Polaroid Type 55: Sunday morning at Mt. Herman Baptist Church
Friend of the blog Jeff Singer let me know about New 55. Bob Crowley in Massachusetts is working on a brand new 4×5 film that resembles Polaroid Type 55. May even be an improvement based on his explanation of what they are working on. This is very exciting news. I wish these guys the best of luck and when they are ready would like to support or help them in any way I can.
Reverend Williams, Ms. Williams and Sister Josephine - Mt. Herman Baptist Church May 2010
This is the very beginning, on Sunday we started up a new long-term project. Its a moment of unrealized possibilities mixed with all the harsh reality of making the right decisions in order to get where we are going. The project is about San Francisco’s African American churches. When we lived on Lyon street our neighbors were Mt. Herman Baptist church. Kind and interesting people who commute into San Francisco every week to attend the church they’ve been running for 34 years. Iana and I are fascinated by the idea that this community has left San Francisco but the city still their spiritual home. We decided back then that there would be some kind of portrait project we could do about the churches in the Western Addition – NOPA to the hipsters. I see this as a portrait project and also a historic record. Like everything it took us some time to get started but now we are on track and I hope we’ll be making some major progress over the next few months.
Sister Shirley - Mt. Herman Baptist Church May 2010
The current plan is to do the studio on location portraits I’ve done successfully before, this time using both Type 55 black and white positive / negative film and digital (insurance). I have a very small cache of Polaroid Type 55. It’s hard to use it up because there will be no more but it can’t sit much longer either, so this is the project and i’m going to use the 8 boxes of film I have and see where it takes me. If anyone is holding onto some Type 55 they would like to sell or donate to this project, we’d be quite appreciative. In addition to the studio-style portraits I’ll also be photographing church services to set the environment for of the portraits. I expect I’ll get more churching this year then in my previous 39.
Brother Dennis - Mt. Herman Baptist Church May 2010
I don’t usually talk about a project from the beginning, a habit of not wanting to get scooped from my journalism days, but I’m taking a chance here and making this a somewhat public process. I plan to post a few pictures after each shoot and then edits as we get to that stage. Here are the first 4 type 55′s from Mt. Herman Baptist and a snapshot of the film drying in our bath. Also, if you have connections to SF churches that would be helpful to this project I’d love to hear from you.
Brother Dennis - Mt. Herman Baptist Church May 9, 2010
-Michael
So, the magnetic white-board is about to be cleared off and once again the process of shooting and editing and shooting and editing and editing begins again.
Type 55 drying in the bath.
Sad news in the photography world this week. Photographer, innovator and inventor Peter Gowland passed away after suffering a broken hip earlier in the month.
I have been talking on this site for a long time about my exploration with the Gowlandflex, the ingenious 4×5 reflex camera Gowland designed and built. As well as being an inventor, Peter was an innovator in Glamour photography. In 2006 Double Exposure’s Lynne Eodice wrote about Peter and Alice:
For many years, Peter Gowland’s name has been synonymous with glamour photography. The son of an actor, Peter was born in Hollywood and became involved with the movie industry at an early age. After he decided that he preferred doing still photography to acting, he went on to photograph some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, interiors of beautiful Los Angeles homes, and numerous swimsuit models. As a photographer, he has over 1000 magazine covers, photographs in prestigious publications (including Playboy centerfolds) and 25 books to his credit.
Peter with his magazine covers
I’m sorry I never had a chance to meet Peter in person. Though he is gone there are about 800 Gowland cameras out in the world, some with the top photographers in the world (Annie Liebovitz, Yousuif Karsh, Phillipe Halsman, Dennis Manarchy, John Huet, Arthur Grace, David Raccuglia, Arthur Elgort, and Mark Laita). I think Peter and Alice would be happy to know that we are still using his cameras to make great images. If you’re shooting with a Gowlandflex, please send me links to your work. I think it would be a great tribute to him to create a gallery of images showing Gowland’s effect on photography.
Fuji 160 VC Color Negative 4x5 shot with Gowlandflex
Here is a quick recap for those who just tuned in. I started this blog when I bought my Gowlandflex camera. That’s why it was called “BigAssCamera”. The goal was to use the Gowland camera to shoot portraits on Type 55. My timing couldn’t have been worse. Polaroid pulled the plug on Type 55 right about the time I took delivery on the new camera. I have 8 boxes of 55 I’m saving for something very special. Meanwhile I’ve been looking at alternatives to get where I had intended to go with that film stock. Working with my partner in crime, the talented retoucher Chrysta Giffen, we experimented on some outtakes from the ongoing Freckles Portrait Project. Here are the results of our exploration.
