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A loose group of us local oddball snappers get together every now and then to go on a collective outing. As part of a whatsapp group that had become dormant I was lamenting with my good friend Zelma the demise of the group. If you remember Zelma you will know they don't come much more oddball than her. I am sure she won't mind me saying so. But I digress. Looks like that group is dead I lamented. Well start another one. And so I opened a Legion whatsapp group and we invited all the usual suspects we hang out with from time to time. As the pews started filling up inevitably the subject of the eulogy had to be broached. How about the dead end of town , the cemetery in Maitland, I tossed into the mix. A unanimous show of hands went up for a quiet Sunday morning the following week. Ok so what would be a unique perspective on the subject I mused? Well between the lyrics of the Doors in mind and what with being eaten by worms. Worms. Worms. Well a damn fish eye lens could well be the same as worms eye lens could it not. That prompted a visit to the supplier of discontinued lensbaby's to pick a bargain basement ultra wide 5.8mm fish eye for the princely sum of 80 EUR. There goes another tank of diesel. Now the 5.8mm has 185-degree angle of view and ability to focus up to as close as 1/4-inch. Damned if you don't have to be a contortionist not to get your own feet in every shot, or that pesky shadow of man holding camera somewhere in the bottom of the frame. But c'est la vie sometimes you have to embrace the picture imperfect. The lens features manual focus and a polished internal barrel for flare effects. Yep with that and a 185 degree angle of view in conditions of sunlight every image looks like it has been viewed by a worm lying cosily at the rear of a tin can. That just left one thing. Well it was obvious it had to be high contrast black and white for the sombre occasion. Time to test out Fuji's infamous Acros and so I stumped for Ritchie Roesch's Fujifilm Acros Push recipe. And off we tootled the following Sunday with the dulcet tones of the Doors emanating from the car stereo. "Cemetery, cool and quiet Hate to leave your sacred lay Dread the milky coming of the day." The Doors
Images from the group outing and subsequent visits to other local graveyards. For more see a short 4:24 electronic tome on the graveyard shift.
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So very clever and amusing, Ian!
Here’s your custom congratulatory haiku:
Worm eye view reveals
Dearly departed delights
Kudos for Ian
Now there’s a real interesting fact for the day.
the ie in view counts as 1 syllable
the ie in ie counts as 2 syllables
the ea in dearly counts as 1 syllable
the ai in rain counts as 1 syllable
yet the ia in ian counts as 2 syllables
Its a strange language at times.
When AI reigns king
Reining in i’s and a’s in rain,
Not vain are poems
Counting beats in rhyming strain,
Hewn from human brains.
lordy lordy , heaven forbid i have started an atrocious new fad
Yes you have……
Atrocious? How dare he? Nancee do not side with him 😆 😆 😆
Strange indeed!
Hi Ian.
Well you surely got me there! I decided when I was a kid I want no part of funerals, or burials – not that I’m an atheist, but because I simply see it as barbaric and pre-medieval.
Yet the vast majority of people on this planet all demand some kind of send off like that, whenever anyone close to them dies.
Death doesn’t bother me that way – I just see it as ceasing to inhabit our bodies, but still existing as spirits, so I only miss physical contact – and keep in touch with them all, in my heart and in my mind.
As punishment for my outrageously antisocial attitudes, I get stuck with invitations I can’t refuse, to go to funerals when I can’t begin to understand the whole point and purpose of them. And a lot of the time, they’re real tear-jerker shows.
One was so awful I couldn’t continue to watch, and walked out – it started at 9am, by 12:30pm I’d well and truly had enough, and just as they lowered the coffin – a white coffin, something like 4 feet AKA 1.2m long, with the corpse of a 6 year old girl who’d just died of cancer – the sextons let the rope slip, the coffin hit the bottom of the grave with a loud crash and splintered, and the girl’s mother, who was seated on the edge of the grave, burst into tears and nearly fell into the grave as well. Altogether too much, for me! I just fled the scene! Very embarrassing thing to do.
Treating this post as photos, though, instead of all those thoughts, they’re remarkably original.
I could see they were originally digi, so I went back to your introduction for an explanation – does the Acros Push recipe give better blacks & highlights? – a lot of my attempts to translate digi back into B&W have struck me as a bit flat, but that might be because all of mine are Nikon.
Did you take a wheel barrow full of “accessories” with you, or is it normal for people to leave junk like an empty beer bottle, an old business directory, a defunct shoe, an unwanted hat, etc, on people’s graves?
Hi Pete,
A good photo journalist never loads a story with props. So saying i did hang my sun hat – it often gets in the way of composing shots – particularly when shooting in portrait mode.
I refer you to the Acros link in the blog for the technical details of what it does and what sort of film similarities it produces. Well worth the read.
But long story short yes it does basically crunch the blacks and increase the highlights to produce high contrast.
I started out digital with Nikon but when mirrorless came in went over to the dark side. Fuji users seemed to be a lot more experimental than staid Nikonites and Canonites and lots about Fuji appealed at the time and still does.
Yikes! Hadn’t noticed the tomb with a pair of arms reaching up out of it!
Yes I’m afraid I’ve ended ip as a devout Nikonite, with a splash of Carl Zeiss thrown in. Just one
other bit of gear, a Canon Powershot, which I mostly use as a point and shoot – the manual is almost incomprehensible!
Watching others, Fuji impresses every time. Back in the days of film, I ended up shooting Fujicolor. But I’ve never considered the leap to Fuji digital.