After 5 weeks in Patagonia and Antarctica, and a huge editing and processing backlog to get through and even maybe publish, what was the obvious thing to do? Of course!! Go to Venice and take some more photos! Well, I’m not making any excuses. Venice is a magical place, especially in February, and it’s just down the road. So. Here is a small selection of, maybe, a slightly different take on La Serenissima. No gondolas, no bridges, no canals (well, almost). And all captured with the quite unbelievable Sigma DP2 Merrill. Oh, and I’ve also got about 300 Olympus Pen Venice shots to get through before I can get back to the backlog!

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been dedicating my “photography time”, what little there is of it, to getting a better understanding of how my Sigma DP2 Merrill camera and its associated software, the much maligned Sigma Photo Pro work. And I’ve got to the point where it’s going pretty well, and I can extract optimal results from the camera. And “optimal” in this case is truly awesome - and for once using “awesome” is justified. So much so, that the idea of buying the new DP3M, with its longer, 75mm equivalent, lens is swirling around my head at each coffee break.

coffee, sigma style

Actually, I’m also very tempted by the new compact Fuji X20 as a take-everywhere camera too. But there’s also a strong voice telling me I’ve got too many cameras. Well, what does that actually mean? To me, photography is an important safety valve that lets me blow off creative steam, which if it remained bottled up, would have serious consequences on the rest of my life. It allows me to tolerate, and try to do well at, an otherwise dull and repetitive job (relatively, that is. I consider myself lucky to actually have a well paid job with a prestigious employer, with pleasant, intelligent colleagues, and especially in the part of the world I live in. I do not forget to count my many blessings. But back to whining about toys).

So let’s do a quick camera inventory. I currently own 4 distinct “systems”.

• Olympus micro Four Thirds: this is basically my general purpose system. I have a Pen E-P3, and 6 lenses, as well as a few older manual focus lenses which can be used via an adapter. This system easiy fits in my small Domke F803 shoulder bag and is ideal for travel, especially when photography is not the dominant objective. The technical quality is certainly good enough.
• Olympus Four Thirds: this is my “serious” system. I’ve been using it since 2003, and at present I use the E-5 body. The strong point of this system are its fabulous range of lenses. The 12-60 and 50-200 zooms are class leaders, and between them cover 90% of requirements for relatively little weight and bulk. However I also have the speciality 7-14 ultrawide, the macro 50mm, and the telephoto 150mm. The latter pair are possibly two of the sharpest, best performing lenses ever built by any company, and that’s a widely held view. Also the whole system has tank-like build quality, has well proven weatherproofing, and with the E-5’s optimal live view coupled with its swivelling screen, the ability to get into really contorted positions. So this is my workhorse system for dedicated photography trips. But it’s heavy, fairly cumbersome (although considerably less so than an equivalent Canon or Nikon system), and I’m getting less enthusiastic about carrying it around.
• Hasselblad XPan: this is obviously a specialist system. I’m on my second XPan body, having destroyed the first, and I have the three available lenses. The image quality from this (film) system is excellent. To some extent this is my trademark format, and while I can still buy film for it, I’ll be using it. Actually, this too fits in the Domke F803, provided I don’t take anything else, but fully loaded it is fairly heavy. And if I take this along with the big Olympus, as I tend to do, and a tripod, then I’m well on the wrong side of 10kg.
• Sigma DP2 Merrill: well, I’ve already made my appreciation for this camera clear. In terms of niche it overlaps with both the Olympus systems, offering significantly better image quality, but considerably less flexibility. I am wondering if it could actually replace my micro Four Thirds system, but there is a lot that the mFT system can do which the Sigma cannot. But in a scenario which suits the Sigma, there’s really no contest.
• Ricoh GRD4 (RIP): since I’ve mentioned and highly praised this camera before, I should include it, but sadly it is now in the hands of some thieving scumbug in Buenos Aires (and for the record, I do not let that all too common incident - for Buenos Aires - colour my opinion of the average Argentian. They’re wonderful people). This was my everyday, pocket camera. At present the Olympus PEN has taken over that role, but it’s really a bit too big, hence my interest in the Fuji X20.

