A couple of years back, I reviewed Marco Paoluzzo’s book about the Faroe Islands, Føroyar. This followed on from his other “Arctic series” books, Iceland and North/Nord. Finally, he has put together his magnum opus, Terra Borealis, with photography from Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, Svalbard and Norway.

Hvitserkur, Iceland: the cover photo of Terra Borealis. Photo © Marco Paoluzzo.

Terra Borealis has been out for about 6 months (and Marco was kind enough to send me a PDF proof over a year ago), so I’ve been a bit slow to write about it. Meanwhile it has been getting good reviews in various publications, and is currently being promoted on the site of the well recommended photo book retailer, Beyond Words. So this is old news.

Marco Paoluzzo is far from the typical landscape photographer - in fact I doubt he’d describe himself as that at all - even if landscapes figure large in his work. He has much more of a reportage view of the world, and is equally fascinated by the human presence in the landscape, or indeed shaping the landscape, as the place itself. He doesn’t photograph people very much, at least not in the Arctic, but he doesn’t shy away from the worst excesses of environmental damage, for example at Barentsburg, Svalbard. In this he reminds me a little of Edward Burtynsky, but less formal. He also shows a fascination with how man has managed to survive and prosper even in these harsh climates, not only in the more obvious Inuit communities, but also severe concrete constructions like those found in Kirkenes.

However, landscape, or perhaps better, “place”, figures very strongly. Since he uses only black and white, and generally avoids the heavy contrast, long exposure style of others such as Josef Hoflehner, this is almost a “decisive moment” approach. It’s certainly very individual, and may not appeal to the general landscape audience. It’s also in stark contrast (ha!) to the highly colorful Iceland “standard” style piled high in Keflavik airport - or indeed found all over Flickr. And it’s all the more refreshing for that.  Terra Borealis is a book that requires, and rewards, a certain degree of engagement and time.

Personally it has a style which resonates with me, even if I’m no black & white photographer. There are strong undercurrents of wonder mixed with ironic humour, and more than a degree of quiet romanticism. Paoluzzo’s photography doesn’t grab you by the throat, it just invites you to contemplate for a while.

My personal favourite is from the back of the dustjacket. It’s a shot taken from a ship cruising up the west coast of Svalbard, and typically, Marco has framed the wild, empty landscape using the ship’s structure, and as you look, you become aware of the coffee cup tucked away in a corner, and just become part of the scene.

Svalbard, observed. Photo © Marco Paoluzzo.

I don’t know where he can go from here with his Arctic series. Russia maybe ? But as you can see from his web site, he has plenty more tales to tell.

If you’ve got a bit of the Arctic in your soul, you need this book.

With Mac OS X Lion and new MacBook Airs released today after weeks of speculation, today was a good day to bury bad news in the tech world.  So Lasersoft, God bless ‘em, chose today to announce, at long, long last Silverfast 8, the next major iteration of the venerable Silverfast: 

SilverFast, the most popular scanner software in the world, is released as brand-new version SilverFast 8. After many successful years, SilverFast will be available completely renewed towards the end of August for the most important scanners of all major manufacturers.

I guess Silverfast 7 was dropped in the Baltic Sea or something, since we’re jumping straight from 6.x to 8, or maybe it’s just in recognition that nobody could possibly make us wait this long for a new version.

So, we’re promised such joys as a new user interface (let’s hope they didn’t hire PhaseOne’s designer), multitasking (gasp) and much goodness. The bit that leaves me a bit worried is “for the most important scanners of all major manufacturers”.  The place of the Minolta Dimage MultiScan Pro in that august assembly must be less than guaranteed.

Well, I for one am looking forward to this more than OS X Lion.

The Hasselblad XPan is not noted for it’s usefulness in wildlife photography, still less in birding. The longest lens is a 90mm f4, which equates roughly to a 50mm in “normal” 35mm terms. Arguably.

So when I was looking for something to scan today (it was raining), I came across a very untypical series of shots I took at Latrabjarg, Iceland, in 2004. That day - or rather night - I was photographing puffins using my Olympus E-1 with 50-200mm lens (that’s 400mm in 35mm terms), when the battery died. And I didn’t have a spare with me, and the spare was about 20km away. Bugger.

So,throwing convention to the wind, and to the amusement of my companions, I switched to the XPan. There can’t be many other places in the world you can get close enough to wildlife, even less birds, to get away with this, but these puffins have no predators on land, and really couldn’t give a damn about some strange animal crawling towards them waving a weird object.  Of course they didn’t really stand still long enough to get many shots - this is shot on ISO 100 Velvia 100F, at f4 I imagine. Maybe 5.6 at a push.

But still, it sort of works, and is vastly different from the standard DSLR shots I got once the battery was recharged.

p.s. Afterwards, I discovered that the E-1’s battery has a sort of “rebound” effect. Leave it off for a bit, switch in on again, and you’re good to go for another 50 shots or so. Same goes for the E-400, but not the E-3, which eats batteries like a pig in donut shop.  Anyway, in this case I’m glad I didn’t know, I’d never have even considered this otherwise!

Today was SWISS HARLEY DAYS (well one of them) in downtown Lugano. Yay. I don’t like Harleys, mainly because of the obnoxious and totally unpleasant noise they make. But I had to go downtown anyway - ironically to go the chemist to try to find something to stop me making obnoxious and totally unpleasant noises while I sleep - so I didn’t have much choice but to grin & bear it. And the streets were crawling with Harleys, Harley Guys, Harley Chicks, and people selling pretty much anything with Harley branding.

