8
Oct
2018
Digitisation Part 4 – Thoughts on Ravilious and Deakins at Beaford

My thoughts as Hidden Histories digitiser and as a photographer with a wealth of black-and-white photography experience on the development of both photographers:

Although these are simply thoughts as they are unsubstantiated because there is very little written evidence for either photographer in terms of their creative/artistic/photographic development, either through their own notes or diary or through academic research.

Ravilious was a gifted image maker in terms of composition right from the start of his time at Beaford, this was clearly due to his art training and family nurturing. However, his technical ability, image exposure and developing of the negative, is inconsistent and errs to the under exposure/under-development side. This produced thin negatives that were often difficult to print. Ravilious said of himself that he is ‘badly self-taught’ and he was scathing about the technical quality of his early pictures through the first decade of the Beaford project. He talks later about using Ansel Adams Zone System in an adapted format, essentially exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights: it was interesting to come across a contact sheet RAV-02-1456, from November 1981, which has test shots for the use of the Zone System.

This is followed by a number of well exposed and well developed rolls of film including RAV-03-1461 which holds some landscape photographs reminiscent of Adams own. Although Ravilious surprisingly deemed these images as only ‘fair’. There is certainly greater consistency in his second decade, after this Zone system revelation. By this time, he had also acquired noncoated lenses for his Leica cameras which would give him a greater range of tones, and the Ilford 400 ISO film he used had been updated from HP4 to HP5 from 1977. His use of the same film sensitivity throughout his time at Beaford is often the mark of a good photographer, taking a lead from his photographic inspiration Cartier Bresson, and using film speed that he could really get to know intimately. This is demonstrated time and again with excellent use of shutter speed to freeze movement that mattered like a person’s face but allow movement in the frame from things like a football, shuttlecock, Wellington (RAV-03-1713-59A) or moving animals etc. A good example of his masterly technique is RAV-03-1526-22 when he pans a reveller dressed in drag sat in a pushchair being raced at a carnival, the pushchair and rider are frozen in the picture and yet the hedge behind seems to blur through his camera movement. Another good example is on contact sheet 1985 where Ravilious sets up his camera on a tripod in school and uses a slow shutter to emphasise the number of children in the overflowing classroom.

RAV-03-1526?22 Documentary Photograph by James Ravilious for the Beaford Archive

Looking again at Ravilious’s chosen ‘Best’ and ‘Good’ image distribution throughout the archive, he chooses a greater percentage from his early years despite his poor technical ability at the time and his admittance that many of his images from this era would be very difficult to print. I have found that an advantage of digitising the negatives is that a greater range of tones can be captured in a RAW file than is possible in a print; therefore it ought to be possible ultimately to make better ‘digital’ prints from some of these earlier negatives that Ravilious might well have struck of as ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor’ because the exposure or development dictated it thus.

Deakins was also art trained, a gifted painter at school he came to Beaford at 21, fresh from Bath Academy of Art. Working on the Beaford Archive was to be his ‘gap-year’ before pursuing his passion for cinema at the National Film School. Deakins was not at Beaford for long enough for me to discuss development and, of course, without a consecutive timeline of photographs it would be impossible to make any assessment. However, what we do have is a remarkable archive, the beginning, of what was to become an incredibly successful career at the highest level in cinematography. There are certainly innumerable references, within this year of images, which demonstrate a cinematic leaning and dramatization of the subject. There is a continuous searching for style through Deakins work; a lot of experimentation, pushing himself to try making images outside of his comfort zone and his technical ability as a way of learning and improving on his ‘seeing’ and his craft. Deakins also pushed the boundaries of ‘taste’ or ‘acceptability’ of an urbanite choosing to unsympathetically document a fox hunt and a stag hunt and kill, a cow slaughtered in an abattoir and cut into pieces for the butchers, death at lambing time and chickens killed, plucked and ready for the table. These images were shot in a cold but honest, undramatised fashion, accurately recording the grittier side of typical rural life.

Stevenstone Hunt, Taddiport 1971 - by Roger Deakins for the Beaford Archive

Myth Busting

I’ve come across many inconsistencies where we read, and we think we know something about James Ravilious but in fact the truth is less certain. For example, it is said that he never used flash, and yet contact sheet RAV-02-1605 from an early January morning in 1983 women are pouring milk into bottles before delivery. I can’t say for absolute certain that Ravilious has used flash but the lighting in the workshop where the women are photographed would be extremely uncomfortable and difficult to work under. We were also told that he never set any of his pictures up, however it’s hard to believe examples like RAV-02-1718-21, RAV-02-418-10A, RAV-02-683-37 and RAV-02-1123-2 have simply arranged themselves.

