The previous post entitled  Nostalgic Pleasures #3 gives the  background to  my  experiment in a minor key  of using 35mm expired Fuji Velvia 50 film  and a 1960's Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR camera.  The  picture  below was made whilst I was wandering  in the area around   Bunjils Cave  in the Black Range Scenic Reserve, adjacent to  the Grampians (Gariwerd) in Victoria  in the  late afternoon in spring.  

The photography that day was chance encounters in a rugged, harsh  and messy  landscape, which  had a history of being burnt from bushfires and with a probable future of becoming warmer and drier:  increasing dryness with more  hotter days  (greater than 35°C) whilst the spells of warmer temperatures will last longer. The climate models indicate that the temperatures will increase by  1.9°C----2.5°C by around mid-century. 

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The picture below is a  second  example of using  expired Fuji Velvia 50 with a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR  and  a Zeiss  Pro-Tessar 35mm f3.2 lens.  The  film  was processed in E-6 chemistry at an Adelaide lab,  then scanned by me  using an Epson V850 Pro flatbed scanner with Silverfast software. The  digital file was post-processed  in Adobe's  Lightroom   This analogue/digital combination makes it a hybrid. 

(Pitkin Rd, Waitpinga, 2024)

The picture was made in the late afternoon during the winter months whilst on a poodlewalk with Maleko and it is a part of the low key  Roadside project, which  is a work-in-process. Pitkin Rd  is a no through  local road in Waitpinga, in the souther Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia  and it leads to several small hobby (life style) farms.  

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The photo was made just after sunrise  during  the recent,  intense stormy conditions on the weekend in the last week of winter. It was Sunday morning  and I sat on a rock at the top of Rosetta Head looking over Encounter Bay  waiting  for the clouds  to cover the early morning sun. 

The north westerly wind on the weekend was  gale force. It was gusting  around 80-125 kph and   the temperatures were 10-15 degrees above  normal in South Australia.   The wild winds  caused a lot of damage in Victoria and extensive flooding along the Derwent River in Tasmania. The latter had been in drought during the autumn and winter of 2024. It appears that the weather is becoming increasingly volatile and turning  quickly from one extreme to another.

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The photo below is another one  from my little experiment   in  nostalgic pleasures: ie., using expired 35mm Fuji Velvia 50  film  exposed at 20 ASA, handholding  a  reconditioned  1960s  Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter,  a 35mm f.3.2 Zeiss Pro-Tessar lens,    and  having the  film processed  with  E-6 chemistry  in Adelaide. 

Nostalgic pleasure in this case is pre-digital analogue technology that  was disrupted by digital technology in the early 21st century.  The digital camera industry collapsed between 2010-2012 due to the emergence of the smartphone killing off  the entry-level camera market ( point-and-shoot cameras) which shrunk nearly to nonexistence.

The photo is a cloud study at  Waitpinga  in the late afternoon  during the winter months:

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According to those who're paid to have their  finger on the pulse of the  Zeitgeist there is  a trend emerging in western culture of people returning to using analogue point and shoot cameras and film. The reasons given for this step back from digital  vary: nostalgia for grainy film quality, full of charm and imperfections;  mental health in that film helps them slow down (mindfulness);  and more trust in photographs taken with a film camera more than a digital photo. with its increasing incorporation of AI. 

Eliza Williams, the editor of Creative Review, says that  people ( ie., gen Z ) "are  looking for some release from the pressures of daily life and the addictive qualities of screens, cameras and taking photographs offers a sense of nostalgic pleasure, which feels wholesome and arty while also making you look cool”.

This  is my  recent embrace of  nostalgic pleasure:

The details are:  walking along Halls Creek Rd, Waitpinga on a  late  afternoon in winter, expired Fuji Velvia 50  film exposed at 20 ASA, a hand held  Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter from the 1960s,  and  film processed in E-6 chemistry by a lab.  The process involves a  detachment of the process of taking a photo and the actual photo itself. 

