Vintage weddings and things

London, Southbank

There are delights - and horrors - to being a photographer, and a few special problems with sometimes being a vintage photographer who uses authentic equipment from 1895 - 1975. The photograph above was one of the delights. Taken with a 1930s Zeiss (shown bottom left), this couple were trolling around the Southbank Centre and wandered into my primitive studio - and fell automatically into the most fantastic pose! Not only that, but they took their cue from me and held while I changed cameras, lenses and positions. I got the impression that they had been photographed once or twice before...

One of the major problemettes with the vintage equipment is with the so-called "pace of life" today. My theory is that no more actual "life" flows past than ever used to, today's average "life" is just thinner and flows more freely and quickly. Modern attention spans are... but anyway, that's quite enough of that, let's move on.

The Zeiss is relatively easy to use and almost as quick as a modern digital provided that I've done my preparation and my brain is in gear - but the big "view camera" or "field camera" that you see above on the [modern - elfin saferty rules] tripod is as slow as it gets. Whether portraits or weddings or events folk love it, squeal with delight or terror as I disappear under the velvet dark-cloth and then get up and rush off, thinking that the deed has been done!

I spend half my professional life running after customers and using a lasso to drag them back.

The view camera is a mahogany body with a (mismatched, modern - 1920s) lens at the front with a (mismatched, modern, 1920s) clockwork shutter, bellows to make a tunnel between the lens and a gizmo at the back that holds either a ground-glass screen or a film back. You often see these things being abused and misused in films and TV - the photographer disappears under the cloth, shouts "cheese" and lets off a flash - when at that stage, matey boy, there would/should be nothing whatsoever to be seen under the cloth! There's no viewfinder as with a modern camera.

Stage 1 - pose. Stage 2 - disappear under the cloth to check the upside down back to front image and focus. Focus is done by physically moving the lens back and forth. Stage 3 - calculate exposure by rule of thumb, thumbwheel gizmo and/or modern magic. Stage 4 - set clockwork shutter and aperture. Stage 5 - change ground glass focus screen for film back. Stage 6 - check that nothing has changed or moved. Stage 7 - remove dark slide to let the camera see the film. Stage 8 - with no need to be anywhere under the cloth, there's nowt there you can see or change, trigger the shutter and any flash. Stage 9 - push in the dark slide to protect the film. Stage 10 - thank the sitters, if sitters there still be, cross your fingers that you did everything properly and maybe go through the stages all over again just in case... Stage 11 - develop the film and print and scan it into the digital age.

Most modern folk tend to spot a shiny squirrel or some other distraction by about halfway through Stage 2!

 Meanwhile some two dozen passers by have wandered up beind their iRaspberry phones or their Smart-Apple Pods or whatever, pointed, clicked, applied the "vintage it" app and wandered off to see something new.

This is a major problem at weddings - it's virtually impossible to hold anyone's attention for more than 1/8000th of a second - so I cheat a bit. Same camera, same equipment, but I just change the order of events. Instead of putting the camera where it needs to be to see the people I put the camera where I want it, do most of the steps before I shout "Oh I say - would you mind awfully saying fromage over here for a moment?" and pose the people where they need to be for the camera. It cuts down the incidence of getting back home, developing the films and finding Bride, Groom, Vicar and Families-in-Lore all beautifully framed and focused and exposed and all looking down at their iPhones. 

I always presume that they are Tweeting, FaceBookin, TXTing or eMailing about how slow this chuffing vintage photographer idiot is and how they should have hired a modern one one who had a clue about what he was doing...

p.s. I love it really!

www.vintagephotographer.co.uk