Book Review: Beyond the Road by Stephen Taylor and Harold Horwood

May 03, 2022

While attending my sister's wedding in China, Maine, I met Steve Taylor and his daughter and son-in-law at Brightworks. I got talking to Steve during some down time between the big moments (if you’ve been part of a wedding you know what I mean), and he mentioned he'd made a book of large format photos on Newfoundland back in the 1970s.

I found the page for Beyond the Road on his website, and was immediately taken by the photos. The book itself is long out of print, but I found a battered copy online for $7 and consider it a steal. If you can locate a copy, add it to your photo book library.

The cover of the book Beyond the Road. A man walks away from the camera past racks of drying materials on a dirt road, toward the ocean. — Photo by Stephen Taylor

The photos from Beyond the Road remind me very strongly of Edward Weston photographs. Steve studied with Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan, and I can see their influence all over his images.

But while the photos certainly have stylistic influences, they are not simple copies of someone else's style or images. They remind me of Weston not just because they were shot on large format film, but because they are well-composed and edited. They are not simply technically good, but contain whole worlds within their borders.

A church sits on the shore underneath a cloudy sky. The land stretches out for miles behind it. — Photo by Stephen Taylor

I enjoy the mix of landscape and portrait images in Beyond the Road. The landscape above of the church along a riverbed immediately grabs my eye. I nearly missed the person in front of the church, and the second cross over the hill behind it.

Photo of mother, seated, illuminated with window light. Behind her stands her shirtless son. — Photo by Stephen Taylor

In the portrait above, we see a woman seated in a wooden chair with arms - I think I sat in one much the same at my grandparents' house. A window outside the left frame provides the primary illumination, throwing her face into relatively sharp relief, while behind her in the softer light is a shirtless young man. He gazes at her softly while she smiles for the camera. Is he her son? What is their relationship?

Behind them both electrical cables snake along the wall, held up by nails or wall ornaments. Both participants are at home, but not exactly relaxed. It's a moment in which things are revealed.

One of the real strengths of this book is Stephen's partnership with the writer Harold Horwood. Horwood's words, and quotes and stories from Newfoundlanders, give the book dimension I often feel is lacking in photo books. Horwood doesn't simply narrate the photos, which gets boring quickly, but adds context that blends with the photos.

Fisherman sit amongst crates and lobster traps in front of a store. — Photo by Stephen Taylor

If I have a criticism of Beyond the Road, it's that the printing techniques available in the 1970s didn't do these images justice. I'd really like to see a reissue or some original prints. The images on Steve's website are a treat as it is, though, so I recommend checking them out as soon as you can.

Footnote: The wedding photos are excellent, and I can't recommend Brightworks enough for Maine weddings. Images above used with the kind permission of the photographer.

What I learned photographing #12: PortconMaine 2021

October 04, 2021 in Essay, long reads, writeups, photography

What I learned photographing PortconMaine 2021

I’ve had a long gestating idea to go document anime conventions and the folks that go to them. I’m not strictly speaking about the cosplayers, either -- ideally I’d document everyone that went, regardless of costume or status, etc. I feel that the community as a whole is large, diverse, and has never really been seriously documented - though the cosplay has by Elena Dorfman (Aperture) As a teenager, I used to be a hardcore weeb -- I’ve subsequently fallen out/aged into different interests -- but I’ll never not have a fondness for anime and the people that watch it; which is what inspired me to revisit the subject as an adult, fifteen years later.

Unfortunately (but sensibly enough), most or all cons were cancelled in 2020, for reasons that should be immediately honest to everyone. So I was stuck waiting for 2021. I actually first attended Portcon back in 2007 as a surly teen -- and I was curious to see “what had changed?” and honestly, cutting just a bit to the end, the general answer is: not that much.

The first re-exposure I had to anime conventions as an adult was actually back in Los Angeles - I lived downtown, and during Anime Expo I’d often find a lot of spillover out from the staples center into the rest of downtown, often flooding my favorite neighborhood places. That said, Anime Expo always seemed larger than life, wild, packed, and like too much; by contrast, one con-goer and vendor described Portcon as: “The most boring con you’ve ever been to, but in a good way.”

If you’re here from Portcon, and see yourself in one of the photos, don’t hesitate to reach out! I’d be happy to send you a copy, or a print, or something, and remove/give you full credit as need be.

So here’s what I learned photographing Portcon and it’s con-goers -- I’ll break down what I learned into three sections: Technical, Artistic, Social. — Skip to the bottom of the page if you want to see my favorite images from the weekend.

