First Cupid Outings: Motion Blur and Wildlife Photography

 In February I took the Cupid out on a couple of strolls around my village. Seeing as I want to work a lot with this camera this year I thought I better remind myself what its like to shoot out and about.

The first thing I learnt was that it is absolutely impossible to hold an eye-level box camera still when you are wearing a baby carrier. The only thing harder to keep still than the box camera is the baby. Still, this experiment produced some interesting motion blur shots that make the photos look a bit more like paintings.

 

On the next outing, daddy carried the baby so I was able to get a few sharp shots. Who knew you could use the Cupid for wildlife photography? Okay, so that small bird on the rock was actually quite a big Cormorant but I'm still quite pleased with the composition. Not having a telephoto lens, or a particularly fast one, I had to approach this bird shot completely differently to what I would normally do. I was actually pretty close to the bird when I took this. Thankfully, Cormorants don't move much when they're drying their feathers. Even so, I knew the bird would be tiny in the photo, so I could hardly claim it was the subject. Instead I treated it a bit more like artists do when they add a tiny person to a landscape they've just painted. A bit of interest that speaks about the grandeur of the surroundings.

Although the bird is miniscule in this image I think it really makes this photo. The image is neatly divided into three sections, shore, sea and sky. The stark contrast of that isolated rock against the sea immediately draws your attention, but it is the bird standing on it that keeps it there. Without the bird the rock is wholly unremarkable and the picture much less interesting. If the bird had been standing on any other rock it would have been lost against the background and we wouldn't have that pretty reflection. 

Anyway the upshot is, when presented with a scene you want to shoot, don/t curse having the wrong camera or lens. Embrace the limitation and use it to fuel your creativity. If I'd had my Om-2n and my 300mm Zuiko lens this would have been a close up of a Cormorant with very little surroundings. I wonder how many of those have been taken?

A Project for 2022

For a while now I've been thinking about a larger project that would give my photography some focus, help me hone my skills a little, and give me a nice, tangible end product. I think it might be quite nice to have a go at making a zine and I have a camera in mind for the job, my Ensign Cupid. Now, I know the Ful-Vue would seem like a more natural choice, given it's the primary camera I feature on this blog, but it's 2022, which is significant as it marks 100 years since the Cupid was launched. A project centred on this quirky, 100 year old camera seems appropriate therefore. 

The Cupid wasn't in production for long, roughly six years, and they aren't all too common on the second hand market, so I'm guessing there aren't that many knocking about. Although those that are still around have had long lives, I wouldn't have thought they'd see much use beyond the 1920s. The Cupid was a quirky concept from the outset, and there were more standard snapshot cameras on the market. Even with the benefit of being able to shoot twice the number of frames, I get the sense this camera, while a pioneer, was a bit of a flop. 

It is nice to imagine a Cupid that was loved enough to avoid being shelved for the last 90 odd years though. Imagine what it could have seen if it had been out and about. What it could have documented. All the changes in society and the landscape. Sadly though I suspect few witnessed much of the last century, and this thought has partly inspired the theme of the zine I want to produce. 

Through the course of 2022 I want to take the Cupid out and about, to as many different locations as I can. I am going to treat it as though this time traveller from the 1920s has woken up in 2022 and wants to see how the world has changed. Admittedly, that's hard to do in the rural Highlands where I'm based, but I have a few trips to the central belt and possibly further afield planned where I can capture some more modern sights. 

The project is still very much in its idea stage, so I may explore other avenues. Once I have a good number of shots developed I'll have a better idea which subjects the camera really excels at taking. For the sake of consistency, and to keep things simple I am going to use one film stock for this project and that will be Catlabs X80. This won't be a surprise if you've been following this blog as I've written previously about why I think it's a great film for box camera photography. Its versatility makes it a great "shoot in any light conditions" option, which means I can have the Cupid loaded and ready to go on any day in any location. It will also be nice to really "learn" this film, and gain more experience shooting and developing it.

So that's the plan. Obviously the Ful-Vues won't be forgotten while all this is going on. I'll keep shooting those and posting their adventures here.  Watch this space for progress. I've never made a zine before so it will be a learning curve. The goal is to enjoy shooting the Cupid, to celebrate this little known camera and to grow as a photorapher.

Back from a break...International Brownie Days!

 Well, it's been a while since I last posted. I took a break from blogging and box camera-ing to get to grips with being a new mum. My daughter is now seven months old and the outdoors is finally showing signs of Spring, and I have been itching to get out shooting again. It just so happens to be the middle of February, which, conveniently is a month dedicated to International Brownie Days! over at Chuck Bakers superb Kodak Brownie website.

The idea behind International Brownie Days! is simply to have fun shooting an old Brownie and then to share up to 5 of your best photos on Chuck's gallery. Entries are open until 14th March 2022. There are some outstanding images there already so click the link for inspiration. 

Well, what better reason to grab a box camera and enjoy shooting film? I have three Brownies in my collection. A Baby Brownie Special, which is still untested as I don't have any 127 film handy; a Brownie Cresta III, which takes superb photos and featured on this blog before; and a Brownie 620 model D. I chose the 620 model D for this outing. It was still untested and had been waiting patiently for me to run a roll through it for quite some time. 

So after my husband re-spooled some 120 film onto a 620 spool using his ingenious method that I shall post here in the near future, we were all set to go. I was shooting Foma Retropan 320 film, which I really love.

 

The camera itself is lovely to use and dates from the mid 1950s. It shoots eight 6x9 frames, has a 100mm meniscus lens, a fixed aperture of f/11 and a single shutter speed of 1/50, plus bulb setting. It can be used with a tripod to assist long exposures, and it has two decent sized and very bright viewfinders. Not as big as the Ful-Vue's, but plenty big enough so composition is easy.

If there's one thing Retropan does not excel at it is grand vistas, which we have lots of in the North West Highlands. Fortunately I managed to find some subjects relatively close by that the film handled nicely. The boat came out particularly well. 

 

 

So now that I'm back into the swing of things I hope to be able to post more regularly again. I have posts in mind for the upcoming months as well as a big project this year that I hope to document here. Watch this space.