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Concrete and Cameras

Concrete and Cameras

Why Concrete and Cameras? Sure Cameras you are a photographer after all but I don’t get it what has concrete got to do with it? And it doesn’t but it does at the same time.

Let me explain, the feature image you have there is not a camera its a pair of late 1970s roller sport urethane Mini-Stoker  wheels mounted on a slimline ACS-430 truck. My Mini-Stoker wheels and the concrete involved in all this is a Canadian publication ‘Concrete Skateboarding’

Concrete-2012-photoannual

So What does Skateboarding and a 200+ lb (not telling you how much but the more I eat healthy the heavier I get and I haven’t had a beer since September unless you count 2 pints of hoppy IPA at a leaving do, but it was sunny and everyone knows beers don’t count in the sunshine or on the patio or a BBQ for that matter.) aging Brit (actually come to think about it beers probably don’t count at all if you are a Brit they are probably compulsory or something. Heard somewhere they were a genetic necessity or you drop dead or become French or something) So what do I have to do with Skateboarding and where do the Cameras come into it?

Well if you click on the cover to the left you will be magically carried away to the fantastic pages of said magazine. ( Not yet wait for it, read some more of the article dude) What you are looking for is page 33.

‘WHY ANALOG ?’

Read the article and it goes something along the lines of why would anyone use an older technology? This is one of the places that asked a question that has plagued me all my existence is a new tool better than an old tool? My thinking goes like this. All the tools you have learned how to use, bought, picked up along the way, stolen from your Dad, rescued from your Grandpas things, paid good cash for at a Flee Market or Garage sale, found in a cupboard in an apartment you one rented even that stupid thing you ordered from the shopping channel should be in your tool bag. Then you can bring the whole you to the game and shine, “Shines the name Roger Young.”

So this is much more a Pro Photography publication than almost any publication that has the word photography on it. It has the Trifecta two passions and insanity all in one. If you have no passion for the thing you are pointing the camera at or the camera you are pointing at the thing you are passionate about you have missed the point. You might as well not bother, if your soul is not on display; if we can’t see you behind your camera from the images you take try harder or stop all together.

Concrete Cameras

So here we have the cameras I have been behind or am thinking about being passionate about, yes some film some digital some medium format some large format and 35mm. Here’s the thing I stopped all together for 10 years nothing the muse had left the soul was cold. I was leaving an Analog world and facing a digital future.One was dieing before the other had taken its first faltering steps. A professional Photographer and large print specialist and all round dark room technician , chemical splosher extraordinaire, stranded in a world where everyone was pointing 3 mp cameras at everything where phones and tablets were taking pictures and yes the sensor did not catch up but like all things it has and even gone off the other end 56mp capture anyone.

So now everyone can point a camera and it then decides how to process stabilize and color correct etc. Who or what is a photographer and its surprisingly not someone who takes photographs. Its the guy whose soul makes images on what ever he can get his hands on. The me here leaning on the monorail, could you see his soul? Maybe. The me that points an Olympus E-P1 at things and once again is ranting and raving about the what if. The me that used the pre-war Voightlander did he have a soul or did the cameras capture the souls of others, its been a missionary in Africa seen War and well it takes some pretty freaky ghostly stuff. I sold it to save the nightmares. Will Hasselnut allow me to strap a iPhone 5 to a Hasselblad and take pictures of the Ghosts in the machine, can I take landscapes with electric sheep, only time will tell.

For now I am going to get a pancake fish eye manual cap lens for my Olympus E-P1 and shoot some streeatscapes and maybe with some skateboarders in the frame.

(Oh now you can go read the article, oh you already have well at least you came back and got to the bottom of this.) and if you want to know more of the story behind the images below subscribe or hang around I am sure I will get round to telling you sooner or later.

Boards wp

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