TECHNICAL:

I shot exclusively 35mm Ilford HP5+ @ 400 iso, then pushed to 1600 in Kodak Xtol 1:1 - I learned next to nothing here, this is about as reliable/firmament of film/recipe as it comes. Give film enough light, and push it for contrast, you’re more or less in the clear - especially if you’re scanning. I only ended up with eight rolls over the three days, so I was able to develop all eight rolls in one go in my paterson tank.

In the last year, I picked up a Minolta CLE - an entire kit (ie the Minolta CLE body, the Rokkor-M 28mm 2.8 [of course with schneideritis], Rokkor-M 40mm 2.0, Rokkor-M 90mm 4.0; minus a working on camera flash.) Following in a long, long tradition of documentary photogs using M-Mount rangefinders, I elected to use the CLE, along with an off camera flash, actually built for that specific era of Minolta 35mm Cameras, so there’d be minimal cause for error - minimal being the key word here. I’m not hyper familiar with the CLE like I am with my Minolta XD-11, or even my Pentax 6x7 - but overall, it wasn’t too clunky to use in practice, day in day out. My particular 40mm lens seems to want to focus beyond infinity, which is strange, but again, it works out most of the time.

My biggest issue technically was getting the flash to sync well with the camera - the flash I used has a long recycle time, and I’m not super experienced using a flash - so my results vary a lot - on the final day my connector cable seemed to shit the bed, at which point I just called it for the weekend -- Ideally, the wisdom is to test your equipment heavily before going out to a shoot date, but while I was in the “research and development” phase of the project, I deemed it OK for a bit of jank or fiddliness.

The other issue I ran into was that one of my rolls snapped in half mid-shoot. I bought my rolls (which were all bulk loaded) off of an acquaintance who shall remain nameless, because I thought I was going to be shooting a ton more than I ended up shooting and wanted to get all the film in one sweep - I’ve had two or three of them snap since that day, and it’s pretty frustrating. I dislike bulk rolls because they always seem to have issues -- even if they’re not using the method of taping the ends of rolls onto recycled canisters/leaders.

TL;DR: I dunno, don’t bulk load film - there’s no real savings (the new canisters go bad after two loads, so they’re not cheap -- and especially don’t do the recycled canister method - even if the canisters are free.)

My final note is that my scanner (an epson v600, natch) is just fucked. I got a particularly bad copy of the epson v600 when I moved back to Maine, and I still can’t get 35mm right, like I did on the old v600 I had when I lived in LA.

I think my key takeaways for gear are: I shot the first 2 days on the 40mm - to middling success - there are some good photos taken with it, but I think for me - the key turn is when I swapped to the 90mm on the final day of the show -- the closer cropped portraits are much more what I had in mind back before I even started shooting. flash is hard, especially when you’re starting at zero - the cables can get clogged/or not work quite right - close cropped portraits work much better. I need to do something about my scanner, be it find a way to shim the focus, or buy/rent a better-newer model scanner.

Also, I don’t know if rangefinders, or 35mm is really “for me” anymore in my main project work. For my big project that I’m working on off-screen, I now only shoot original Fuji Acros 100 in medium format, and I’m generally much happier with the results than I am when I shoot 35mm. I also would consider swapping to something with a bellows (like a Mamiya c-330, or even RZ67) or close focus to shoot the portraits on so that I could get a closer crop.

ARTISTIC:

Portraiture is hard. Especially portraiture where you’re attempting to portray people honestly, and make them the star of the photo, with little accompaniment or background to balance the subject with.

Add on to that I’m somewhat disinclined to work with people on the whole -- or it’s a foreign concept to me (mostly). My interest sort of clicked into place when I started making just headshots or face photos with the Minolta M-Rokkor 90mm F/4.0 over the Minolta CLE Rokkor-M 40mm f/2.0, as an almost topographic approach to faces, rather than a purely documentary look at cosplayers.

Mark Steinmetz topographies with Diane Arbus rendering was kind of my starting idea for a look, and I’d say I got intermittent success - but at the same time none of the photos really add up to be “more” than maybe a few fun portraits, and a neat sort of catalog of cosplayers - again, not their fault the photos didn’t meet my expectations - the cosplayers and attendees were nothing if not game and helpful, I’m just wildly terrible at getting folks to perform street portraiture or whatever this constitutes.

To my eye the best portraits tended to either be:

One: The photos where folks really went in on posing for them - check to your left.

Or Two: the super zoomed in photos -- Check right, below

With honorable mention (or perhaps the stealthy “best” category) going to the few photos where I managed to get approval, then shoot a quasi candid photo -- I think there’s money on the table on this one, and I hope to explore it more.

Black and White is definitely the right choice over color - I’m not aiming to document the costumes - again, a lot of really great ones - but I’m more interested in the cosplayers than their costumes. The BNW helps remove some of the punchiness or baseline “oddity” of the costumes, and lets me (maybe y’all) jump past the costumes and look closer at the people.

