To all of you who took a look at my streetshooter series and interested in my "technique", here goes. As a 15 year old spending the summer in France ( I was born there and all my relatives are there ), I happened on a gallery in Paris. There, I saw a bunch of photographs taken by some guy named Henri Cartier Bresson. I was fascinated by his term " the decisive moment". I thought to myself," very true! Everything in life has a decisive moment". From that day on I decided to try my hand at the decisive moment.
I scraped and saved for over a year doing odd jobs until I had enough money for a used double stroke M3. I could only afford the 50mmf/2.8 ( or was it the f3.5?- stolen some time ago ). So, I went out and photographed things and people that struck my fancy.
For film, I used whatever was the cheapest! I think alot of it was black and white movie film that I bought in 100ft. rolls and bulk loaded myself. Sadly, some of the film was very out of date and ended up foggy and grainy. I made the best prints I could but some looked as if they had been shot at ASA 1600 by today's film standards.
90% of my photographs were pre-focused. I'd hide my camera ( I covered it with black masking tape and wore black!) and pull it out at what I perceived to be the decisive moment. Click and I was gone. Next prey.
I made all my prints on a Focomat Ic ( almost the only enlarger that would give me sharp grain from edge to edge ( Dursts were also good ). Being a condenser enlarger, it showed grain and dust. I preferred that to softer images.
Finally, on most of my old negatives, the emulsion has some cracks ( that's why I scanned most of my negatives and created my Streetshooter series). I scanned most of them with a Nikon Coolscan 5000. Good scanner, but like the Focomat enlarger, it seems to amplify the grain! Yes, I probably could do multi-pass scans but that would take forever. I could also spend more time playing with S curves and burning and dodging, but again, it's time consuming. At least I work a bit harder that Cartier Bresson who never made one of his own prints!
Thanks again for looking! 1/250 at F/5.6 and be there!