18
Nov
2017
Shinrin-yoku*

The North Devon countryside clings on to the colour green for as long as it possibly can, already hinting towards next spring; whereas other parts of the country are a dazzle of autumn hues or brown and dying from months of drying summer. Searching for a way to represent this I went for the first time to Harford Wood. At the moment, working full time on digitising negatives, I don’t get the freedom required by most landscape photographers, to choose time of day, weather conditions and location. However, with a few hours on a Wednesday morning before seeing a client for a workshop, I made a slight detour to the wood. On this damp, slightly misty day, I was blessed with ideal conditions to see Harford Wood in a soft, dreamlike light with no wind at all, which made my views seem like huge pictorial canvases. I was also enjoying the warmth of the light falling through the high canopy of golden yellow leaves, in stark contrast to the overwhelming reflected green light experienced through the summer.

Harford Woods, November 2017

*Forest bathing is the practice of taking a short, leisurely visit to a forest for health benefits. The practice originated in Japan where it is called shinrin-yoku – from Wikipedia

31
Aug
2017
after James Ravilious
Early daffodils in wood, Millhams, Dolton, April 1980

Early daffodils in wood, Millhams, Dolton, April 1980 – Documentary Photograph by James Ravilious for the Beaford Archive

As digitiser for Beaford Arts, Hidden Histories project, I have the privilege of seeing all of Roger Deakins’ and James Ravilious’ 10,000 images in the Beaford Archive. As a photographer, I have left myself open to any influence on my own work gained through this exposure. I’ve found myself drawn to the hinterland between urban areas and the moors, the edges of farmland, areas left to wild, in this lush fertile land know as North Devon. I’m inspired by these quiet, contemplative landscapes, devoid of landmarks or horizon, which are not descriptive of a specific place but describe perfectly this region. In response and in comparison, to Ravilious’ images, my own are a soft, warm, saturated green, the colour of North Devon. The Beaford Archive is a social documentary archive of North Devon from the 1970’s and 1980’s but these intimate landscapes I’m hoping will be more timeless, looking the same now as they were then. “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1856, and these archived images should act as a warning to intensive farming which would destroy this unique eco-system forever.

These images are featured in my new gallery page Green and Pleasant Land.

Pool in Higher Dean Wood

Wrinkle Wood, Lee

Hole Track

Hole Valley

Little Silver Wood

Higher Dean Wood

Little Silver Wood

18
Jul
2017
Digitisation Part 3 – Making copies of negatives

“Creating digital surrogates for 10,000 negatives will facilitate improved access and significantly reduce the impact on the original negatives. ?The newly digitised material will also provide inspiration for our activities. A digital master archive image will be produced at a high resolution which will minimize the need for subsequent rescanning and retains the maximum amount of data. This RAW mastered file will be immediately archived.”

James Ravilious Negative Sheet

Photographic negatives hold far more image information than the resulting print. There is a far greater range of grey tones, and the photographer chooses how much or how little of this information is to be made visible in the final print. The amount of contrast is controlled through choice of grade of printing paper, 1-5, where 1 is low and 5 is high contrast; or through using variable contrast paper in combination with coloured filters to produce a similar result. Brightness and darkness of tones is achieved through the time exposure of the paper to the enlargers light, focused through the negative. And a fine control of exposure here is achieved through ‘dodging’ and ‘shading’, where the photographer can selectively darken or lighten areas of the print through selective exposure to light. The photographer desires an information rich, full tonal range negative, one which is correctly exposed and developed, for the greatest opportunity to create a fine print from it.

A negative isn’t created in digital photography, the closest thing we have in terms of an image file which holds greater information than our final print is the RAW file. The RAW file holds more visual information than is possible to see in a print and, similar to the negative, the photographer can select what to include in the final digital image or print.

“In line with recommendation from our Digital Consultant, Elizabeth Fife-Faulkner, we will employ the photographic capture method. This method allows faster image capture than the traditional flat-bed scanner method, produces higher quality results and is fast becoming the industry standard. In addition, the method reduces the instances of static, a significant issue for archive materials and in particular for 35mm photographic negatives.”