So, have I got too many cameras? I didn’t mention my antique non-functional Canon A1, my small collection of semi-functional Ricohs, or my so far unused, bought on a whim, Lomography Belair 612. So by any sane measure, absolutely yes. But I would say I’ve got too many when they start getting in the way, when they become an end in themselves. It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially with so many desirable cameras on offer these days, but I don’t think I’ve fallen all the way in yet. Obviously any camera that just sits on the shelf is a waste of time and space, but all the above get regular exercise.

I am thinking about selling the mFT system, but the apparent promise of an Olympus body which is designed for both micro and full Four Thirds lenses is alluring. I’m also thinking of selling the Olympus 150mm lens as frankly using it is a little beyond my skill level. And it ties a lot of money up. And I will sell a spare XPan 45mm lens with all its accessories.

So should I just hit the button and buy a DP3 and X20? What will they actually bring me, apart from a few minutes of retail therapy?

What I really need to do is to at least make an attempt to get my photography to a wider audience. Then maybe I’ll have a little more justification for the shopping. Although I’m reluctant to the point of neurosis to bang my own drum, frankly I feel my photography is at the very least on a par with a lot I see out there, if not better. It’s just not very strident. I need to get into self-promotion mode, nobody’s going to do it for me. But more of that in another post.

In the meantime… should I? Or shouldn’t I?

Venice, apparently, is the photographer’s dream. And indeed, I would imagine that upwards of hundreds of thousands of shots of Her Sereness are captured every day. And yet, it is quite remarkable that searches on the web for interesting books of Venetian photography give pretty barren results. Obviously there are endless shots of the Canale Grande from the Rialto bridge, of St Mark’s square (or rather the square that people think is St Mark’s but isn’t), of gondolas, etc, but actual, creative, thought inspiring stuff ? Not so much.

There are some examples I know of, but they’re quite left of centre. The late Simon Marsden’s “City of Haunting Dreams” is gorgeous, but obviously rather gothic (Marsden is the undisputed master of infrared and “supernatural” photography). And there’s Spanish photographer Toni Catany’s “Venise”, very much a book of two halves, and which seems rather hard to get hold of these days.  Leafing through both of these, Catany’s work seems to have influenced me more, at least his later stuff.

I have just ordered Christopher Thomas’ Venice in Solitude, which looks good, but again is a little specialised (he uses a now extinct large format Polaroid film). So where’s the classic ? Where’s the “Lost in Venice” that should be in every bookshop, every Venice corner tourist trap? Apparently it doesn’t exist. Maybe with everybody busy taking their own photos, there’s no market for it ? Maybe it is just impossible to grab and fix that elusive essence of Venice, which keeps flashing in the corner of your eye, but vanishes as you try to fix it on film or screen. Maybe some well-known (but not to me) Italian photographer has cornered the market ? Actually, I don’t think so, I did that search too. 

There are a couple of local photographers I discovered selling prints ands stuff, but I’m not going to link to them, because frankly they’re no better than the average visitor. And there are people doing photo tours - should be a sitting target, but again they seem sadly uninspiring.

In the current edition of Reponses Photo, you can find three “alternative” views of Venice, by three winners of Fuji cameras taken to Venice by the slightly ridiculous and rather pretentious Jean-Christophe Bechet. The results are disappointing to put it mildly (although Bechet naturally thinks they’re great). One shot modern docks in the fog - ok, fine, Venice has a modern side. Hold the front page. One shot the inside of (modern) museums - well frankly I would have thought he’d have found more, and better, material in Paris. And one was a little more courageous and shot Venice at night. At least he tried. Why did it not occur to Bechet that the real challenge lies not in avoiding replicating the millions of tourist shots, but perhaps to do them well, with an eye to really nailing what it is that captivates people about the floating city.  But no, that wouldn’t be arty enough. Except that it would. Venice could, and should, be the muse for some photographer’s masterpiece. But strangely it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. Maybe I’m just ignorant I’ll carry on searching. Suggestions, anybody ?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was inspired by reading Stuart Klipper’s “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole“ to attempt to capture some feeling of Antarctica away from the more usual high drama of high contrast, mirrored, dramatic landscapes. I hope this doesn’t descend into plagiarism - after all it’s hardly the first time I’ve tried this, or something like it - but I can’t deny that I was compelled to get the hell out of the library, and work with this soft, dull light while I still had the opportunity.  Actually, there would be all too much opportunity in the days ahead!

