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We visited the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, Kentucky and rode the train. It was wonderful.

This train burns a ton of coal on its run from New Haven to Boston. It smells great if you like the smell of coal and hot steam. The tracks are maintained well but there is still a bit of unevenness in the rails so the train does a gentle rocking motion as it moves down the track at a blistering 25 miles per hour. It took volunteers thirty four years to restore this engine to its current condition. It was worth it.

Kentucky Railway Museum Website

1955 Oldsmobile Holiday

For more information on this line of automobiles, go to 1954-1956 Oldsmobile 98 & Super 88 and 1954-1956 Oldsmobile

I look at a lot of photographs. It’s part of my job, and if that wasn’t enough pain, I do it in my off hours so I can tweet my favorites to my friends. Also, I study the masters of the art in a vain attempt to discover the secret of their magic. When one looks at a torrent of thousands and thousands of excellent photographs, some patterns and characteristics begin to takes shape. It appears to me that one of the characteristics that separate the sheep from the goats is in what we shoot. I don’t mean subject matter here, but rather, what it is in the mind of the photographer that triggers the snap of the shutter.

Amateurs and novices tend to shoot an idea in their heads. They don’t really shoot what they see. They have an idea, like “That’s a nice looking cow.” They point the camera in the general direction of the beast and trip the shutter. When they get home and look at their pictures, it’s a “fail” because the cow is just a small, dark lump in front of the sun surrounded by some telephone poles and half of Bubba’s pickup truck. They have responded to an idea with their camera without ever really looking at the scene, the light, the framing of the picture or anything else that might help to make the picture a good one. These pictures will usually have the subject in the dead center of the frame and will be too far away for an interesting photograph.

Advanced hobbyists and many professionals have gotten past this problem. They have learned to look at the light and to seek interesting forms. They have learned to frame their photos for greater interest. They have mastered their cameras, and are not worried about remembering how to operate the device. They shoot what they see. This is a good thing, and it makes for quality photography. I would hazard the guess that most of us are in this range of the spectrum: we have learned the rules and the devices; we’ve learned to look at the subject, and we can reliably produce decent pictures.

The place that we all really want to be is beyond technical competence. We want to shoot a memorable photograph. We want to shoot that one frame that somehow rises above the millions of other exposures to become iconic. We want to shoot Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “Kiss.” We want to shoot Ansel Adam’s “Moonrise, Hernadez” or Steve McCurry’s “Afghan Girl.” I’m sure everyone has their own list of “memorable” photos, and these are just a few of mine. It appears to me that the truly memorable photos have a characteristic that is beyond just idea and technical competence. To my eye, and this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that the truly memorable photographs have the characteristic of feeling – feeling of the photographer about the moment being captured. Something of the photographer’s history and unconscious bleeds into the photograph.

Think for a minute about Eisenstaedt’s “Kiss.” Eisenstaedt was a German Jew, born in Bavaria in 1906. He served in the German army in the artillery in World War I. He photographed Hitler’s meeting with Mussolini in Italy. He photographed Joseph Goebbels at the League of Nations in Geneva in 1933. He had to flee Germany when the Nazi’s began to actively persecute the Jews. Can you imagine the storm surge of feeling that raced through his being when he captured the iconic photo of the sailor in Time’s Square sweeping a nurse into his arms and planting an enthusiastic kiss on her lips as the end of World War II was announced? That’s feeling. Eisenstaedt lived his life through the lens of his camera, and when you know the history, it appears to be no accident that he was the guy in Times Square with his camera ready to catch the celebration of V-J day.

You and I cannot retrace Eisie’s steps, although if you told me I would be given a chance to photograph Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Ernest Hemingway, I would be temped to try. There are many others who have captured memorable photos without the travail that Eisenstaedt faced: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Fiedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Ansel Adams… I could go on. The common thread is feeling, intuition, involvement and the ability to let a bit of the unconscious bleed into the photograph. The truly memorable photographs seem to have a bit of the photographer in them. He or she is shooting a feeling, a realization about life that brings his or her whole experience to bear on a moment full of meaning which is captured in a single frame.

