“Any Day Now” by Elbow
What's got into me
Can't believe myself
Must be someone else
Must beAny day now how's about getting out of this place
Anyways
Got a lot of spare time
Some of my youth and all of my senses on overdriveDon't play Coltrane you will sleep at the wheel
Eyes on horizon
Don't sleep at the wheel
Secret weapon no more.
Calling all gear heads, especially Canon fanboys, this review is for you. If you’re a photo geek and have spent any time on eBay, you know that “old glass” is experiencing renewed attention. Spikes in pricing are nothing new, especially in the film photography world, but with the advent of cheaply made, easily acquired lens adapters, it is now possible to get just about any old lens to work on your fancy pants digital camera. These old lenses are valued for their “look",” and if you want to read between the lines of the spin doctors, you could deduce that this means any unique quality that one cannot find on today’s optical offerings. I love the character of old lenses as much as the next dweeb, and have had wonderful results mounting some stellar Leica glass onto my Canon 6D. That’s right, I said Leica, so sue me.
In the interest of proving that you don’t need a bundle of cash to have fun with old lenses, I will focus this review on what is currently my “go to” lens, a Canon FD 50mm f1.8 lens. Pretty sure this was the standard lens that came with a Canon AE-1 when you bought one from Andre Agassi’s older brother, back in the day. My copy was obtained from a friend who found the camera and lens in the back of their closet. Maybe I could use it, they thought. Though I already had an AE-1 of my own, I graciously took it off their hands anyway. Figuring I might be able to play with the extra lens without any real consequences, I wondered to myself…”what would happen if…?” What if I dropped the lens on the ground? What if I smashed the lens with a hammer? If I scratched the front and back elements with course sandpaper? Yes, purists, I did all of these. And then bought a cheap adapter from Amazon to attach the abused lens to my digital camera. Viola! Unpredictable results. Unrepeatable photos. I dare you to try to recreate the photos I’ve been making with this gem. Follow my method, but know, your results may vary.
On to the real world usage. The lens has an aperture range from a wide open, bokeh wet dream of 1.8, all the way to f/16. However, I never use it on any setting other than wide open. It provides creamy, shallow depth of field, with a sweet spot of focus that would make a Lensbaby cry for its mommy. It also creates fuzzy areas of blasted out highlights that make shooting into the sun a hazed out misadventure. I usually shoot with a rubber lens hood to bring down the intrusive effects of the flared out haze from light sources. Even I have my limits for how much visual schmutz I can deal with. And even though I am a self-appointed film evangelist, I appreciate the ability to shoot with this lens on my digital camera, considering I have about ten frames of deletable photos for every one keeper. I find that setting the lens at the minimum focus point and then leaning in and out until something is in focus seems to work well. Not exactly “spray and pray” more like “creep and peep.”
As far as resulting images are concerned, please keep in mind that the raw images will most likely require some post-production work in Lightroom (my software of choice, not a paid endorsement…yet…ahem…) Especially to wrench some contrast out of the raw captures. No, that’s not cheating. Use your tools, be it a hammer or the clarity slider. I find nature subjects render best using this lens, but I bet you could probably do some cool night street shooting, especially with your ISO setting cranked up to 25600, or whatever the ungodly low light setting is nowadays.
I hope you are inspired to take a hammer to one of your extra lenses and give this approach a try. Or snag the cheapest lens you can find one eBay and give it a go. What have you got to lose, except reliability, predictability, perfection, and taking boring photos that look like everyone else’s?
