Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

When I started off with my large format work, I had a couple of things on my ‘dream list’. One of those was a drum scanner (which I’ll come back to in a future post) and the other was one of Jobo’s automated processing labs. Well it took me a couple of years before I finally started developing my own film in a completely manual Jobo unit and a few months after this a friend of mine, Baxter Bradford, told me he was selling his film gear and buying a Phase setup and one of the things he was selling was a Jobo ATL2300 with a load of extras and a whole host of spares. Well, fortunately I had a little cash and a campervan that would fit the thing in and so I became the pround owner of one of Jobo’s flagship processing machines.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the ATL 2x00 series, they consist of a thermostated bath, motor and lift - just like your usual middle of range Jobo systems, but they also have an automated chemical pumping system, a powered lift, a chemical heating system and program settings to automate all of these systems. It’s as close you can get to a ‘plug and play’ system for film developing with investing with a full dip and dunk, replenishment system.

Soo - what does this mean for film processing? Well - for me it means I can mix my chemicals, load the film into a Jobo drum, attach it to the ATL and press a button. The system then waits until chemicals and water bath are up to temperature and then starts processing, pumping water and chemicals in at the right time, finally ‘ping’ing when it’s all done (although it gives you a countdown too so you can set a timer and wander off). Once it’s done, it can either sit on a rinse cycle or just stop.

This isn’t too much of an advantage, although it’s nice not to have to sit next to the machine for most of the process - when you’ve a lot of film to develop this could come in handy. However, it will come in very handy soon when we don’t have any more 3 bath e6 process chemicals left (you did know that they have all been discontinued? Buy up the last stock from AG Photographic while you can), keeping an eye on a 6 bath process just adds more scope for mistakes and more attention.

To support all this excessiveness, I’ve also set up an osmosis unit (a small yachting one) so that I can get pure water on demand (150ml in two minutes) and a tempered water panel which mixes hot and cold to a set temperature for the Jobo’s rinse cycles (although this did contribute to a flood in our office - don’t use mixers like this on a gravity fed system without a one way valve on the hot water; otherwise you end up with cold water shooting back into your hot water system, overflowing your header tanks and if all things are OK, causing water to overflow outside the house - or if things in your plumbing aren’t OK, causing water to overflow into your office... DOH!).

Anyway - I had fun setting all this up in my garage (with some sweet talking of ever patient wife) using one of IKEA’s fantastic shelving systems. I also set up my recently purchased film dryer and had to solve a problem most people have in that most film dryers are configured to dry roll film and so trying to fit lots of sheets of film in a small space (about 12”x10”) is tough.

However, with my penchant for magnets (see my Lee filter adaptations in older blog posts) and some flexible craft aluminium rods, I set up some inserts into the body of the dryer to make sure each sheet is separate and won’t touch any other sheets. If anybody is intersted in this, drop me a line and I can send you some instructions.

A couple of things I’ve learned since I last posted about e6 processing wouldn’t go amiss at this point.

• If you can, use distilled or at least filtered water. I would recommend getting distilled water for the first and colour dev steps as this will prevent any pH problems which can cause colour issues. Also, filtered water is a really good idea for the final wash as any dust in the final step will become embedded in the emulsion. (be wary of using distilled water in a Jobo - they use water resistivity to monitor the flow and distilled water doesn't conduct)

• Much disagreement on how long to leave the first dev in. Some documents (few) say 6 minutes, others say 7 minutes. I use 6’30” and a few people I know use 7’00”.

• Pushing and pulling variations are varied. My research and experience suggests -30% for a one stop pull, +30% for a one stop push and +130% for a two stop push. Pushing will exhaust chemistry so don’t reuse too much when doing so.

• It’s a good idea to ‘dab away’ the accumulating drops on the bottom of your sheets when drying. The concentrated stabiliser that will gather here otherwise will mark a corner of your film

• I like the little bulldog paper clips for holding film. No marks on the film and they work with my magnets! (and cheap!)

What the hell I've been doing for the last couple of months!!!

Well I can finally tell everyone what it is I've been doing for the last few months. In short, Joe Cornish and I have set up a company that is creating a Britain oriented, online landscape photography magazine. In long, it's something I've been thinking about doing for the last two years and have been actively researching for the last nine months. It started whilst I was out in the Hebrides with David Ward and we were talking about the direness of much of the photographic press and especially it's landscape photography coverage. This, and multiple other conversations, convinced me that the photographic press can never have great landscape photography coverage. The reason for this is that they are beholden to their advertisers and this means that they have to create content that attracts users who are buying stuff. This stuff is either new photographers, photographers who are upgrading their equipment or photographers buying gadgets/tours/workshops etc. There is no incentive to cater for photographers who have 'good enough' equipment and who maybe have moved on to trying to work on their composition/art. In fact, they know that the majority of photographers only buy photography magazines for a couple of years and so there is no point continuing to create new content, so they just recycle the old content on a two year basis. Oh they might throw in the odd 'interesting' sideline (witness David Ward's articles in Photographer Monthly). Amateur Photographer seems the only magazine that is willing to go out on a limb and throw some real curveballs (a recent treatise on Petzval lens construction for example).

