Category Archives: Photographs

Kodachrome – the only excuse to use film

Bio, Film, Photographs

Gone, but not forgotten.

The Big Yellow God. Thus was Kodak known in the 1970s because you mailed your exposed Kodachrome slide film in a yellow mailer to Rochester, NY and time and the USPS permitting, you would get your slides back, beautifully mounted in 2″x2″ cardboard, in a yellow box, in a couple of weeks.


The Ektachrome outlier was their 160ASA/ISO speed demon!

In 1970 Kodak lost a trust busting suit which allowed only the BYG to process Kodachrome and the floodgates opened to independent processing shops who could afford the costly gear and crack the 17-step process, which included a couple of re-exposure steps to effect reversal of the image. Consonant with that old economic adage that “All control drives up price” prices crashed and Kodachrome became the most popular film on the planet. That explains the above slides lacking the Kodak imprimatur on the cardboard mount. They were processed by indie shops which had a faster turnaround.


The Kodachrome process.

While my color snapping had seen but one roll of Kodachrome exposed in Paris along with one of grain crazy Ansco/GAF’s 500, I no longer had a darkroom after taking my last TriX monochrome image and, quite frankly, I was bored to death with black and white. So why not the best? I loaded up my Leica with Kodachrome 64 (I considered the 25 ASA alternative too slow) and had at it. This was in November, 1977.


My first color image in the US. November, 1977, Anchorage, AK.


Indie Kodak processing lab, Anchorage.


Harsh and high contrast.


Kodachrome yellows and reds were to die for.


On the Natchez, Mississippi River, New Orleans.


Brennan’s, New Orleans.


Bourbon Street, New Orleans.


New Orleans.


Bergdorf’s, NYC.


NYC.

Kodachrome was a very contrasty film with unique rendering of yellows and reds. It was not especially fine grained, as these ultra-high resolution scans from my Nikon D800 disclose. At ISO 100 on the D800’s monster 36mp sensor there is zero digital ‘grain’. You only see what was stored on the film itself. No matter. They print just fine.

Leica M3 and Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Paris revisited

Bio, Photographs

One last visit to The City of Light.

My first visit in September, 1974 had been nothing but joyful, confirming my love of all things French.

By October, 1977 my utter disillusionment with England saw a one way ticket to America in my baggage but, before boarding that Pan Am flight, a second and final visit to Paris was indicated. I simply wanted to cement the images of that gorgeous city in my mind. And in my Leica.

These are among the very last monochrome film images I ever took. Thereafter, once in America, my salary would double, my taxes would halve, my suit count would rise from one to three and my prospects would improve two orders of magnitude. And Kodachrome and the local printing place would obsolete TriX and the smelly chemicals and enlarger in the home darkroom/bedroom.



At the Arc de Triomphe


Self portrait with Leica




At the Elysée Palace, Cadillac and all




Wedding in Parc Monceau, quite possibly the most perfect public park …. after the Tuileries Gardens


Parc Monceau


At the Holocaust Museum. Appropriately spiky and threatening


At the Holocaust Museum


Café Cher(ie)


Working girl


The Venus de Milo has seen better days



Gorilla



Mailman


Train conductor


Gendarmes








If the English are a nation of animal lovers then the French are a nation of dog lovers


Pipe and pigeons

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX. What could be more perfect for street photography? All images ‘scanned’ using the Nikon D800.

The Hebrides

Photographs

Rugged.

By September, 1976 I had decided that it was time to move to the New World but one last trip to the wilds of Scotland was indicated. Rugged and windswept these are very remote places in seemingly terminal population decline. And who can wonder?

The various islands are connected by ferries and I recall making some pretty rough crossings.












A crofter’s cottage on the island of Harris, where the famous tweed cloth is hand made.

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Elmar and Nikon F, 28mm and 80-200mm Vivitar lenses, TriX, ‘scanned’ on the Nikon D800.

Easter Sunday

Photographs

Sunny interlude.

That rarest of events in London, a sunny Sunday, brings out the crowds. And while these images were snapped at a park parade on Easter Sunday in 1976. the watchers were of greater interest than the paraders.





The three wheeler is an Invacar, a vehicle designed for invalids. Horribly unsafe, it probably created more invalids than it accepted.




Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, 50mm Summicron, TriX ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

Battersea Power Station

Photographs

Though completed in 1935, Battersea Power Station on the south bank of London’s Thames very much adheres to the high Victorian dictates of English architecture. Large, foreboding, massive, lugubrious, overpowering and anything but welcoming, it was decommissioned in 1975, just a few months before these images were taken in March, 1976.





The forces that be wrangled for almost four decades (!) about how to redevelop the site which is now a high end shopping and residential location. Needless to add, it was sold to foreign investors like pretty much everything else in today’s England.

Nikon F, 28mm Vivitar, TriX, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.