Both photos taken with the Hasselblad XPan, 90mm lens, and Kodak Ektachrome E100G

An unavoidable part of Antarctic Peninsula cruises is crossing the Drake Passage. Apart from the high probability of gut-churning seas, it takes at least 2 full days, more if you’re headed further South. Fortunately one of the compensations onboard OneOcean’s Akademik Vavilov is a well stocked polar library, which included a number of photo books. Most of these books were either historical (Frank Hurley, etc) or recent monographs by well-known photographers. The latter tend to follow the fine art, “National Geographic” school - beautifully crafted representations of the natural beauty of the polar regions, in the style of the particular photographer. There’s nothing at all wrong with that, of course, it’s what pretty much all photographers onboard aspired to, however unrealistically, me included. And OneOcean make sure to have not only a excellent staff photographer on-board, but often as well a professional, known photographer as “artist in residence”, for example Daisy Gilardini, or in our case, Ira Meyer. But the book that grabbed my attention was somewhat different. First of all it stood out by having a stark, subdued cover photo. And second, much to my delight, it appeared to, and indeed did, contain exclsively panoramic photography. I had stumbled across “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole“, by Stuart Klipper, and it turned out to be quite a discovery.

The photography featured in the book came out of a number of visits to the Antarctic as part of the US National Science Foundation’s artist and writers programme. This has given Stuart Klipper extensive and near-exclusive access to areas of the continent well off the tourist trail, and from these he has built up a fantastic body of work. This work is generally more aligned with the “extraordinary in the ordinary” ethos pioneered by Stephen Shore, but with the twist that there is little ordinary in this particular subject matter. It presents a much more reflective and impressionistic view than we usually see. His photographs often dictate no obvious focal point. The subject is the whole frame, and often at first glance it could seem void of interest. There are few “wow” moments. But give it a little time and space, and the otherworldliness of the scene starts to take hold. Far more than another shot of an impossibly blue iceberg against a dramatic sky, Klipper’s vast expanses of ice under soft, subdued light give you a true picture of Antarctica. And it doesn’t hurt that the majority of his work is made using the unattainable, unrealistic camera of my dreams, the Linhof Technorama 617. Which in a short documentary clip, he’s seen using handheld, for heaven’s sake!

Finding further information about Stuart Klipper is not totally straightforward. He has a website, but to say it is inscrutable is putting it mildly. When you do manage to find anything written about or by him, he seems to come across as an erudite, engaging, committed, entertaining and slightly insane character. He’s certainly a million miles away from the standard pro landscape photographer type. He offers no workshops, no gear reviews, he doesn’t sell his work, at least not directly. He doesn’t even sell his book. In fact he doesn’t even mention it on his website. He does have a Facebook page, but that has only photos on it. Which, actually, is more than enough. His non-polar work is equally fascinating, and again mainly 617 panoramic. All in all he seems to pretty much a denizen of the “art” end of the photography world (actually I’ve discovered that he is an associate professor of art at the University of Colorado).

Although it’s a bit glib to say so, I feel just a little bit validated by Stuart Klipper’s work. Although I enjoy “normal” photogaphy and try to do a good job of it, both myself and others have noticed that panoramic format work is where my heart really lies. And I have a lot of shots in my archive which could be taken for attempts at copying Stuart Klipper.

So, as soon as I’d got a little immersed in “The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole” for the first time, I couldn’t resist going to grab my XPan, and spending some time outside in the southern reaches of the Drake Passage shooting a whole roll of essentially nothing, with a few chunks of ice floating in it. Totally undistracted by the later, unavoidable lures of penguins, whales, leopard seals and big blue icebergs against dramatic skies (and indeed anybody else on deck), I tried to let the approaching Antarctic speak to me.

—-

Coda - actually, doing a touch more Googling turns up quite a lot of references to Stuart Klipper, even on one of my favourite websites, The Online Photographer.  I obviously haven’t been paying attention. It’s also gratifying to discover that pretty much everything I’ve read about him is more or less aligned with my own reactions.

Oh, and two great quotes from this interview:

Film or digital, why ?
I’m not a Luddite. Film is what
the Linhof uses.

When asked why he prefers the ‘wide-field’ format he simply says ‘because it’s wider’.