Anyway - I rant. The answer was to plan something myself, something with that uses the advantages that the web has to offer (and that I have enough knowledge to make the most of). The following months saw me getting to know Joe Cornish through a couple of courses and finally being asked by him to develop a new website. The website has taken a while to sort out through no fault on either of our parts but whilst getting to know each other, the idea inevitably got talked about and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Joe saw the potential in the project too. So, we bashed heads and put together a plan where we could both contribute aspects that were of equal value and the company Landscape Media Ltd was registered and the 'Great British Landscapes' magazine was conceived. Unfortunately, I had a full time job and an employer that I had a lot of respect for and so the planning went on the back burner, tinkering with approaches and styles, etc.

In the end, I had to make a decision on whether the project was going to proceed and, after a supportive phone call with my wife, we decided to go ahead with things full time (well, almost full time - I'm working for my wife's company for a couple of days a week and we're incubating the project). This was three months ago and since then I've been clearing out some work (witness the Light and Land website going live for instance) and sorting out the business end of things and for the last two months it's been full on researching and developing the project. Thing's came together a couple of weeks ago where we were in a position to organise a launch date. The 18th of October will see free issue as a taster for everybody with content from a location guide of a popular Yorkshire gritstone outcrop through a technical offering on dealing with shooting into the sun and also a couple of screencasts from Joe Cornish with two never before seen pictures.

The website will be subscription based, or more properly, it will be a 'freemium' website. For those who haven't come across this term, it's seems fairly unique to the internet, it means that some of the content will be free and there will be a subscription fee for 'premium' content. The content that will be free won't all be immediately free. Some of it will be but some other bits will be 'delayed free', in other words it will be free after a couple of months but subscribers will be able to see this content immediately. So subscribers will get 'the full monty' whereas others will get what will be a large range of well written content but maybe they'll have a wait for a while for some of it.

So what 'sort' of content are we going to be producing? Well, obviously with a name like 'Great British Landscapes' it's going to be British oriented. However, this doesn't mean that it won't be relevant for non-brits, a lot of the content will be nationality neutral. There will be an 'issue' every two weeks and each issue will include a location guide, an extended article on craft or art, a screencast or interview and a couple of reviews of books/websites or other photographic material. There will also be extracts and highlights from the web, hopefully such that you can pick up GBL and it will provide enough links to get the most out of the internet without taking you away from the real work (photography, if you hadn't guessed).

Sooo - if you're interested (I really hope you are) and might possibly be subscribing (I really hope you do!) then hop on over to Great British Landscapes and add your email to the box (and you might win a years subscription!). If you're the sort of person who does that social media thang, you can also follow what's happening by like'ing http://www.facebook.com/landscapegb or following @landscapegb (if you want to follow my personal tweets, try @timparkin).

Oh, and if you're around Bradford on the 16th of October, Joe and I are giving the keynote speech for a photography conference at the National Media Museum and we'd love to have you (although you'll have to pay and check there are tickets left of course - http://www.exposureleeds.org/photocamp).

Finally - what does this mean for this blog, well I'll still be writing in it although it will probably become a 'behind the scenes' blog and I may be moving the whole website over to www.landsacpegb.com (something like http://www.landscapegb.com/timparkin). When I write stuff that might make sense to have a wider audience, it will be posted on Great British Landscapes. We're also including a few extra writers for regular features, including a special guest for the first issue.

We both really want this to reflect what the landscape photography community want and as such we're really interested in your ideas as well so comment away...

Soo - it’s been a seriously long time since I’ve been posting but that doesn’t mean nothing has happened, quite the contrary. I’ll try to keep the updates separate but to summarise, I’ve been finishing a couple of websites and I’ve finally got the Light and Land website live! I’ve also nearly launched Joe Cornish’s new website (last few products being added). On the film front, I’ve finally got my hands on a fully automated Jobo developing machine (and flooded the office whilst plumbing it in) and a drum scanner! Me and a few people from the lf-photo forum have been running a scanning comparison and I’ve worked out how to get the best out of the Epson scanner in the process (with surprisingly good results). I’ve also been playing with all of the colour films you can use now you’ve had to revert to sheet film (if you’re a large format photographer that is). On the general side, I’ve been using the Lee RF75 kit which is working really well (and fits on my LF gear too!) and I’m starting to use the Canon Tilt Shift lens too, which is a smashing bit of kit and opens up lots of opportunities.. I’ve also been off the the Yorkshire Wolds with Paul Moon and Jon Brock and have to say it’s a place that rewards investigation. I’ve also been playing with the new Intuos, have started to use Capture One and have discovered the best noise reduction software in the world ever! (for film anyway - I’ve yet to try it on digital). The big news is yet to come though, I’m announcing a new business venture in September and it’s a biggy - landscape photography related and lots of new content..

