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“When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.”

Peter Handke’s Song of Childhood, from Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), came to my mind when writing an earlier post here -few days ago- about the Eternal Children.

“When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.”

This is a film that still haunts me, since the first unsuspected time, with its magic, its little surprises and original questions - which slowly reveal themselves, the poetic motion and engulfment.

I vividly remember the first time that I discovered the pleasure of photography by simply changing the vantage point of my view. So much, I also remember the experience and awe felt by the monochromatic cinematography, when first viewed the Wings of Desire.

Parallel to what is portrayed on the film, the longing for physicality and the emphasis on human relations, there has been since then a personal desire to retouch the mystical, non-straightforward, but critically real world that I once saw.

Henri Alekan, at the age of 77, was the director of photography. Interestingly, I found out now, that he used a unique, very old and fragile silk stocking that belonged to his grandmother as a filter for the monochromatic sequences.

There is a wonderful interview of Henri Alekan here, under the title ‘If there such a thing as real angels.’ It is intriguing to read his explanations about many scenes of the film. Even more, his personal views on artistic expression and lens-based image making. I picked up, for example, two points. One where he says, ‘I just don’t believe that electronic effects can make the public experience the same communication you can achieve with a trick that is manually executed.” And another one where he emphasises his approach by pointing out that “a certain level of illumination for the image to be recorded on film [is necessary] but it must correspond intimately with what will happen, with the action.”

All the photographs in this article are film-frames from Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire.

Paul’s Place is a voluntary charity for physically and cognitively impaired adults, aged 18-59, that helps people in and around Bristol. “They had decided to do a nude calendar to raise awareness of their work. They had done all the work, they just needed a photographer to come in and shoot it for them and I feel very privileged they asked me..” writes portrait and PR photographer Theo Calmers (British Journal of Photography 12/09/2007, p.31)

A preview of all the photos for this calendar could be seen here (in Paul’s Place website) where can be purchased too, and here (in the artist’s website). Two of those photos are presented in this article, accompanied by Theo Calmer’s comments regarding the completion of this special project. The second picture (below) was also included in the AOP Open exhibition 2007.

“I used a large former TV studio, because it was easy for the models to access. Access isn’t something I ever really thought about before but doing this project really opened my eyes. The most important thing was making sure that the models were happy and comfortable. Getting naked was a big deal for many of them. They had complete control over who was around. If they wanted their carer or assistant it was fine, if not it was just me and my assistant. Each shoot took 10 minutes to an hour.

…I created the environment to fit the project. I used low watt lights - 100W or even 60W - with soft boxes plus a big bounce board to give the models a bit of privacy. I also had some music playing, and encouraged them to bring their own CDs. It was helpful for smoothing over what were sometimes awkward silences.

I used a Colorama backdrop called Snow White, which is a soft rather than brilliant white, but we achieved the colour in post production by adjusting the saturation and curves. I didn’t want it to be sentimental sepia, but at the same time I didn’t want it to be harsh. It was about achieving a balance.” (BJP)

The last comments introduce us to some of the artistic ideas behind the project. Although, Theo’s words that “they had done all the work, they just needed a photographer” leaves unclear who was the conceptual author for each of the particular photos dealing altogether with issues of disability representation.

Overall, it is so enjoyable to see such approaches dealing with and challenging contemporary social taboos.

One final thought that keeps a more critical stance, however, regards my observation that the picture at left, which was chosen for the AOP exhibition and was also published in the BJP relevant article, is probably the less challenging of all in the project and rather the more conforming one with today’s mainstream social norms of beauty, body and sexuality.

But this of course has to do not with the project itself, but with how ready or not a society is to embrace such new ideas.

I woke up this morning to find a strange message… “I wish that the twang didn’t exist.. my apologies if you’re a fan!”

The Twang?.. pardon?… Oh yes, this is a new indie band from Birmingham which I had recently photographed, just few months ago, in a gig here in Leeds and then uploaded those pictures online.

It didn’t take long to find out that there’s quite an impressive polarisation going on about this band right now. On one side, raving critiques for what NME describes as “swaggering, big hearted rock’n'roll mischief from Birmingham.” They write songs, Time Out claims, “better, more exciting and fresher [...] than anyone else.” Just check their myspace profile. By the way, they were hailed by NME as Britain’s best new band And were second in BBC News website’s Sound of 2007.