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These three photos  were  made whilst on a photowalk in the Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park with Adam and Michael  Duttkiewicz and a couple of  their friends at the time.   This would have been a decade or more ago.  It would have been  around the time when I was still living in the city,   re-learning to photograph  in black and white,  and experimenting in seeing in b+w.   

I have not looked at these  files for a decade or more,  as the quality of some of these b+w negatives was poor.  I was embarrassed as they  were underexposed, overdeveloped, and  clumsily  composed.    

 I didn't bother to go through these archival  files  to see what is actually there.  I dismissed them and forgot about these archives.    Until now.  

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I mentioned my  brief  experiment using a roll of expired film --- Fuji Velvia 50 transparency---  here on the Leica poetics blog. Though the results were pretty ordinary, if not largely  disappointing,  I've  decided to continue with the expired film experiment.

I've been gifted  with more  expired Velvia 50 in both 35mm and 120 formats.  I had hoped to use  the Rolleifex 6006 for the 120 film,  but it is not working, despite a newly packed  battery. The electronics are the problem by all accounts, and it needs to go overseas to be repaired as  nobody in Australia  is willing to, or capable of  repairing  it. That's expensive,  so I will  continue  the experiment  in the short term  with the expired 35mm Velvia 50. 

I recently  acquired, courtesy of  Brett Rogers in Moleswoth, Tasmania,   a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super  SLR camera with a standard 50mm Tessar lens, leaf shutter and   coupled selenium light meter, along with filters,  lenshood and a  camera bag plus  the loan of 35mm and 85mm lenses  to use with the 35mm Velvia 50.  The Zeiss Ikon Contaflex  SLR, which  was manufactured by Zeiss-Ikon AG in Stuttgart, West Germany between the years 1959 and 1962, is what's known as a vintage camera.    Mike Eckman has a very informative account of the  post war history  of both the Contaflex and the Zeiss-Ikon company.   Zeiss today is a high end lens manufacturer.

This history indicates that I have stepped back into the subculture of collectors and vintage cameras  with  its nostalgia, archives,  museum  and memories --- often to the extent of living off its  remembered inheritance and history. It  is a step back into past times  so as to  use a quality vintage, mechanical camera  in the present with expired film.  This requires  that you have  access to skilled technicians,  like Brett Rogers,  who have the knowledge and expertise to  repair these antique cameras, restore them back to life, then to look after and service them with tender loving care.    

 The  two photos on this post are from the original roll of expired Velvia 50 that were  made with a Leica M4-P rangefinder. Looking at them I can see that the film needs to be rated at 32  instead of 50 ASA so as to increase the shadow detail.  They provide a starting point. The photos in the next post  will be those made with the Contaflex.  

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An experiment using  double exposure to layer the photo  and to make the ordinary seem  a bit strange through  imperfections.  

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 I have an ongoing photographic interest in edgelands. Edgelands are usually understood as  the banal hinterlands that exists between urban and rural environments, and they disrupt and  challenge the common notion of beauty in the landscape.

The picture below  is a  recent (2024) attempt at an interpretation of edgelands in Waitpinga. This   earlier attempt (in 2022)  was centred around  the early morning light and it adopts a pictureesque approach.   The more recent interpretation below is bleaker.

The more recent interpretation builds on earlier work here (in 2020) and here (in 2019). It is the bleak interpretation  that is more fitting   to this particular edgeland, rather  than the earlier  picturesque  approach.  It fits with the aesthetic experience of being in (walking in) a  degraded landscape.They are very modest compared to the work of Naoya Hatekeyama.

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The image below is a continuation of the little experiment that I'd started  a couple of years ago to try and photograph light itself. Light is the subject. 

This  is late afternoon light in the Redwoods near Beech Forest in the Otways in Victoria in March 2024.   I was concerned with the  intensity of the light. 

I  experimented whilst walking amongst the Californian Redwoods that afternoon, but  I wasn't really happy with  the results of light falling on the trunks of the Redwoods.   I needed to de-literalized’ the images much more. 

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