I’ll write a little post about each of these bits of photography related fun over the next few weeks and keep you posted on the business venture too..

I was asked by Jon Eland (Strawbleu) if I would be interested in giving a presentation on my photography to Exposure Leeds, a community that started as a flickr group I believe but has grown into a general photography society for Yorkshire with members coming from as far as Manchester. I was unsure of how to approach giving a talk and given that I had to fill 2 hours, I figured I could cover quite a bit of ground. Obviously most people would never have heard of large format photography and so an element of this in my talk would probably be a good plan and there were an assortment of other topics I fancied covering too. In the end I decided to create a potted history of my photography, expounding on various revelations and cockups along the way, pulling in subjects such as film, large format, stitching, exposure balancing, finding the picture, composition, persistence, etc. etc. Sort of a mini-summary of this blog I supposed (although slightly less geeky so that I'd end up with the same number of people in the audience that I started with).

Not being the biggest fan of powerpoint, I decided to give Keynote a go after hearing Niall Benvie talking about it in such high regard. The application is quite a revelation - finally an easy to use presentation tool that concentrates on the show, not on the gimmicks (although it has these aplenty but their use is oriented towards supporting the presentation, not being the goal of it).

So, laptop in hand I got dropped off at the Old Broadcasting House site near the centre of Leeds with my camera gear, some slides and a light box to present with. Inside I found a wonderful space, well appointed and with great presentation facilities (a microphone that worked and a projector that rendered colours properly - a rare thing indeed). Only a couple of people were there at the start but as I got things set up, more and more people arrived. Finally, when Jon Eland introduced me, there were approaching fifty people in the audience! Well, I figured I'd best give them some value for money (£2 entry with free coffee!).

The presentation went exceedingly well with pictures dredged up from my digital past and it was interesting seeing a consistent picture of how I've progressed as a photographer. One of the highlights of the evening for me was explaining the large format camera in terms of digital cameras.

My question to the audience was "If I said I was selling a single use 100Mp digital sensor that had a vastly superior colour handling response and only cost £3, how many people would buy it?" - the response was pretty damn positive. I didn't add the next bit but I could have "And you could buy a camera that used this sensor for half the price of a Canon 7D and you can get lenses for the camera that are the equal to the new Canon 24mm tilt-shift, which retails for £2K, for about £3-400 - would you buy it?".

I imagine most of you know what I'm talking about and, put in those terms, most people seem to react very positively indeed. Never mind adding "Oh and you can pick your sensor reponsivess to give you anything from a Joe Cornish colour boost to a Fine Art accurate colour response with 10 stops of dynamic range". I was also cruel enough to point out that if you take black and white and like using a red filter, your 20 megapixel camera is now only a 5 megapixel camera - I actually felt guilty about that one... Oh, and an interesting blog post recently about guy testing the M9 against an M6 with some microfilm developer and the results are very interesting

Other bits of my presentation were mostly about why it's better to take less pictures, reinforcing the point that the less pictures you take, the more time you have to find them and actually work on the composition once you're there. I think I made sense :-)

I finished the talk by showing a video by the God of Landscape Photography - no not Joe Cornish, Peter Lik - He of the "To get the best light I use the 5 minute window that photographers know as the 'golden hour'" - take a look at it yourself here..

The response to my talk way exceeded my expectations, as did my enjoyment of giving it. A couple of response from people at the bottom of this blog post. I went for a drink afterward with flickr photo here Tricky and Jim Moran (whom I had known through the internet for many years but had never met before) plus quite a few other people who went to the talk (it's handy having a pub next door to the venue). The evening was a great success by my criteria and I'd happily give another talk now - knowing that people find what I have to say interesting.

Hopefully we'll also get a few more people interested in large format photography! A bit of evangelism doesn't go amiss (and may convince the film companies that there is something to this large format thing - well, OK - I won't manage it single handedly but if everyone does a bit, we'll could definitely boost the scene somewhat).

For anyone who wants a taste of landscape photography, our Large Format courses are working with Leeds Exposure to create a one off outing at £120 as long as we can fill the 6 places. Each person who comes along will be able to take two pictures and will get the use of one of our large format cameras. We'll develop the film and scan it into digital for you so you'll have the original slides and a 200Mp digital conversion. We're trying to work out where to host this event and currently we're thinking about Brimham Rocks. If anybody has any other suggestions, please add a comment to this post.