An aside: Do you know what Eisenstaedt would do for practice when times were slow? He would take a simple subject like and egg and put it under a single light. He would shoot the egg with every combination of f-stop and shutter speed possible (do the math), and then he would print every single negative in the darkroom just to see what the film and paper would do. The message is clear: for the greats, like Eisie, Weston, Adams, McCurry, and Cartier-Bresson, the technical skill is a given. These folks have shot so many exposures that the camera becomes an extension of their nervous system, much like the union of a great musician with the instrument. They reach the point at which the mechanism becomes invisible. As long as we are fiddling with our gadgets, we are not in the place where the truly memorable photographers live.

I don’t care for tidy summaries because they always seem to reduce good thoughts to over-simplifications, but if I had to do it with this idea, I would say that novices shoot ideas in their heads; journeymen shoot what they see, but the truly memorable photographers shoot what they feel.

What’s your reaction to this one? I was walking St. James Court shooting houses and this young woman came walking up the sidewalk toward me. The shot was a classic surreptitious “shoot from the hip” shot. I just tripped the shutter on the 635 as it hung against my stomach. I was set for f16 and had the focal point set to about 20 feet, so I didn’t have to focus. I really like the shot, but it also strikes me as kind of creepy, almost like a stalker or something. Maybe if the girl was 80 years old, or a male, it would be different, but a young, fairly attractive female being photographed without her knowledge or permission bothers me. On the other hand, I really like the shot. What do you think? (Click on image for larger view.)

Water and photography are a natural pairing. The openness and reflective properties of water make for interesting textures and the activities of people on and around water provide us with great subject matter. I have been exploring the waterfront in Louisville – the park, the docks and trails. I never seem to fail to fill up my memory cards and expose all the film I carry when I go down to the river. (Click on images for larger view).

This lady was definitely getting her inner Zen going. She was just reading at the end of the dock. I think her serene vibes helped to make the picture. I wanted to know what book she was reading, but I decided not to disturb her. It was probably The Diamond Sutra or something like that.

I was carrying my Yashica 635 TLR (a 120 film camera) when we walked past this guy. He yelled, “I got something!” and I turned and shot the picture without focusing or even aiming the camera because I thought a big fish was about to explode out of the water. It turned out to be an unfortunate box turtle. The fisherman cut the hook with some wire cutters so it could slip out of the turtle’s mouth and let him go. He said, “I’m strictly ‘catch and release.’ I don’t like killing things.” (The vignette is a Photoshop effect, not the lens.)

The Belle of Louisville is the oldest operating steam ship in the United States. She’s coming in to dock after a cruise up the river. I love this boat.

Another guy fishing with bridges in the background. This is looking upstream on the Ohio River toward Cincinnati. We talked to this guy and he wasn’t catching anything. He said he’d never fished the river before and didn’t know what he was doing wrong. My hunch is that it was so hot that the fish were deep in the channel, out past where you could cast a line.

Gotta’ luv the ducks. I think ducks are natural comedians.

Here’s the crew tying up the Belle at the Third Street dock. That foggy stuff is real live steam from the engine. I particularly enjoyed catching the rope in mid air (and yes, this was done with a digital DSLR).

This is the southern end of the Kennedy Bridge where Interstate 65 crosses the Ohio. The massive expressway makes a perfect canopy for a cookout when the sun is beating down.

See also “Cooling Off in Waterfront Park”

There’s a park on the waterfront in Louisville, creatively named “Waterfront Park.” Through the park runs a long fountain and wading pool that was put together with an artistic eye. Part of the fountain runs underneath a section of Interstate 64 so that you get not only the cooling water, but also shade. We went down there today and there seemed to be a picture everywhere the camera was aimed. (Click on images for a larger view.)

