London with the Lensbaby
About three weeks ago I had an exhausting day in London, taking in exhibitions and making photographs along the way.
I started in St Pancras Station using my camera with a Lensbaby, to try to get a different take on the well photographed set pieces. For those of you who have not come across the Lensbaby before, it is a lens with an optic which has a flexible base to allow you to shift the angle of the lens away from the plane of the camera to get selective focus. It is possible to change the glass part of the lens to give different effects. I have just bought the Lensbaby Three Optic Swop kit, which comprises, a single glass optic which gives more distortion than the double glass optic that comes with the Lensbaby Composer (the basic lens), a plastic lens to give Holga type effects and a pin hole/zone plate lens. I did not have the tripod with me so I worked with the single glass optic and the plastic lens, using an aperture, mainly of f5.6. I also took the 50mm f1.4 lens with me, to try and compare using this on a very large aperture.
Then I went to Somerset House where I saw the Erwin Blumenfeld exhibition, "Blumenfeld Studio - New York 1941 - 1960". Blumenfeld was a photographer who started out in Germany and then moved to France where he became very experimental under the influence of Matisse and also the Dadaists. He was noticed by Cecil Beaton who got him a job with French Vogue. At the start of the second world war he was imprisoned in France because of his German nationality (although he was Jewish) When the Nazis rolled in to France in 1941 he was allowed out and moved to New York where he worked for many of the fashion magazines. His approach was very cutting edge and he innovated many of the styles still used today. His personal photography was always rather weird and he did a lot of self portraiture. I would have liked to have seen more of this in the exhibition. He died of what seems to have been a self induced heart attack in Rome in 1969. Somerset House needs to be congratulated on mounting yet another great, and free, photographic exhibition.
It was a beautiful sunny day, the hottest of the year and the fountains were turned on in the courtyard of Somerset House where children were playing and running through the water.
I walked from here up the Strand to Embankment Station and got on the train to Green Park. I was going to see the Sebastio Salgado platinum prints at Phillip's the Auctioneer's gallery. They had about 50 photographs from Genesis and some of his earlier work (not platinum) on display in a large cool area, with jazz playing on the speaker system. It was great, I was on my own and able to wander around and take time with each picture, a much more enjoyable experience than I was able to get later at the Salgado Genesis exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Just as I was about to finish a man came in and, rather than starting in a different place to where I was, he chose to start at the picture just in front of the one I was looking at, thus simulating a crowd!
From here I went to the V&A to take some pictures of the statues, and finally to the Natural History Museum where I met up with Alan and Hugh and we looked at the Genesis set. I had mixed feelings about them. After seeing the platinum ones, some looked over processed and too contrasty. Our tickets were timed for 7.00pm and the rooms were really busy with people, not particularly talking about the photographs, but standing in front of them gossiping about work and generally getting in the way. I resolved to go back when it was quieter and did not even bother looking at the last 25% (Alan and Hugh were out of the door anyway by then).
We ate at a really cheap noodle bar where the people at the table next to us found a finger nail in their food. We won't be going back.
After all that preamble, here are the pictures. The last one showing the oranges going down to the juice bar at the V&A is the only 50mm lens picture to make the final selection (taken at f4.8)
I started in St Pancras Station using my camera with a Lensbaby, to try to get a different take on the well photographed set pieces. For those of you who have not come across the Lensbaby before, it is a lens with an optic which has a flexible base to allow you to shift the angle of the lens away from the plane of the camera to get selective focus. It is possible to change the glass part of the lens to give different effects. I have just bought the Lensbaby Three Optic Swop kit, which comprises, a single glass optic which gives more distortion than the double glass optic that comes with the Lensbaby Composer (the basic lens), a plastic lens to give Holga type effects and a pin hole/zone plate lens. I did not have the tripod with me so I worked with the single glass optic and the plastic lens, using an aperture, mainly of f5.6. I also took the 50mm f1.4 lens with me, to try and compare using this on a very large aperture.
Then I went to Somerset House where I saw the Erwin Blumenfeld exhibition, "Blumenfeld Studio - New York 1941 - 1960". Blumenfeld was a photographer who started out in Germany and then moved to France where he became very experimental under the influence of Matisse and also the Dadaists. He was noticed by Cecil Beaton who got him a job with French Vogue. At the start of the second world war he was imprisoned in France because of his German nationality (although he was Jewish) When the Nazis rolled in to France in 1941 he was allowed out and moved to New York where he worked for many of the fashion magazines. His approach was very cutting edge and he innovated many of the styles still used today. His personal photography was always rather weird and he did a lot of self portraiture. I would have liked to have seen more of this in the exhibition. He died of what seems to have been a self induced heart attack in Rome in 1969. Somerset House needs to be congratulated on mounting yet another great, and free, photographic exhibition.
It was a beautiful sunny day, the hottest of the year and the fountains were turned on in the courtyard of Somerset House where children were playing and running through the water.
I walked from here up the Strand to Embankment Station and got on the train to Green Park. I was going to see the Sebastio Salgado platinum prints at Phillip's the Auctioneer's gallery. They had about 50 photographs from Genesis and some of his earlier work (not platinum) on display in a large cool area, with jazz playing on the speaker system. It was great, I was on my own and able to wander around and take time with each picture, a much more enjoyable experience than I was able to get later at the Salgado Genesis exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Just as I was about to finish a man came in and, rather than starting in a different place to where I was, he chose to start at the picture just in front of the one I was looking at, thus simulating a crowd!
From here I went to the V&A to take some pictures of the statues, and finally to the Natural History Museum where I met up with Alan and Hugh and we looked at the Genesis set. I had mixed feelings about them. After seeing the platinum ones, some looked over processed and too contrasty. Our tickets were timed for 7.00pm and the rooms were really busy with people, not particularly talking about the photographs, but standing in front of them gossiping about work and generally getting in the way. I resolved to go back when it was quieter and did not even bother looking at the last 25% (Alan and Hugh were out of the door anyway by then).
We ate at a really cheap noodle bar where the people at the table next to us found a finger nail in their food. We won't be going back.
After all that preamble, here are the pictures. The last one showing the oranges going down to the juice bar at the V&A is the only 50mm lens picture to make the final selection (taken at f4.8)
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