Also, the feedback I've had from the talk was brilliant.. from a few twitter posts..

"Tim delivered a thouroughly interesting presentation at Exposure Leeds. It was great to see a different approach to landscape photography than I am used to and his talk (aswell as his photos!) inspired me." - Gary Stevenson

"Tim's talk was informative, humorous and above all passionate. A truly insightful evening! Did I fail to mention the superb photography?" - Malcolm Stoney

"Really enjoying @timparkin talk - nice explanation of how large format cameras work!" - Jon Eland

"Very interesting talk by the very talented @timparkin at @exposureleeds tonight, feeling a bit tempted by large format :-)" - Rick Harrison

to a wonderful blog post by Elly Oracle.

Thanks to everyone who came for making it such a fun time!

Working with Dav to put on a beginners large format course was something I was quite excited about and as much as we knew we were hitting a potentially small market, we were hopeful to get at least a few people along. As it turned out, our first course had two people and one more participant who came along on the Saturday afternoon.

So after picking up Vinnie (our new camper whose full name is Cosy Rosy Camper Vinne Van Parkin - named by my neices) in Chesterfield, I enjoyed my rolling drive over to Baslow, where we were hosting the course at the Devonshire Arms hotel.

I have to say that the Devonshire Arms has been renovated very nicely and the staff are very friendly indeed. A couple of teething problems but nothing major so we met up with our guests, Robert Parslow and Simon Howers. Robert is a veteran of many Light and Land courses and it was nice to meet up with someone whom I had been heard in very good tones before hand. Simon I didn't know and although he had a lot of experience with film, he was only just starting to use the large format camera and was interested in how to use tilts and movements.

I'd spent a few evenings the week before writing some comprehensive notes about the technical sides of photography and so the friday evening was spent reviewing some of the cameras (including Dav's new Chamonix - which I'm sure he'll write about soon but was very impressive to me). Then back to bed, check for the shitty morning weather and meet up for a nice morning's chat about tilt, shift, swing, diffraction, pies, politics, movies and then it was time to get out and put a few things in to practise.

Out to Baslow edge and we're trying out some movements and taking a few pictures. The weather was glorious with beams of light travelling across the valley that we could use as studio lighting. I tried to explain the concept of using the sky as a big lighting rig. Softboxes for the foreground (the edges of clouds where the light is diffuse and soft), a few spotlights on important features in the background (beams of light coming through the clouds) and the jobs a good 'un. I took a picture alongside everyone else.

Back to the hotel and we set up our Jobo CPE in the bathroom and developed a few films and then back out again for some more shooting, meeting up with Paul Arthur and his wife along the way. The afternoon was more overcast but we could see a good break in the cloud on the horizon so we prayed for it to stay. Fortunately it opened up and gave us a wonderful lightshow. I managed a quick shot of some Bracken shapes and a wall, making the most of the subtle purples and reds in the heather and bracken - underexposing my velvia to make the bleached bracken strands stand out in the foreground. And whilst I was taking it, Robert Parslow was taking this wonderful photograph just next door.

Back to the hotel for tea and then a slide show and a chat about composition and it was off to bed again. Sunday morning went a little less straightforwardly. I was up early but we found out that the doors couldn't be opened so I followed the fire exit and moved a chest of drawers out of the way along a corridor and then unbolted and opened the front door at which point the alarms went off - or so I though - it was actually my very loud iphone alarm telling me I was about to miss a sunrise. So we'd found a way out but we couldn't lock it again and so I stayed behind and waited for the staff to arrive.

The rest of the gang went out and enjoyed a great sunrise at Higger tor alongside a bunch of jumping, singing and dancing born again christians. Me? I was just sitting back at the hotel but unbeknonst to me the alarms had gone off and the staff member that was living in the hotel had tried to get out but his way was blocked by a chest of drawers (how did they get in front of his door then?) at which point he thought he was trapped by some gang of theives and called the police (I'm not sure where the police were though - they need a better service obviously).

In the end, we had a chat with the staff about it and apologised; we were both put out a bit. Anyway - back out again to Padley gorge and we had a few good opportunties for pictures (I got captivated by the mosses on the trees and walls).

Overall? A good start to the courses I think.. no profit made but everyone came away happy I think they all learned something. A big thank you to Paul, Simon and Robert for coming on the course and making it very enjoyable (if quite tiring and a little stressful - developing someone elses film in a bathtub is a worrying task at the best of times - even worse when they've paid for the service).

UPDATE: I've got some pictures from the course and have uploaded them to picasaweb..

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