Breaking in the M6..

[jamxo]

So about a year ago after saving up for a long, long time, I managed to buy myself an M6 from around 1980 and a Konica Hexanon 35mm F2 lens. Ever since first holding the camera, I was completely blown away by it, and have shot many rolls of film through it.

I am now studying a Photography BA at the University of Brighton (an amazing course, lead by among others Mark Power of Magnum), and for our first project I shot around 20 rolls of neopan through the M6 every day, every night.

Whilst Ive used the camera alot over the last year, it was really satisfying to use it really intensely over a six week period, with no grief and only one body and one lens to help me finish the project.

Anyway I finally had time to stick the final edit up on my website and so I thought I would share it with any interested RFF-ers!

View it here http://jamiestoker.com/artwork/516513.html although be warned, its quite a hefty file!

Thanks!

 

[knodd]

superb shots! love the tone, composition, subject, really great stuff!

 

[MikeL]

Thanks for posting them Jamie. Nice tones in your images.

The images of the covered smoke detector and the guy rolling his own brought back some memories. Thanks!

 

[Jarle Aasland]

Well done. Thanks for sharing.

Jarle

 

[wilt]

Good ones, I like them!

Where these scanned from negs or prints?

 

[Paul C. Perkins MD]

Great stuff!

 

[Brennotdan]

Thanks for posting them Jamie. Nice tones in your images.

The images of the covered smoke detector and the guy rolling his own brought back some memories. Thanks!

Ha! Same here

Nice images, you've documented an era in your life.

 

[jamxo]

Good ones, I like them!

Where these scanned from negs or prints?

All the images were neopan 400 rated between 400-1600, scanned on an Epson v700 (although I did lots of darkroom work prints throughout the project to help me edit!)

Thanks all

 

[gian]

nicely done jamie!! congrats

 

[Florian1234]

Very cool project, Jamie. 🙂

 

[Tom A]

Great project and good execution. There is nothing like disregarding film volume and shooting once heart out. It is still easier to edit a 1000 shots on contacts or from negs, than the 3-5000 digital shooters tend to expose under similar circumstances.
You can always recognize digital shooters = bleary eyed from staring at a screen for days, bags under there eyes big enough to carry groceries in and the brain in lock down mode after having tried to decide between 25 shots of the same subject with minute changes.
At least "analogs" are bleary eyed from the right reason, celebrating the end of a project in the pub with too much beer and too many cigarettes!

 

[Henk]

Right on Tom !

Right on Tom !

Indeed Tom !

I'm also very lucky to have fantastic beers here in Belgium 🙂

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Alright, Jamie, don't get me wrong but... some of those photographs would look incredibly inane if I took them. In your hands, some subjects like the lamp posts in the street, or a car driving on top of a road sign have a different quality: they're poignant!! 😱 What on Earth did you do?

As I said, if I had seen those photographs in a roll of mine, I would have thrown them out. I'm glad you didn't! 🙂 They exemplify some weird type of poetry of the day-by-day that's hard to express.

In short, congratulations on your project! 🙂 You're on your way of becoming a great photographer. I liked your very candid portraits and the "objet trouvé" shots (like the beer cans, the window, and the street lamps mentioned above). Good job!

 

[Matt(1pt4)]

Cool. I like the presentation as one big jpg.

 

[jamxo]

At least "analogs" are bleary eyed from the right reason, celebrating the end of a project in the pub with too much beer and too many cigarettes!

Amen to that! Precisely the plan tomorrow night when we finish our project review!


SolaresLarrave -

Thank you very much! These non people shots are a new thing to me (pretty much 99% of my previous stuff has been people based) but after researching alot of great photographers, I realised that if you train your eye well enough, and get the narrative direction right, shots of architecture/objects/etc work very well within a context! And if you are trying to capture the identity of a new place, it only makes sense to include some of the objects found in that place!

At 20 years old, I am just trying to train my eye and searching for a personal style whilst learning all there is to know first!

Thanks all,
J

 

[swoop]

Damn kid. I've been doing this a long while and I know I'll never be that good.

 

[januaryman]

Young eyes and brain matter a lot. Get out there more. I'm sorry I didn't. Some of my best work was shot before I was 25, and with a dinky fixed lens rangefinder! For some reason, your page won't load beyond the initial welcome screen, so I can't see the photos, but you've impressed many people here. So keep going!

 

[martin s]

I agree, some really nice images. My favorite is the one with the girl (Jack Daniels).

martin

 

[pesphoto]

Im curious to see, it's blocked for me at work for some reason.
I'll check it out at home.

 

[Mcpengy]

These are great, some excellent vision. I like the fact they're all on one image too, which I didn't expect to! Wish I'd done the same, nearly at the end of uni now and things are different now from the first few years. Keep documenting the change, it'll be fascinating.