I dunno, I’m not wild about most of my results to be honest - like I think the photos are honest, and show the subjects in a favorable light (most important thing to me), but a lot of them fall short of being truly successful portraits that transcend the subject matter.

SOCIAL:

“pseudo” candid shot - would like more of these.

First and foremost, I’d like to thank everyone for being so accepting of me going and photographing them, alongside the convention for allowing me to do so - thanks again to Julie specifically, for approving my request. I really appreciate that everyone - or close to it -- I think out of whatever 150-160 people I photographed I only got turned down five odd times.

The only real stipulation of me being allowed to photograph the con was that I had to ask everyone for permission first - which led to some mixed results - I definitely would’ve like to have gotten more candid photos - though as someone later pointed out to me, I could likely have asked permission, come back later, and made a sort of “pseudo-candid” photo.

I wish I’d done more rapport with folks -- I’m sure the base level awkwardness of a random outsider with a camera doesn’t help, but I found that a lot of the interactions photographing people went down as follows:

ME: “Can I take your photo?”

COSPLAYER/VENDOR/CONGOER: “Sure!”

I take the photo, maybe a second one.

ME: “Thanks so much ---”

COSPLAYER: walks away.

I guess my talk-no-jutsu was too weak.

Occasionally, I’d try to follow up with a question, but I often found that most folks were on their way to something - I really would’ve liked to have gotten more “man on the street” data, or personal stories -- maybe next year.

Back in 2007, Portcon was sort of the state fair for weebs and nerds, I don’t think that’s changed much since then - though I think on the whole, it’s become (maybe it was this in 2007?) a sort of first foray into a more public queer life for a lot of the teens in attendance. I’d also wager that the overall attendance actually skewed more female, or female and non-binary, than male.

In almost perfect diametrical opposition, a baseball tournament was also being held nearby this year, and a lot of the teams were staying in the same hotel as the convention. I photographed a few folks from that for contrast. I found that the adults were frequently game to be photographed and bore little malice towards the conventioneers - likewise with the middle-schoolers. But the highschoolers, the older ones - needed a serious attitude adjustment.

Anime has definitely changed a lot in the last 15 odd years -- My Hero Academia was by far the most commonly cosplayed series (though, that should surprise absolutely nobody), and outside of a few boomer anime costumes - like the woman cosplaying Misato, or a few Pokemon folks - I had trouble recognizing much of anything or anyone.

I don’t know if it was just covid that slowed the convention down - I found that it was fairly limited -- all the panels moved online, again, sensible given you’d have like 20-30-40 people in a conference room before -- and the main attraction was a couple of vendor rooms, along with a substantial cosplay pavilion - though even that shut down at 7pm -- all that being said, it didn’t keep the attendees down, they definitely seemed glad to be there.

So, that’s what I learned and saw photographing PortCon 2021. Again, Thanks to the con, and everyone who let me take their photograph -- with a little luck, I’ll be back at it again next summer.

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Acadia National Park and Beyond - Pentax 6x7

February 29, 2020 in bnw, landscape, travel photography

Acadia National Park - Pentax 6x7

-- Finally in Glorious Medium Format (that got wasted due to bad metering and waiting too long to get developed)

Usually when I get a large batch of photos, it’s hard for me to do more than an initial triage of the shots. However I waited two years to get these photos developed - the color ones. I don’t think waiting two years is a good idea. I’d be proud of them if they came out two years ago - I can’t just let the photos sit there and do nothing though, so I’m hosting them here.

(Fujifilm 160NS + Fujifilm Pro 400H pictured right, Fujifilm Acros 100 Below — I’d also like to go on record saying I shot this in 2018 before the lighthouse was a movie. Goddamn New Hampshire ass poser making a movie about Maine.)

If you haven’t read the previous maine travelogue, go ahead and do that. I dunno. I’m really starting to sit on the fence of whether the pentax is really the camera for me - I mean yeah I’ve gotten better over two years but it’s not like i’ve actually put the work in to improve that much using it - it’s not super sustainable for a lot of my daily uses and if you’ve followed me, I’ve done a lot of griping about how I just don’t get quite enough practice with it. Unless I’m in some dire pain - ie the grief suite - then there’s like some crazy override switch in my brain that goes off I can start borrowing on some level of photographic skill that doesn’t usually hit me in standard practice until about a year later -- usually about three to six months now that I’ve figured out how to practice better. (Pro 400h from Acadia National Park Below)

Anyway, I’d like to think a lot of these photos are what I traded for pinch hit grief shooting - don’t get me wrong, there’s some good stuff in here, and unlike the usual travelogue photo dump, I’ve picked it over pretty heavily, but all in all, there’s not much I’d put on my resume, nor is there anything worth going back and cleaning up or rescanning - in my opinion. That said, the feeling in a lot of these is cool, and it’s fun to look back on how I shot in 2018. Anyway - enjoy. (Provia 100f in 120 Below)

Honestly most of the color film looks like ass here. I can’t tell if it’s because i waited too long to develop all the film or my metering was way off but it all looks *bad* like there’s some neat stuff, but meh, I wouldn’t steak my name on it now.

