Memory and the Mind's Eye (Continued)

Latest images in my Memory and the Mind's Eye series.

Plates: Durations

Bicycle Ride

Baseball Game

Plates: Durations

 Coffee Date

Grocery Run

Plates: Memory and the Mind's Eye (Continued)

Through multiple exposures, the images below attempt to stretch the confining barriers of the photographic medium, as well as depict how I visualize personal memories. For each of these photographs, I made five exposures: One "main" exposure of a memorable moment, and 4 supplementary exposures of more forgettable, routine instances.

One of my annoyances with photography is how absolute and restrictive it can be. Within a small fraction of a second, the camera perfectly and truthfully captures the light reflected off objects in front of it, and that's it. Although time is one of the vital ingredients to a photograph, photographs cannot accurately depict the act of spending time, to have done or experienced something. A single photograph is not able to fully convey a life event, as much more occurs before and after the subject smiles (or the sun falls perfectly on the landscape, etc) and the shutter button is tripped. This is why we take so many pictures, and experiences are usually shown through a sequence of multiple photographs, or accompanied by a block of text. With each of these photographs, I want to give a deeper, more complete picture of what it's like to experience life.

The exactitude of a photograph is contrary to how we remember our lives. The camera was essentially invented as a capture device to augment our relatively weak minds, and the preciseness of photographic images are unnatural compared to the images conjured by the mind's eye, which are much hazier and ghost-like. Mental images of certain meaningful moments are engrained in our memory, they stand out against the near limitless latent images of routine and banal moments. Sooner or later, however, even these moments begin to fade, mental images become obscured or partially destroyed by the passage of time and influx of additional memories. The main exposures in these photographs are obviously the most distinct and clear, but even they are obscured by the other exposures, as well as the largish film grain resulting from me using a relatively fast film speed.  

So much of what we do is completely forgotten, unobtainable and lost far within the deep recesses of our minds. Nonetheless, many of these unreachable memories help shape who we are. They make us whole. I am constantly disturbed by how much we can't remember about our own lives, it's a theme that's present in much of my current work. Each of the following images would have turned out drastically underexposed and useless if the main exposure had not been amplified by the additional exposures. 

To sum everything up, with this series I want to demonstrate how behind every vivid memory, there are innumerable faded and forgotten ones that, while forgettable, complete us. I am attempting to create a more accurate interpretation of what visual memory looks like, to show what past experiences look like when I close my eyes and try to remember. 

These images represent approximately one month of work. For that amount of time, I constantly kept my Pentax LX on me, capturing both memorable and routine images. I kept a chart taped to the back of my camera so I could keep track of how many exposures I had on each frame. Some of the images did not come out well exposed (a 40 year old camera does sometimes make mistakes in aperture-priority mode). Others were not as visually interesting, and were cut. I am excited to see where this series goes. As always, feedback and critique is always appreciated.

Pensacola Beach

High Tea

Katie Leaves

Golf with Dad

Beer with Pearson

Milwaukee Trip

Spending Time with David and Nicole

Leaving Chicago

Goofy Golf

One Last Glimpse

Visiting with Brent

Holding Hands at Fair Grinds

Hangin' with the Guys

First Time Playing Racquetball 

Spotlight: Canon GIII QL17

First released in 1972, the Canon Canonet G-III QL17 is a cool compact 35mm rangefinder with a name that just rolls right off the tongue! Featuring a fixed 40mm f/1.7 lens and an automatic exposure mode, the G-III is a great alternative to the more expensive Olympus 35 SP. The G-III is a tiny camera, easy to bring along with you wherever you go. Its petite frame, versatile wide-but-not-too-wide lens, and nice feature-set make it an ideal travel camera for when you're packing light.

Small!

As you can see from the photo above, the G-III fits nicely in the palm of my spindly hand. While relatively diminutive, the ergonomics on the camera are quite pleasing. For a camera of its size, the controls are laid out nicely, and nothing feels cramped. I especially like the nice thumb tab on the focus ring and the short focus throw of the lens.

Both aperture and shutter speed controls are located on the lens barrel, along with a self-timer lever. Aperture stops do not click. Shutter speeds between 1/500 and 1/4 are available. I'm not sure why the 1/2 and 1 second speeds were excluded... seems kind of strange to me. There is also a bulb mode function, but to much annoyance, in order to select "B" on the shutter speed dial, you must first depress a small button on the lens barrel.


If you turn the aperture dial to "A", the camera will choose the appropriate aperture for you, based on the selected shutter speed. This shutter priority mode is a cool feature, but I did not test it on my personal camera because the G-III takes the obnoxiously hard to find 625 mercury battery, of which I have none. Thankfully the camera's shutter is fully mechanical. The one glaring negative of the G-III is how there is no way to measure light while in manual exposure mode. Yep, as far as metering goes, it's either automatic or nothing.

The viewfinder is pretty nice overall. The window is a little dim and blue tinted, but the rangefinder patch is pretty contrasty and easy to focus with. The frame-lines are parallax corrected, and move as you focus in and out.

Here are some photographs I made with the Canon Canonet G-III QL17. I used Ilford HP5+.

Spotlight: Rolleiflex (Model K4 640)

The Rolleiflex (Model K4 640) was first released in 1939, and, at the time, was the best 6x6 twin lens reflex camera money could buy. This particular Rollei belonged to my wife's grandfather, Dick Baer, and was just recently passed down to my father-in-law, Tom Baer. Tom let me borrow the camera while I was visiting Chicago last week.

The K4 Rolleiflex is the third main iteration in Frank & Heidecke's flagship twin lens reflex line. It has a relatively fast fixed 75mm f/3.5 Tessar lens (this is long before Rolleiflex cameras were made available with f/2.8 lenses).

These cameras were often used by photojournalists, and it's easy to see why. The Rolleiflex is smartly designed in a way so that all controls are right at your fingertips. Apertures and shutter speeds (1 second - 1/500th) are easily changed via two levers on the sides of the taking lens, and the currently selected settings are easily viewable in a window on top of the viewing lens. The focus knob and film crank are placed on opposite sides of the camera so that you can continue to focus while advancing to the next frame. The Rolleiflex is extremely small and portable for a medium format camera, it's really no bigger or heavier than an average 35mm SLR. It's a very non-obtrusive device.

The only real downside with the K4 Rolleiflex is the focusing screen. It's pretty dim, and focusing on anything in less than direct sunlight is difficult. There's a pop-up magnifier on the hood, but this does little to alleviate frustrations. One positive thing about the finder is how it's parallax compensated. As you focus closer, a black bar moves down across the focusing screen to demonstrate the parallax error.

Focusing Screen, along with aperture and shutter speed window

I used Katie's grandpa's Rollei to make photographs at a family party. Allegedly no film had been put through it since the 70's, but everything seemed to work great except for the 1 and 1/2 second shutter speeds, which would stick. Dick Baer himself was at the party, I think he enjoyed seeing his old camera being put to use again after all those years. Take a look at the photos below. I used Tmax 400.

Dick Baer, the original owner of the featured Rolleiflex and grandfather to my wife, Katie.