I wanted to do something different with my camera these last few days. It is a digital 4/3 Olympus EM10ii. I have over the last week shot a roll of black and white film (Ilford FP4) on an old Pentax Me Super with a lovely f1.7 50mm lens. ( Given to me by a friend whose father was a photographer. She was clearing out his old workshop recently and found a box of film stuff, which I got to have first dibs on. More on that another day soon) The important thing to note is that I really enjoyed using again, what was my very first camera in 1981, that lovely Me Super. Made me ponder something.
I have an adapter for my Olympus to allow me to M42 mount film lenses, of which I have a bout 5 or 6. I fitted a Carl Zeiss 2.8/50mm lens for the first series of experiments. Below is a picture of the happy couple.
I also have a couple of lovely Pentax portrait lenses which I will have a crack with too sometime soon. Just need some willing sitters.
I got to experience the joy of a fixed 50mm lens all over again shooting the pentax and it helped me to remember that my framing and focusing involved a lot more of me moving into or out of the shot. I use two zooms on the Olympus ( 14-42mm and 40-150mm) and so tend to stay put more when taking shots and let the lens do the ‘moving.’ Something about this simple shift took me back in time. Not nostalgia but a visceral feeling. A body felt remembering of that first camera in my hands.
A fixed focal length of 50mm in my grasp changed how is saw what was in front of me. I really wasn’t expecting that.
When fitted to my digital body these lenses operates only on a manual focus setting. And guess what I discovered when playing with the focusing ring and looking through the viewfinder?
This!!!! Bokeh and blur. Being me, I did a deep dive into playing with this out of focus unfolding. Inside the cabin and outside in the woods.
Here are a selection of the outside shots along with some poetic thoughts in the form of a Haibun which I have separated into single lines from the original paragraph. I have a possible project in mind for the indoor stuff, so let’s wait and see.
Breathing in, I watch the light fall through the woodlands.
Breathing out, I watch the trees dance with the glimmerings.
All around me, circles of golds, greens, browns and blues.
A new moment sparkling in my awareness.
The shadows held by the light. The light emerging from the dark.
Miraculous. Liminal. Luminous.
It’s funny how my feeling empty always had a heaviness to it.
And now in this place, my feeling full is touched with a lightness of being.
paradox hits now
time stops at the speed of light
eternally spring
Thank you for viewing my Emergent Spiral.
You might also enjoy ‘Turning the pages,’ a walk through an old beechwood in the highlands of Scotland.
Ohhh, I love this!! I used to throw my fixed 50 mm on my camera when I found myself looking too close, too often and needed a wider perspective. I love that focal length. You have created poetry here with your camera.. I love the blur and bokeh.. absolutely beautiful!
Some of those photos look like paintings, very beautiful. Loving the Dreadzone music too, helped me revisit a vague memory of seeing them back in the 90s!