I thought I was going to make another book or travelogue out of this, but given the context of the trip and who I took it with, I’m kinda happy to share it here as a learning experience and simply be done with it. Y’know?

The gear report (for that SEO Clout):

A bunch of bergger pancro 400 in 120. A bunch of Acros in 120 (RIP) Some Fujifilm Provia. A whole heaping fuck ton of Fujifilm Pro 400h that quite frankly I wasted -- even worse as the price continues to rise. I almost forgot - there’s some Fujifilm Pro160C in 120 mixed in here. By far my favorite no longer manufactured film/emulsion. Shout out Will Hopkins for scoring me a big ass grip of Fujifilm pro 160NS when he went to Japan. I still need to find a good project for it.

I like 400h a lot - I can’t tell what exactly went wrong -- some of it’s fine some of it isn’t. Same with the Provia 100f. The black and white turned out okay. I mean, I developed it and scanned it myself, and I haven’t really had any major qualms with my own processing in a long time. Longer ago than I shot this (give or take the dust/scan line problem)

All that said, I still don’t feel great about the Bergger Pancro 400. It just never quite turns out like I want it to, and after years of pissing and moaning about it, and not quite ever getting the results I want out of it, I think I’m making the switch to Ilford HP5+. Who knows, I’m really just bloviating here. Sorry. Beyond that this is really where I finally broke down after scanning (thanks Epson V600) and got into canned air - also figuring out how to scan the calibration area. I’m sure I could rescan but, like I said, this isn’t exactly new or relevant material.

Honestly some gripes aside the Provia 100f isn’t too bad -- not quite optimal, but survivable. Y’know? Ah well. Fujifilm, if you’re listening (lord knows you aren’t’/and/or you don’t want to listen to me -- I’ve taken too many potshots for that.) I’d love to get another whack at Provia 100f again.

That said -- as long as this is more of a confessional/photodump -- I had an issue with one roll of the bergger Pancro 400 - I got this crazy dot effect -- I hate that I don’t know what I caused it (the leading guess from @clemtaconsix is that it’s air bells) and it’s kinda unusable for most purposes - however the effect is interesting and I’d like to know what caused it -- if you know, and can show evidence I’ll give you the zine of your choosing, and a t-shirt provided I have the size for you.

The Pentax Kit: Pentax 6x7 MLU, Pentax Takumar 45 F/4 Takumar 105mm f/2.4, Takumar 165mm F/2.8. Honestly the Pentax lenses are kinda nuts. I might *actually* like the 55 more than the 45 - now that I’m a year or two away, and I can see the kinda wacky look. I still think the 105 is the best lens in the range - I need to get that stupid ikea lamp so that I can de-yellow the lens but that’s a small fix -- honestly the yellowing looks pretty good on BNW film so I might invest in a yellow filter - or not because hey, I’m not sure this is the right camera for me. That said, when the 6x7 works and shoots right - it really shoots right.

All in I think a 35mm equivalent on a 6x7 of some kind is where I’m headed. Or not. I dunno. It doesn’t really matter what I shoot anymore. They’re just fucking cameras. That said, I do think Medium format does lend a little more gravitas to the images - while still being reasonably portable.

(The Killing Field, Mini-Series on Pro 400h to the right)

The real key takeaway here is don’t sit on your film for two years. Especially when your fridge is unreliably damp and the weather in LA is stupidly hot in the summer and probably cooks your film half to death.

Again, would still highly recommend visiting Acadia National Park - probably my favorite that I’ve been to, although it gets real touristy, and my opinion is tainted with being a native Mainer.

More important than any of that — go buy a zine or in the shop. I'm tryna raise some funds to clear out my backlog, and make way for some actual new stuff.

What I learned shooting... #4: Agfapan APX100 (35mm)

January 28, 2019 in film, Gallery, bnw, photography, street photography

A thorough review and overview of one of the last batch of Agfapan APX100 in 35mm. Tested primarily with the Minolta XD-11, and Rokkor MC-PG 50mm 1.4 lens, and to a lesser extent the Minoltina AL-s. Primary Developers used were Kodak Xtol, and Rodinal.