Digital capture combined with scans of Type 55 and other film stocks
Fuji 160VC plus some loving from CGRetouching
I’m on the lookout for a pair of 8″ Petzval portrait lenses. If you know of a source for these please send me a message. These lenses were made starting in 1840. They are characterized by extremely sharp center of focus with a quick falloff to a swirly bokeh. My plan is to try to adapt them to fit on the Gowlandflex, so if you have any experience with this also please let me know.
-Michael
Our local APA chapter just had a great event on editing. On the panel were Wired contributing photographer Joe Pugliese and Wired Photography Editor Anna Alexander talking about the editorial assignment process and Norman Maslov Agent Internationale and Sue Tallon talking about portfolio editing. In the interest of full disclosure I am on the board of APA-SF.
If you weren’t there you missed a great discussion about all things editing. I have one juicy tidbit to share – especially for my Gowlandflex, Type 55 followers. After all, that big, beautiful, beast of a camera was the reason I started this blog. Here goes: Wired, the magazine of the digerati, prefers film. Yep you heard it here. They not only are okay with photographers shooting film on assignment but prefer and encourage it. Joe Pugliese, Todd Hido, Dan Winters – all shoot film for Wired. So dust off your 4×5 holders and unplug yourself for a minute. Film isn’t dead.
Meanwhile you can read about and see photos from a Dan Winters shoot with Brad Pitt – on 4×5 – for Wired here on WTJ.
If you are lucky enough to be in San Francisco on September 23 2009, APA is hosting a lecture by Dan Winters about his new book Periodical Photographs, Aperture press 2009 at AAU. Details coming soon on the APAsf.com website.
A few months ago we had the time and opportunity to visit our cousin Andrey in
It’s hard as an American not to have wildly inaccurate preconceptions about progress change in
The result of all the new building (they’ve had the best architects in the world working overtime) and the rapid cultural and economic development is a duality between new and old that seems present in every aspect of life. This uneasy and very rapid mix of the new into a very old place manifests itself physically in the streets and buildings, culturally in the art, politics and clothes and psychologically in the outlook of young and older generations
Heading to
The other critical element for this shoot was the ‘fixer’ Lin Jing. We really got lucky finding her. She was amazing. Her tireless energy and willingness to approach strangers on our behalf really made the shoot work. I ended up finding her through my old college friend Kay Chin Tay in
Well the work is finally online here: winokurphotography.com I hope you will take a look. One last step for us, sending prints to everyone we photographed. As always a BIG big up to my crew on this project: Iana Simeonov, Lin Jing and Chrysta Geffin.
-Michael
Polaroid announced today it will close factories and cease production of all instant films. You can see the AP story here: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8209093
I’ll try to stockpile some type 55 film, but the stuff doesn’t age that well so it will all be gone in a few years. It would be great if Fuji would take over some of this business as they have shown some interest in 4×5 and medium format instant pack films, but it is hard to imagine them expanding those offerings.
There is no doubt the Gowlandflex is a hard camera to work with. In my mind much easier then any other 4×5 camera but that’s not saying much on the easy – hard spectrum.
I hope he doesn’t mind but here are some photos of my friend David McLain trying to use my Gowlandflex. David’s an amazing photographer but he is used to working fast and light on assignments for National Geographic. Check him out at www.davidmclain.com or www.mergegroup.com. These photos were taken by my buddy Kevin Stokes www.stokes-web.com
I photographed George P. Schultz yesterday at Stanford University. The shoot was digital and involved a car full of gear, of course I had to bring the Gowlandflex along for some extra fun. This is a perfect example of the strength of this camera. We were shooting fast (I think we had 20 minutes of Mr. Schultz time) at multiple locations. There was no way I would have introduced a regular 4×5 camera into this shoot. With the Gowlandflex I was able to literally put the Canon DSLR down and pickup the Gowlandflex and make a couple exposures without really changing the pace of the shoot. My only gripe is with the evil Polaroid they really should be ashamed of their quality control. At $90 per pack I find myself throwing away 2-3 sheets of film that self destruct in the film holder.
-Michael