Old things fascinate me. I love old cars, old coins, old tools, and I love old cameras. I’m not a film versus digital jihadist – I use digital cameras too and wouldn’t give them up for a minute. My digital cameras are the “bread and butter” of my workday. They go on all of the important shoots. When I’m shooting for fun or trying to get “creative,” I’ll often grab one of my veteran film cameras, in part because they make me shift gears mentally and in part because the textures and tones of film please me. Most important is that I just enjoy using them.

There are issues with shooting vintage cameras that have to be acknowledged. The first is maintenance and the second is cost. Cameras that are 30-50 years old often have problems. Most of the time, we buy these cameras used and it is hard to know how much use and abuse they have received. Just the sheer passage of time can cause components in the mechanism to deteriorate: light seals rot, shutters get sticky, batteries go out of production, parts wear out, and dust and fungus can accumulate in places which are hard to clean. So, if you pick up an old camera at a yard sale or off of Ebay, chances are that it will need some maintenance to get it into working order. This means knowing your cameras and their weaknesses pretty well, and having some sort of support in the form of technicians who can repair and adjust them. This isn’t always easy to line up, but people are out there who have the parts and know how to work on most old cameras of quality. Sadly, as digital cements its supremacy in the photographic world, the number of skilled analog camera repairmen declines. I would hope that we will reach a point of equilibrium someday between digital and analog hardware so that the people who are able to work on older cameras can make a living, but that hasn’t happened yet.

The second major issue with older cameras is the cost of operation. Film and processing cost money. There is no escaping that, but the costs can be mitigated. You can develop your own film and you can often buy expired film which still works just fine, especially in black and white. Expired color film can be a bit more dicey, but it can render some interesting results and effects. I recently tested a batch of Fujichrome Astia 100 and found that it produced very acceptable pictures when using a bit of color correction in Photoshop.

The last important piece of the processing cost puzzle is a scanner which can scan film directly, such as the Epson “V” series of scanners. Again, this is a cost, but one that is worthwhile for many reasons. You can shoot a lot of film for the price of a Nikon D700 or Canon 5D, and vintage analog cameras these days can often be had for absurdly low prices. A good scanner working directly from film can easily produce an image of equal or higher resolution than the current crop of professional grade DSLR cameras. Also, a scanner will allow you to scan old prints whose negative are long lost. You will spend some money to shoot film, but many photographers still find it worth the effort.

I won’t rehash in detail why I still enjoy using film. If you want to read more of that, please see my article, “Dancing with Dinosaurs.” The condensed version is this: film causes me to shift gears mentally; I enjoy the textures and tones of film; and, I enjoy working with vintage cameras.

Lately, my vintage camera shooting time has been shared by two wonderful cameras: the Nikon F3 and the Yashica 635. Here’s a bit on each of these, and why I like them.

The Nikon F3: Introduced in 1980, the Nikon F3 has been called “the greatest manual 35mm SLR ever built” and few seem interested in disputing the claim. Built like a tank, the Nikon F3 is legendary for its sheer ruggedness and durability. If you’re the kind who needs to sling a camera into the belly of a chopper under a hail of gunfire, the F3 still has no equals. Many of the features of modern SLR and DSLR cameras that we take for granted today were developed on some variation of the F3 platform, such as electronic shutters, exposure automation, “off the film plane through the lens” flash metering, and even autofocus (F3AF). The F3 “H” variant was capable of shooting 13 frames per second. To this day, it still has the smoothest film advance in the world. The body was built to highly exacting tolerances so that it still gives some of the best lens performance and focus sharpness ever. I am told that the Nikon F6 has even more exacting focus, but those are as scarce as hens’ teeth. The F3 was in production for 20 years, the longest production run of any of the Nikon professional grade “F” series cameras because it was just that good. There are a bunch of them still out there and you can buy them for a song. The F3 is simply a classic. The quality of the components is so high that even my 30-year-old F3 has never required maintenance or repair. When you hold this instrument in your hands, you know that you are holding a real camera.

