Burma Daze - Chasing George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling.

After many years, I finally made it to Burma (Myanmar) a place that has long interested me thanks to the literature of George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling and the exploits of Orde Wingate's Chindits fighting the Japanese during World War 2.   

It was an awesome trip and over the next few weeks I'll have to sort through the images and whittle them down to a reasonable edit. But, for now, here are some of the snapshots that I took with my iPod Touch which came as a throw in when I upgraded my Macbook pro recently. I took it with me to listen to some podcasts and stuff during the quiet times but ended up using the camera and its apps to grab some snapshots between beers and the more 'serious' photographic endeavours. 

Hotel room views - dreaming of George Orwell and Rudyard Kiplinfg

Puppet, Rangoon

Sule Pagoda, Rangoon

Ananda Pahto temple, Bagan

Stupa Ruins, Indein

Buddha at Nga Hpe Kyaung

Betel nut seller, Mandalay

Rangoon

Preparing for the road to Mandalay

Shan market, Indein

Coffee and propaganda somewhere over the Irrawaddy

Fisherman, Inle lake

Nyaungshwe

Monks sharing a cigar...yes they're kids.

The Irrawaddy

Roadside book stall, Rangoon.

Departure lounge, Yangon

When the generals talk... (with apologies to Midnight Oil)

Flight

 Now it's time to start editing and printing, so stay tuned for more photos and an in depth trip report.

Welcome to the night train

Simple Living: The Detritus of Life (I)

Welcome to the Night train. Buy the ticket, take the ride. A sneak peak at a new series that I am working on 

Diginegs... from phone pic to B&W darkroom print

Screen-grab from my LR catalog showing a photo taken with my Nokia N95 mobile/cell phone. (Click on picture to see a larger version)

Those of you that know me, know how much I love being in the darkroom and printing traditional silver gelatin based prints. When I travel these days one of the big decisions that I have to make is to determine how much of my film based analog gear Vs my digital cameras I should take. There's just not enough room for all or both. 

During my trip to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, with Perth photographer and party animal,  Robert (Safaribob) McLellan, in late 2009 I opted just to take a couple of 35mm  cameras (my beloved Hasselblad X-pan and my little Leica P&S) leaving all my digital kit back home. EXCEPT for my trusty old and much loved Nokia N95 cellphone. Ended up using the camera on the phone quite a lot, albeit mainly when Bob and I were staggering around in search of beer or food... which is what we seemed to be doing mostly

Quite liked some of the pix, so I decided to produce some inkjet based digital negatives and see how they printed in the darkroom. I've been making digital negatives for some time now, although mostly to use as contact negs when producing Canotypes, Van Dyke and other alternative processes. I'd also just bought a 'low end' Canon MG5250 printer and was curious to see how it would compare to my older Epson. 

So, after doing some preliminary prepping of the phone pic in lightroom, I moved it over to photoshop and ran some tests, tweak ing the curves to match the silver gelatin process, with my printer and the inkjet material that I am using. Most practitioners of this technique, including one of the guru's, Dan Burkholder, recommend the Pictorico OHP sheets but as I am struggling to get these atm, I opted for Nobo OHP film available from Officeworks. The quality of the resulting negatives and Fibre Based prints (Kentmere Fineprint VC FB paper) are pretty bloody good considering the printer and Nobo OHP film don't even register on the 'radar' as being worthy of consideration for the majority of the practitioners of this technique.

Shop Window, Old Quarter, Hanoi - Silver Gelatin Artists proof print
(Click on picture to see a larger version)