Bowens Illumitran converted to LED for copying negatives is on the right of the image

Recommendation for copying negatives

Most of the Digital Consultant’s recommendations were implemented but a popular method of copying a negative or slide using a camera, bellows, a lens and flash was hotly debated right at the onset of the Hidden Histories Project. The concern with this method was that of contrast, the longstanding digital printers of the Beaford Archive images at Focal Point in Exeter suggested that a LED light source would be lower in contrast and therefore help produce a greater range of tones in the digital copy. This was also in keeping with James Ravilious’ preference for old uncoated lenses for his Leica camera because he disliked the modern higher contrast lenses.

Bowens Illumitran

Focal Point were able to convert an old Bowens Illumitran Slide Copier, which originally had it’s own flash light source, into an LED copier more suited for our needs. This cobbling together of the best of old and new technologies was very much in keeping with the spirit of Ravilious!

Negative Digitisation Process

10,000 images of the 80,000 negatives that exist in the Beaford Archive, roughly 1000 of Deakins and 9000 of Ravilious, were selected by a curator from the contact sheets I had scanned and created digitally. This information including negative number, description, date and notes, was received on an Excel spreadsheet.

Once the apparatus was set up, cleanliness and keeping surfaces dust free were key through regular dusting with compressed air. Negatives, which are removed from their archival sleeves by their sprocket holes with tweesers, were only handled by their edges.

The guys at Focal Point recommended that the optimum lens was a Rodenstock 60mm f4 enlarger lens. I discovered that it’s ‘sweet’ spot, where the grain of the negative was in focus right to the corners was between f8 and f11. My natural instinct had been to close the lens right down to f22 but this resulted in a softening of the image.

Once an exposure was achieved with a slight clipping of the negative’s highlights (a prints shadow image) I bracketed the RAW exposures by a third of a stop each way. Photographic film base for Ilford HP4 and later HP5 is the same density and so the only variation on exposure is through fogging to light or the occasional fixer stain. Many of the films have a variety of exposure and over/under development but this doesn’t affect the copying exposure to digital a great deal.

I then worked in batches of 10 films at a time which, at 4-5 pictures per roll that the curator had chosen, equaled approximately 45 images per folder. This gave me both a simple, straightforward filing system and a reasonable number to invert to positive images, adjust levels of exposure and spot out dust, scratches and hairs later on. (I’ll go into this in detail in a future post). After every batch I checked the focus and made adjustments if needed. The images were downloaded and a best of the 3 bracketed exposures was saved for each image. The Nikon RAW NEF files were converted to RAW .dng files because this format is considered universal and more archival because it isn’t associated with a particular camera brand. These files were then immediately backed up so that duplicates existed.

Ravilious digitised negatives viewed in Adobe Bridge

Digitisation Part 4 ? Thoughts on Ravilious and Deakins at Beaford

23
Jun
2017
The Best Light for Photography


Creedence Clearwater Revival

The undisputed best light for photography is sunshine in the early morning or evening, right? But every light type, time of day and weather condition, has its own quality which will have visual benefits once you really look for them. Circumstances can make photographing in the early and late sunlight virtually impossible, but I would never discount other times or light. In previous posts I’ve described the benefits of photographing in a cave lit by a heavy overcast sky or a shipwreck by moonlight and I think back fondly to picture making in the rain or in fog and mist.

Lee Friedlander

Recently I’ve had some time available to me for photography around midday, a time with the potential of high sunshine and harsh shadows, a time avoided by many practitioners. The weather has been exceptionally hot, with harsh, bright sunshine; so I’ve been enjoying exploring in the shade of local woodland. This light reminds me of the album cover art for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River or Lee Friedlander’s images in his book The Desert Seen.

The high contrast scene that I see is softened by the canopy of full summer leaves, and made softer still with the use of a polarising filter. I’m also experimenting with exposure bracketing and HDR processing of the RAW images to again lower the contrast, heighten the saturation and emphasise the enveloping, claustrophobic effect the forest seems to have over me.

Crowball Wood

Crowball Wood

I?ve been exploring the hinterland between the A361 and Exmoor in North Devon, An area which seems to cling onto the past with traditional farming of small fields, separated by old beech hedges and winding streams; of high hills, deep valleys and pockets of seemingly unmanaged woodland. This area, less than 10 miles from Barnstaple, feels like a different country, with a different cooler and damper climate. Hidden from the few one-lane roads, it?s scattered old buildings are populated by people living off the land, or finding an off-grid solace in an overpopulated country.

Higher Dean Wood

Little Silver Wood

Pool in Higher Dean Wood