Metaphors are all fine and good, but sometimes the direct meaning of words is more appropriate. This year has been one of destruction, in ways small and large. And I’ll ignore stepping on the soapbox sitting next to me, holding off on the socio-political banter for the time being. We all need a break at this point, don’t we? Instead, i’m taking time to look more deeply at my work and process over the past year. Apropos, since this is entry number 50 for the year… how the fuck are we a few weeks away from the new year? Anyone who’s read this blog with any regularity (I know there are at least two of you) would know that my work has taken some radical directions this year. I’ve devoted myself almost exclusively to film photography in 2020, but there have been some forays into digital as well. I’m not a Luddite, I’m not a purist, and I’m not a film fetishist (um, maybe I’m guilty on that last count.) Most people don’t give a fuck what tools you use to create your work. It’s the final images that matter. At the same time, I can’t neglect the fact that the majority of my work this year has been a shift away from the pristine, singular image. There are roots to this shift to be found in my work over the past few years, but I think it’s been during this pandemically enforced, navel gazing year that I have allowed myself the freedom to pursue these ideas in many different ways. Some of my self-publishing projects have already reflected this move towards using several images to create a feeling, to convey my thoughts, to capture the character of a particular location. To push myself further away from relying on clarity, sharpness and other signs of a perfectionist slant, I started using my old friend, the Lensbaby, bringing unpredictability and happenstance to my photos. The deep dive into film brought another variable and an invitation to surprise. Further down the rabbit hole, pinhole lenses on my big boy dslr allowed for unrestrained exploration of shapes, forms and, as always light. Plastic cameras, slow film, home developing, scanning and post-production in Lightroom, along with a secret combo of software led me to a point where I took an even more dramatic step. I burned, scratched, pieced and otherwise degraded my roles of film, at once destroying while creating. Why stop there? I found an old lens for a Canon AE-1, that I knew was not functioning properly. So first, I threw it on the ground. Kicked it into the dirt. Stepped on it. I took a hammer to the lens. It did not break completely. Kudos to 1970s glass and metal. it still fit on my digital camera, by means of an adapter. And it became the latest tool for me to explore and record, without any hope of perfection. Or at least perfection in the literal sense. Because some of the photos I’ve been creating feel closer to an ideal to me than anything I have tried to create with “perfect” light, “perfect” focus or “perfect” composition. I’m not going to belabor the oft-quoted Picasso again, but to say that my destructive tendencies have lead to a fertile run of creation for me this year, well that’s an understatement. The muse is still here, and she brings deeper, more satisfying art from deep down in the well. And while that water flows, I’ll raise a glass and drink it. And then I’ll smash the glass against the wall.
As artists, we channel the outer world through our deepest inner mind, and then spew it back out for everyone to see (ourselves included.) I’ve been feeling creatively “bi-polar” lately… and I don’t meant diminish that actual condition, but it seems the most accurate way to describe my process. I took a road trip a few weeks ago, and looking at my images from that short jaunt, I see a very consistent approach. They look like “my” images for sure, but they also possess a quiet, staid, almost banal kind of presence. Nothing outstandingly original here, but a set of competent images. Since then, the pendulum has swung in a completely opposite direction. I’ve been shooting pinhole images, on a panoramic Holga, and a 4 x 5 wooden box camera, and the photos look nothing like the road trip photos. There is clearly a connection with some of my other work, and subject matter is more of the familiar environmental work I’ve been producing in the bosque. But after processing the film in my kitchen sink, I’ve been taking a radical approach to “post-processing” the images. I’ve been abusing the film with fire, with knives, with dirt; abrasions, scratches, bubbles, melting plastic, ash and rock. I dived deeply into an experimental phase with this direction. I am not sure where it is coming from, and I’m not sure where it is heading. I’ve overdone the technique many times, and I’ve pulled myself back from the edge of complete destruction of the film and number of times. I’ve also been fighting the overthinking that come along with most of my creative endeavors. What does it all mean? Is it any good? Why? Who cares? Still, I feel this direction is coming from deep inside of me, and I do have some suspicions that it is a reaction to the world we live in… well that’s fucking obvious, isn’t it? Forests are burning, edges are fraying, patience is crumbling, fevers are rising, destruction on so many fronts. Institutions are failing, stability is out of our reach, what do I have any control over? So, I am surrendering to the fire, to the dirt, to the happenstance, to the unpredictability… to existence, I suppose.