When I started shooting, back at the dawn of time, the cameras I used were much like the F3, only not as nice and not built as well – Nikon, Pentax and Canon 35mm SLR’s that were more or less manual. The F3 is as comfortable as an old shoe for me. I won’t go into the electronic and mechanical intricacies that make the F3 what it is; that would take many pages. I will just say that, among film cameras, it is the best at getting the picture I am seeing of any I have ever shot.

The Yashica 635: I don’t think the Yashica 635 has ever won a “greatest” in anything, except perhaps, the greatest twin lens reflex camera that can run both 35mm and 120 film. The 635 is essentially a Yashica D with the additional capability of running 35mm film. The charm of the 635 is different, less tangible, but very real. I was walking down the street in downtown Louisville with my Yashica 635 hanging from my neck on a strap. A pretty young woman approached on the sidewalk from the other direction. As she got close, she glanced at the camera, smiled and said to me, “I love your camera.” OK, this is a keeper. Almost everywhere I go with the 635, someone stops me and comments on it. It’s the greatest photography conversation starter ever. I have fun with this camera. The 635 is funky. You look down into it and it has a little flip out magnifying glass in the viewfinder for precise focus. The shutter cocking mechanism does not advance the film – that’s a separate knob, so I get double exposures all the time because I get excited about something I’m seeing and forget to advance the film. They’re nice double exposures and some of them are cool, but it can be annoying when you ruin a good shot because you forgot to advance the film. Also, when you look down into the viewfinder, the image is reversed left to right. Now, I think this is cosmic, and I believe it triggers some left-brain, right brain creative neurology, but it does require some imagination to remember that the picture you’re shooting is going to be the horizontal opposite of what you’re seeing.

What I really like about this camera is the big 6×6 negative and the particular characteristics of the lens. With a good scanner, you can make images that will print wonderfully at a size of 8 feet square. At f8 and above, the lens is very sharp and capable of great precision, but below f8, the lens softens ever so slightly and I find it to be an extremely pleasing effect – it’s a subtle softening that lends an artistic feeling to the picture. If I have a criticism of this lens, the Yashikor 80mm f3.5, it would be that it’s a bit contrasty in bright light. I get my best pictures from this lens in soft light situations.

The Yashica 635 really makes me slow down and think about what I’m doing. 120 rolls in 6×6 only have 12 exposures, so I don’t click like crazy. Each exposure is very intentional. The 635 has no onboard light meter, so I have to stop and pull out my light meter and take a reading of the scene around me. Everything about shooting it is slow, deliberate and intentional. The intriguing paradox of the Yashica 635 is that I have shot some of my best photographs on it, or cameras very much like it, such as the Yashica 124G and the Rolleiflex.

You shoot on a vintage camera for the same reason you buy and restore a 1939 Ford coupe: because you like the way it feels and what happens in your head when you do it. It’s not the easiest or most practical path for photography. For the easiest and most practical, get a nice Nikon or Canon DSLR and your life will be good. For a path less traveled, which can be full of surprises and unexpected delights, the vintage cameras can be a magic carpet.

Links:

The Nikon 35mm SLR Saga

Modern Classic SLRs Series : Nikon F3

Ken Rockwell on the Nikon F3

The F3 on Camerapedia

Yashica 635 on Camerapedia

Examples of pictures shot on Yashica 635 cameras

“Bath Time in Horse Country”
Click here to purchase a print

The job was to shoot a field test of a new soil treatment that was supposed to make pastures grow better. The location was a horse farm near Georgetown, Kentucky. After the required shots of the sprayer, the fields, cattle and horses were done, I began to just wander around the elegant old farm looking for pictures. The colt barn was open at both ends and when walked in out of the bright sun I saw this scene. I didn’t have a long lens with me, but I zoomed out as far as I could and tripped the shutter. The trainer was just beginning to give the colt a bath. It was a hot day, and the hand bath with big soapy sponges seemed to suit the little horse just fine. I was delighted that I had captured the quiet moment.