Great opportunity for street shooting, no ?

Well yeah, but I don’t do street shooting.

So just for a complete change, since I decided to do some street shooting, of Harleys, why not throw in another spanner and dig out my long-retired Canon A1, put a roll of slightly out of date Ektar 100 in it, and bolt my rediscovered 50mm f1.2L on the front ? And so I set off.

Terrible iPhone photo…but rather gorgeous, isn’t it ?

I took me a little while to get into the groove, but I soon got back into it. Frames 14, 15 & 16 have some great shots featuring bits of a bikini-clad biker chick posing for all and sundry on a very impressive Harley. Unlike the slobbering mob focusing on her more obvious attributes, I went for close up, f1.2 gorgeous-detail. Frame 15 features a close up of the tattoo on her ankle against some detailing of the bike’s chrome. Awesome.  Frame 17 is a KILLER. I got a large Harley dude with a patch saying “great legs, what time do they open ?” on his leather jacket, with the patch in the foreground, and her legs, which did indeed match said criteria, in the background, lying on the Harley. WHOA! I’m motoring here.

Well, of course I would have been if the camera had been switched on.

It’s simple, shooting with film, isn’t it ? Just set the aperture, set the speed, focus and click. Bingo. Well yeah. If, that is, you remembered to turn the thing on. Unlike my digital wonderboxes, or indeed my XPan, the A1’s shutter will fire with the camera - and hence the meter - switched off. I’m not sure why. There’s no control over shutter speed, or is there ? Can’t remember.  I’m not sure why I didn’t realise there was no meter display, either. So, after frame 18, I switched it on.

Oh well. Back to the hot chick, who is starting to look a little concerned at this weirdo with the antique camera.  The rest of the roll was sort of ok, but really not as inspired. What the hell, I’ll rewind it and take it the last surviving 1-hour shop.

Oops. Seems I didn’t quite remember how to load a roll of film into an A1.  Oh well. Again.

So I went home and did a bunch of chores, for example lying on the couch thinking about what part of the gardening to do.

And later I went back into town with two more rolls of Ektar, the first properly loaded, camera switched on, Av mode, ready to rock.  The hot girl was looking a bit frazzled by now (it was a hot day) but was still game and so was I, but the bikes and been moved around and the geometry wasn’t there any more. Nevermind, I still took a few shots, and then wandered off to take some details of bikes, and some more street shots, including a nice candid of two pseudo-Angels. At least I hope they were pseudo.

And then I came home. And I decided to write this post. And I took the photo above. And while fooling around with the A1, I noticed that the aperture on the 50mm seemed to be stuck wide open, as it was when I first tried to put it on my E-P2.  Oh well once more. At least a good number of shots were at f1.2, so I guess something will have worked.

But in any case, it was really, really fun using this camera again. I felt, I dunno, somehow sleek and graceful (ha!) compared to all these people lumbering around with huge DSLRs, constantly chimping, photographing from 2 miles across the street with zoom fully extended.

Film is fun. Even when it doesn’t work. Oh, and Harleys are ok, too.

For those of us still in the Stone Age of film, and slide film at that, there’s a lot to worry about. Dwindling film supplies and variety, processing labs dropping like flies, and especially that day when the film scanner goes bleeeeeep-kerTHUNK. And then it’s Game Over, unless of course you’re willing to sell your soul to Hasselblad for a Flextight. The last (and first, really) wave of affordable, high quality medium format scanners from Nikon, Minolta, Polaroid and Microtek are fast approaching Lights Out. But remarkably, a potential saviour has arisen in the shape of Germany’s Reflecta. Although they’re probably not well known outside of Central Europe, Reflecta is a company with a long history. Typically they’ve made various low to mid-range accessories and devices, including slide projectors (I believe some Leica slide projectors were rebadged Reflectas) and cheap and cheerful 35mm film scanners. However, as the mid to semi-pro market collapsed, Reflecta has been cautiously and quietly edging upwards, acquiring a credibility-enhancing partnership with Silverfast on the way, as well as some encouraging reviews. Although the fact that they have practically no credible competiton must help. And now, well they’ve taken the major step of announcing their first medium format scanner.

And note, unlike any of it’s comparable predecessors it goes up to 6x12. It doesn’t appear to have a dedicated 35mm panoramic holder, but I guess one can be cobbled together.

On paper the specifications look modest. A DMax of 3.6 (I wonder how many people remember what that means) and an optical resolution of 3200dpi. Probably enough, and actually probably closer to the truth than claims of 4800dpi and similar, but not terribly exciting for the marketing men. But then it doesn’t need to be. It has no competition whatsoever, if you discount worn out overpriced eBay fodder.

From pre-release photos it appears to have a mechanism and construction similar to the Microtek / Polaroid 120 scanner, with a moving holder and fixed sensor, which is a pity. Moving sensor systems generally provide a much better platform for multisampling.

It is due to be available in July, but so far no pricing has been announced. I would expect something in the range of €1000, but I suppose it could be higher.

And will it be any good? Well, we’ll have to wait and see. But with the alternative being Nothing, I suppose the bar’s not set too high.