On the other hand, it also seems that something in their music, or their street-smart lyrics and a reputation for rowdiness have created few.. haters for the ‘Brummie lads’ as well. Well, as frontman Phil Etheridge points out in the BBC website “I ain’t going to sing about rivers, man, I don’t live by a river - I live by a canal and there’s bikes in it” and “we just have a laugh, and obviously sometimes that might be a little bit more rowdy than you and your friends having a dinner party, but it’s only done in jest.”

I remember the gig in Leeds quite well (and that’s already a positive remark). It was fun and enjoyed it. Although, I also remember been convinced at some point that my camera and lenses will meet the end of their short life soon… getting baptised in those flying pints of beer in the air by excited party-goers!… Here’s some photos from The Twang at the Faversham, Leeds, 4 March 2007 (© Christos Stavrou. All Rights Reserved)

The passion and energy shown by frontman Phil Etheridge was captivating. I used a telephoto lens and a high 1600 ISO to capture a glimpse of it (© 2007 Christos Stavrou. All Rights Reserved)

Finally, few tips about shooting music concerts from my personal experience:

• Go early to find a suitable place and view-angle
• Use a lens hood to minimise lens flare and also help your precious glass from fingertips, liquids, etc.
• Being polite and co-operative with the stage-crew might offer you the chance to use some otherwise difficult to access spaces and viewpoints
• Use of high ISO will be essential, either in film or digital equipment. Concert pics with their many dark areas and their uneven lighting demand digital cameras with low noise in high ISOs and a rather high dynamic range. It is recommended, of course, to use fast lenses with large maximum aperture (my lenses used above had maximum aperture 2 and 2.8) to gain as much speed as possible.
• Even if, however, you are stuck with slow lenses, (such as many current zoom-lenses) or your camera’s unworkable high ISOs, you can still achieve adequate results by concentrating at your technique: Use a monopod (which is helpful in any case!) and anticipate the artist’s movement, so that you can click at the right posing moment

Hmm.. and something else which might be helpful to film users. There are many good films out there, especially 400 B&W films, which could be exposed in a higher ISO, such as 1600 giving you at least 2 extra stops of speed. Grain and contrast would be of course affected but the results could be very satisfactory. Extra time in the developing stage will be required to compensate for pushing the film. To find out the exact extra time that is to be applied, as well as appropriate agitation techniques, search the internet or ask the manufacturer for initial info. Nevertheless, practice and experimentation is essential, after which you would be able to create your own charts in order to achieve a desired aesthetic and technical result.

I have just received an interesting email from the lovely and smiley Jessops’s employee, portrayed in the first photograph of my last post about Jessops. Apart of thanking me for his 15′ of fame, he also informed me that he is a music producer and photographer, and his website is jonstanleyaustin.com

Looking at his pictures I really liked this one below and asked to know more:

The image has an obvious Holga feeling, nevertheless it is a digitally made photo with a very interesting technique involving some.. gravy too, yes indeed! Here’s what John wrote to me:

“I’ve been experimenting with “texture layers” on photoshop, to give the pictures a bit more depth.

For this picture, there are two layers: the original image, and a texture layer.

For the texture layer i basically took a picture of some paper with gravy poored over it. I then took this picture and put it on top of my original picture, then set the blending mode to multiply, and reduced the opacity. The detail from the texture layer now shows through onto the image. Details like the creases in the paper, and the brown from the gravy. I believe it gives the image a sort of aged feel.

But other aspects of the image totally contradict this. Like the extreme blur and extreme vibrancy of the green in the grass. These aspects were applied within photoshop also, as they are two traits that a “holga” camera is known for. I have a Holga, and i like it alot, and i like the images that it produces. So i just tried to recreate its magic on my digital images.

It’s not exactly the same as a holga image, if i wanted that i would of used my holga. I just like experimenting with my digital pictures. There’s a lot of possibilities, so you may as well try them”

Does it make sense? Yes, I think so. And although there might be other, digital ways to recreate texture within a picture, I find his technique fascinating.

Oh and something else, (following a previous point made in this blog, that many film vs digital arguments are sterile and misleading), it’s so interesting to see how people mix and reproduce film, digital files, ideas, food.. Creativity is endless!