NikonGear'23
Images => People, Portraits, Street, PJ & Cityscapes => Topic started by: David Paterson on October 10, 2017, 20:36:18
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My recent trip to n.w. Scotland reminded me that many years ago, I started work on a book about that region. The book never happened and the work just got filed away and hasn't been looked at since, ie. for 44 years. I dragged some of it out of storage and made a few very quick scans (all from 35mm bW negatives - Kodak Plus X developed in D76, for anyone who is interested).
Drumbeg, June 1973, the sheep-shearing:
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I really like the portraits !
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Really lovely stuff there and thanks for sharing. Just goes to prove to me that I still love how film renders. Like the Kodak Plus X you are using here....I think it is a good pairing with the subject matter.
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Those are very sensitive and emotional. Great capture of people. Do you have any relationship with them?
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As I was born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where sheep was commonly seen in the suburbs, such scenes look very familiar, especially they are shot in the early seventies when I spent my naive years.
Thanks for remembering and sharing the images, Dave!
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Thank you for your kind comments, Armando, Andrew, Paco and Akira.
Those are very sensitive and emotional. Great capture of people. Do you have any relationship with them?
No, no relationship. I stayed in their tiny village for about two weeks in 1973 and have been back there quite a number of times. I never saw any of them again, but while I was with them a strong bond of friendship existed.
As I was born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where sheep was commonly seen in the suburbs, such scenes look very familiar, especially they are shot in the early seventies when I spent my naive years.
Thanks for remembering and sharing the images, Dave!
I am also very used to sheep - my brother was a farmer and always had sheep; we usually have sheep in the field next to our house, and occasionally we have to chase them out of our garden; they do love to eat roses. :(
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Beautiful work David,
I really like the looks of the scanned Plus-X and your processing.
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David, thanks so much for posting these images. They are a "memory lane" experience for me. My father and his brothers were sheep farmers in southern NZ and your Scottish images remind me very much of the personalities that farmed near to where we were in NZ - not too surprising really as the vast majorty of them were Scots by descent. I also agree with Andrew's comments re the film look. Quite apt for this application I feel.
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After 44 years I guess not many of those sheep are still on the planet.
Would be interesting to see how the young girl turned out.
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Ah, those were the days. :)
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a wonderful set of images, beside the great portraits I like in the first this on sheep in the center, just jumping away
and yes, we have a lot of sheep here in our area. Now the discussion raises, how to protect them, as we get wolves back
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My thanks to Jakov, Jack, Hugh and Bill.
After 44 years I guess not many of those sheep are still on the planet.
Would be interesting to see how the young girl turned out.
Probably most of those men are gone as well - most of them would have been in their 50s or 60s in 1973. The little girl would be around 50 now! I'm going to email a few of these to a friend who lives nearby to see if we can identify her (and some of the men too). I'd like to give prints to any of them who are interested, or to their children or grand-children.
Hugh - I'm glad that these resonated with you, and I realise from my own experience that events like sheep-shearing look pretty much the same all over the world. I once encountered a team of shearers who travel all around the world to wherever large numbers of sheep need shearing. This was in the Falklands Islands, there were six in the team (mostly from NZ) and they aimed to shear 5000 sheep that day. That's more than one per minute per worker for 12 straight hours; those guys were tough.
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Thomas - thank you - I'm glad you like them, and it's good to hear from you. I hope you are well.
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wonderful
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Wow, that's a fascinating trip down memory lane. Very interesting, no-nonsense characters who no doubt faced more that a few challenges in their chosen livelihood. B&W is so appropriate for those images - beautifully processed. You must have quite a store of interesting negatives!
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I have a feeling this could turn into a very long and extensive thread,,, :) Very nice documentary style!
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Thank you so much, Frank, Mike and Erik.
Mike - one of the sadnesses for me is that I have thousands of b/w negatives (and 40,000 transparencies), the vast majority of which will never be scanned or seen by anyone, including me. It's just far too big a task. When I finally accepted that I had retired, I threw out approx. 20,000 b/w commercial negs, but my personal work is still intact, and goes back to 1965. I'll try not to let that make me feel old. ::)
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No, no relationship. I stayed in their tiny village for about two weeks in 1973 and have been back there quite a number of times. I never saw any of them again, but while I was with them a strong bond of friendship existed.
I am also very used to sheep - my brother was a farmer and always had sheep; we usually have sheep in the field next to our house, and occasionally we have to chase them out of our garden; they do love to eat roses. :(
The man in the second and other images seems to resemble you. After reading your reply to my comment, I thought he could be your grandfather...
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The man in the second and other images seems to resemble you. After reading your reply to my comment, I thought he could be your grandfather...
Yes, he is a very good-looking guy, so you could easily think he might be related to me . . . . . . . 8) 8) 8)
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Dave, I'm floored...
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Fantastic images! Maybe it is time to reconsider that book. These deserve a wide audience.
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Fred, thanks for your very kind comment - as a matter of fact 12 of these images will be included in a book which I am working on right now. It will be produced by Blurb.com and this means that only a small number of people will ever have an actual book, however I'm looking at ways to make a pdf version freely available.
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Really great pictures ! I'll look at the Blurb's selling store if you make it for public selling :-)
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Thank you, Jacques -I probably will put it for sale at Blurb - I'll let you know.
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Terrific work, David: wonderfully expressive portraits.
Those of us who shot film need to give it another look because, if it was processed and stored properly, there are probably some real treasures locked away in those negative sleeves.
After Nepal's back-to-back earthquakes a couple of years ago, I realised that I had extensive coverage (shot in 1972 on colour negative stock) of a way of life and of treasured historic buildings which are now no more.
My Nepal series is here:
http://shelbourne-america.net/Historic-Nepal/index.html
We had taken our two very young children right round the world on a global adventure during the summer of 1972 and although I had developed my film I had printed very few frames so none of us had ever seen the pictures.
The Nepali tragedy got me scanning the whole of the rest of the huge number of photographs from that journey and Blurb printed a book for me to give to my fellow intrepid adventurers for Christmas.
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Ann, I do agree, particularly because the world has changed do much since some of us started taking photographs. Looking back, it sometimes appears that we lived in an entirely different world.
The big problem is the scanning process is so tedious.
The benefit is that once old photographs are liberated into digital life, they can be shared with many people.
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Terrific work, David: wonderfully expressive portraits.
Those of us who shot film need to give it another look because, if it was processed and stored properly, there are probably some real treasures locked away in those negative sleeves.
After Nepal's back-to-back earthquakes a couple of years ago, I realised that I had extensive coverage (shot in 1972 on colour negative stock) of a way of life and of treasured historic buildings which are now no more.
My Nepal series is here:
http://shelbourne-america.net/Historic-Nepal/index.html
We had taken our two very young children right round the world on a global adventure during the summer of 1972 and although I had developed my film I had printed very few frames so none of us had ever seen the pictures.
The Nepali tragedy got me scanning the whole of the rest of the huge number of photographs from that journey and Blurb printed a book for me to give to my fellow intrepid adventurers for Christmas.
Dear Ann! First time I have seen the full coverage. I remember a thread on the old site with very few of these in it. Great series!!!
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Thanks, Ann, I'm very pleased that you like them. Your lovely images of 1972 Nepal are exactly how I remember 1979 Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan - very little had changed during the intervening years.
How to deal with an already much-reduced film archive of perhaps 25,000 b/w negs and 50,000 transparencies - in all sizes from 35mm to 10x8" - is something I am trying to come to terms with; it's not easy to come up with a manageable regime which carries a reasonable chance of preserving all the best work, while getting rid of all the inferior stuff.