The Robbins Files

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to do something about my non-existent negative filing system. It was getting beyond the ridiculous stage making it impossible to find anything without riffling through piles of see-through sheets.

In the course of this effort, I started unearthing negatives I hadn't seen since the days when I could also see my feet when standing up. Yes, some of them were that old! I scanned a few of them and pinged them to Phil Rogers as, for some reason, he likes looking at my old negatives, particularly if they're 6x9, as some of them were.

Phil urged me to do a post up about them for the blog so here it is. The oldest one is the shot above, from the days when I was young (about 21), free and single and could take off up Scotland's north-west coast and the Isles at the drop of a hat. The only problem with this neg is I can't remember if I took it on Mull or Skye. In those days I cut medium format negs up individually mainly because that's the only way I could get them to fit in the carrier of the enlarger I was using at the time. With no notes to fall back on, I can't even look at negs from the same roll to see if I can work out the location.

"Dan" (the van), the under-noted caravanette.

It was taken in the early morning not far from where I'd spent the night in my first caravanette - the first vehicle I ever owned - a charming 1960s Bedford CA. Red leather seats, tartan carpets and red and white bodywork - what a wee beauty. The camera was my 1954 Rollei Automat with a 75mm f3.5 Tessar, my first MF camera and one which I still have although it needs a service to sort out one or two issues. It's a wee beauty as well.

It's cropped in the landscape format because I was shooting over a wall and there's some out-of-focus stonework at the bottom of the frame. Sometimes the light and atmosphere on the islands can be magical and this was one such occasion. It's a pity that my photographic abilities at that time were limited (translation: I was crap) because I don't have many noteworthy negatives to show for my travels but I've always like this photograph.

Here's another quiet wee shot but now we've been beamed over to Scotland's east coast. It's some ruined old farm buildings at a place called Usan just up the coast from Montrose. A gentle light, courtesy of one of our common low pressure North Sea troughs, was kind to the buildings and the lazy cows which had nothing better to do but sit and stare.

I had my first Mamiya Press on a tripod for this one. Photography under these conditions can be very relaxing. The weather was doing nothing at all and my bovine models were acting as if they were on strike. I could have gone away somewhere for a cup of coffee and found the same scene waiting to be captured when I returned. As a pic it's nothing special but I can clearly remember taking it - some 25 years ago - and it's a nice memory.

The shot above was made at the same time at Usan but from the other side of farm buildings. I think this one was handheld on the Mamiya which was just as well as it was tricky capturing the cows in this configuration. A slight movement left or right would end up with cows over-lapping or being chopped in half by the edge of the frame.

Here's an old haunt of mine, Craigowl hill with its communications towers at the summit. Not such an old shot, though, having been taken on the Zeiss Super Ikonta IV I picked up at a local auction a couple of years ago.

Looking out of the livingroom window.

That's Craigowl on the horizon - a 20 minute drive away.

As the crow flies, it's only about five miles from where I live - in fact, I've got a good view of it from my livingroom window (see above). I've been up there in all weathers but, as usual, bad weather is better with snow the best. There must have been quite a few farm vehicles up the narrow, private road on that day as the snow was badly churned up.

The Ikonta's 75mm Tessar has done a good job of recording the gritty nature of the scene although, if I'm being honest, grittiness was about all that any camera could have captured on that day.

The final shot is another oldie, taken about 25 years ago on the Mamiya Press at a farm not far from where I once lived in the country. It was another old farm which wasn't too prosperous and which subsequently never really got the maintenance it needed. Still, if everything was spick and span I'd have hardly any subjects.

The lens used for this was the 65mm Sekor (equivalent to about 28mm in 35mm terms) and my copy had a tendency to flare. This was one of those occasions where this "defect" has actually given the photograph more atmosphere and also helped lift the shadows. A high contrast, multi-coated lens would have left the shadows, particularly the roof trusses, quite a bit darker given the same exposure. The second Usan shot above also shows a little bit of the 65mm's flare.

I've not been too active on the photography front lately but I'll hopefully have something fresh to post about in a week or two.