died for a second and last time…I’m trying not to take it personally:

August Picnic

Goodbye SX70 Sonar…I will miss you

RIP

One day last year, on inserting a fresh film pack, the motor just kept running and would not stop, even after ejecting the cardboard dark slide. I’d read that this was a fairly common affliction and was due to a snapped plastic shaft that attaches to the motor. The repair is quite simple and involves opening the camera up and reattaching one of the springs in lieu of the shaft (see here for details).

The first hurdle was actually getting the SX70 open. The base plate is covered by a sheet of aluminium (covered in leatherette) which you must remove to get at the screws underneath – it’s glued on pretty tight and it’s quite easy to wreck the covering getting it off. That’s when I discovered that the screwheads were a non-standard 1mm square:

That funny little screw

I looked everywhere online and searched my local Maplins store top to bottom, but couldn’t find a screwdriver to fit. Apparently most SX70s are assembled using star-shaped Torx screws, but my mine was one of the very few held together with non-standard square-head screws. My friend Ben, a sculptor, came to the rescue and filed down an Allen key to make me a bespoke screwdriver small enough to undo the screws!

DIY screwdriver

Aaaaarrgghhh! To heap Pelion on Ossa, the moment I opened the casing I found this:

Drive shaft repair (circled)

That was the repair that I was about to make, and someone had got there first! You can see clearly that the end of the screw has been poked into a little slot on the drive shaft coming from the motor. If the problem wasn’t solved by this repair, then it can only mean that something else was wrong (most likely costly gear damage). I had to admit defeat, my beloved SX70 Sonar was kaput…

Dead SX70

There’s something very beautiful about twilight; not just the temperature of the light – the muzzy blues and drowsy mauves – but one is so used to the fleeting nature of it, that by the time you’ve really started to appreciate the moment, it’s gone.

This far North (the furthest North I’ve ever been) the twilight lasts for several hours, and it’s not long before it starts to play tricks on the eye and mind. There’s a charged sort of clarity to the landscape that you get with day-for-night scenes in films, like the shadows and edges are too sharp for such a late, fuzzy hour. But it can’t be; I look at the time and it’s only 3 o’clock in the afternoon, but every sense in my body ignores this fact and promptly initiates a midnight shut-down. Drinking a cup of coffee in a little wooden cafe nestled in the mountains and fjells is all I can do to stay awake.

This was the first time I’ve shot exclusively on digital; for practical reasons. If there was going to be any Aurora activity, I wanted to know there and then if the shot was successfully recorded – after all this was a rare opportunity. With the luxury of hindsight I would now have taken medium format film as well. The Nikon D200 is a nice bit of kit but I reckon good old-fashioned slide film is made for the light out there.

Taxi rank, Tromsø town centre – about 3 pm

We were fortunate to be looked after during our stay by Per Helge and Trond Håvard, who were very generous with their time and brimming with local knowledge. I have happy memories of being driven at daredevil speed by Trond Håvard in his rattling, Sherman tank of a van through valleys and up hills; waving at live deer, and clinging on for dear life…silently I thanked the inventor of seatbelts!

The tank!

We also got a private guided tour around the Tromsø Museum and the local art school, Kunstakadamiet i Tromsø. Towards the end of the week, we were invited to Per Helge’s apartment for dinner and conversation and baffled him by photographing his very photogenic kitchen post-meal.

As is always the way, we later found out there was a short spike of Aurora activity while we were indoors. Most likely it would have been too weak to see so we probably didn’t miss anything. Yes, I’m afraid we didn’t see one glimmer of the Northern Lights. The nearest was an artificial recreation of the Aurora Machine in the Tromsø Museum. I wish we’d been able to turn the real Aurora on with the press of a button…

Aurora Facticius

To see the full set of images from Tromsø, click here to be taken to the Flickr set.

It’s the Winter solstice and the days will soon be getting lighter; but where there’s hunger, there’s danger.

Your very own box of instant joy

I’m thrilled to write that one of my Polaroid images has been published in a box of mini notecards by Chronicle Books*. This is a continuation of 2008‘s limited edition book, “For The Love of Light“, which it featured in. Once again the very talented and very organised  Jen Altman was responsible for getting this together. The whole edition of Light has now sold out, so this box of notecards is a second chance to own some of the images. And if you already own the book…why not buy the notecards anyway? Christmas is only a few weeks away!

My contribution "Fading Now"

The image the editors chose was “Fading Now” from my short series of expired flowers. There are 19 other cards (though my set had a couple of extra duplicate cards) featuring photos by Jen Altman, Jenny Vorwaller, Yu-I Chan, Liz Shuman, Cori Kindred, Shu Fang Lee, Jen Gotch, Fernanda Montoro, Mathias Meyer, Anna Beard, Nanako Koyama, Amanda Gilligan, Maditi, Anne Naumann and Hannah Huffman.

A few of the cards in the set

The notecard and the original. Guess which one's which!

The notecards are printed on quality card stock, with a varnish over the image so they’re shiny like a real polaroid…

Bling like the real thing!

And as a nice little touch, the border is printed with the texture of the original Polaroid paper frame

The 20 polaroids

Famous at last!

* If you purchase the notecards through the link on this site, I get a little commission – thanks.

There’s some news coming in an hour or two, but my bed is calling and it’s too cold to sit up all night, clattering away on my Mac keyboard so it will have to wait. Until tomorrow…

It’s a sad day for me…Sunday just gone I woke up early (couldn’t sleep) to a beautiful sunrise. As is my habit I reached for my polaroid camera, pressed the shutter and…kaput. My beloved SX70 is now dead. It could be in a temporary coma, but I prefer not to apply the balm of false hope.

All this in the week that a package of rare polaroid film arrived from Austria. Fate is taunting me.

«Taxi!»

Well, the shots from Paris have been processed for some time now – either hanging up in my bathroom (several rolls of black & white: tri-x and acros100) or back from their trip to the lab. Now begins the long slog of dusting, mounting, scanning and spotting said negatives and slides…but I’m being lazy. So far I’ve only managed to upload one and a half rolls of colour from our trip. That leaves 25 and a half rolls left to upload!

This is 2008…surely we sould have robots to do this sort of thing for us by now?

As soon as the prints are available for sale I’ll post a link here, but in the meantime if you want to be kept up to date on developments, drop me an email: mat{at}cyanblue.co.uk