New York Fashion Week

From the collection of Erkan Coruh

It's New York fashion week and I'm not really inspired by what I've seen so far, but I never am. However, amongst the blandness that is designed for the masses and knocked out in China, you do occasionally come across something tht will definitely not find it's way to the high street, at least not this century. This collection by Erkab Coruh has caught my interest, not least because of the photography, which I love.Is it ahead of its time? Ironic? Or a mistake?

From the collection of Erkan Coruh

Untitled Portrait

Untitled by Tim Irving

The First Sunset in Colour

First Sunset by Adolf Miethe

This is possibly the first sunset photographed in colour! It was taken by Adolf Miethe in 1903. Adolf Miethe was an important figure in early photography, co- inventing the magnesium flash and the first colour camera, that combined 3 negative plates to make the final print.The same camera that was used by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky to photograph 19th century Russia.

The original negatives

The 3 original negatives are being auctioned in Germany on the 25th of this month with a starting bid of 100 euros. I love this photo and could look at it for hours. I wonder what the final auction price will be?

A Visit to Middle England

The life of a photographer is exciting and it doesn't get much better than last weekends assignment, the Church Hall. To be more precise, the monthly book sale within a church hall situated in the Home Counties. I bought no books, but I had a very entertaining morning.......

Physically this church hall is in Suburbia, about 18 miles from London, but it represents every church hall I've ever entered, it is Middle England and slightly to the right. A land of sensible footwear.

I'll leave you to look at the photographs, but I'll tell you that the layout of the books, which are stacked randomly, don't make it easy to browse. One lady told me that looking down and continually turning her head to read the spines, made her feel sick. So be warned.

35mm film in 120 Cameras

Happy Accident - Tim Irving

The image above was taken because I wanted to incorporate sprocket holes into the picure. The only way I know of doing this is to use 35mm film in a 120 (medium format) camera. Incidentally, the negative wasn't scanned, I re-photographed it.

Running 35mm film through a 120 or 620 camera is very easy to do as you can see by the sequence below:

The items you'll need: A roll film camera, 35mm film, polystyrene packing foam, black adhesive tape

Insert the 35mm film into the camera, add the foam to keep the film central - Pull the film across to the take up spool and wind 2 full turns

Close the camera back and stick tape over the windows to prevent fogging

Make a mark on the wind on knob

Isn't that easy!
I wound the film 2 full turns for each exposure. The spacing is uneven and overlapping, but for my purposes it really doesn't matter. So now you know how to do it, good luck.

A Journey to Nowhere

My daughter used to say to me, more often than I found comfortable "What's it like to be old?" I should point out that to a child a dad always appears old and at the time I was a young man and couldn't give her a satisfying answer. Now I am older, I can tell you and my daughter, that with age I am becoming increasingly emotional, a good obituary can make my eyes damp. I'm also becoming nostalgic and getting a liking for experiencing 'deja vu'. I'm pleased to say my memory, which has never been wonderful, is still in tact, I don't forget friend's names and cover up by calling them "Darling", yet.

On Monday I gave in to nostalgia and visited a historical railway, running trains from the 1950's and 60's. My excuse was testing a batch of old (mature), film and a few cameras. I boarded the nice red train you see below and spent two hours riding up and down the one mile track. Happy to be alone in a 1960's compartment carriage. The train made the same clickety clack noise, had the same rolling motion and even the same smells as the train I took from Crewe to Inverness in 1968 on my way to the Outer Hebrides. After going back and forth for an hour I walked through the train's corridors to find the buffet car and had warm scones and tea served on a bone china tea set, by a smiling waitress.

Back in my compartment, I even managed a 5 minute doze before my train arrived at the station for the hundredth time that day and I had to leave. The whole experience was a journey to nowhere, but it was good journey. The film needs another year or so to mature but there's no hurry, the cameras performed faultlessly. - Nostalgia is rock and roll.

Le Boudoir - Still techniques in film making

Lily DesLys - Le Boudoir from Treyban on Vimeo.


No, the video isn't a cheap ploy to entertain you while I'm fitting a new toilet and sink. It's a nicely made video, but I'd like to draw your attention to the sequences that are blurred, like the opening shot where the dancers legs are in focus but the background is blurred.There are also a few handheld sequences where blur is introduced.

This is a very difficult effect to achieve using a video camera , so i'm guessing here, but I think this film has been made using Canon 5D Mark 2, which is a still camera with a video function. By using wide aperture prime lenses the film maker has added bokeh in a movie. By professional movie standards, a Canon 5D Mark 2 is cheap, so I expect to see tasteful blurs popping up all over the place, until it's done to death.

I also noticed that the film maker has created a vignette by shading the corners of the frame. This technique is usually used to draw your attention to the action, but seems redundant given the subject of the movie.