OPorto

I wanted to post this picture separate from the one under "Lisbon and Porto" because it has a very different feel after a bit of old-fashioned darkroom work on it.

It was just after sunrise as I took a cup of coffee from my hotel and walked to the ocean side. An ancient stone jetty took me closer to the waves, rocks and the iodine-rich, salty effluvia of the Atlantic. There was nothing special for photography though, as the fishermen I had seen the day before were not there. I put my camera down, sat at the very end of the jetty and enjoyed my double espresso.

When I turned to my left, a fisherman was now walking toward the jetty. He was probably 200 meters away and walking fast. I had enough time to frame one picture through a Rollei Tessar 200mm.

Although it was shot on B&W 100 ASA film, I wanted to duplicate the feeling I had looking through the viewfinder. So I did a bit of darkroom work to brig out the rustiness the morning light gave to the old city and stone jetty in the background.

The foot step pattern on the sand tells a story, I think.

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013
                                                                              

Kyoto

I was in Kyoto for two days, mostly busy at the University. Given my interest in photography, I was given a couple of hours, escorted by a colleague, to go to the market.
It was a more traditional market than the ones I have seen in Tokyo, and I expected that. The exquisite Japanese taste in clothing and detail is what I wanted to capture in this photo, amid the traditional banners and market structure.

I also like to eat street food, as it gets me closer to local culture. I tried different types of tofu and seaweed, but my discovery that day was the fried fish balls. I had tried both the yellow and white versions in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but the ones I tried in Kyoto were the absolute best. The white fish ball, scortchingly hot, enticed my senses wonderfully.

I returned to Tokyo by train, and on the way back Mount Fuji was majestically clear that day. Not a single cloud and the mountain was all colour. The man next to me noticed that I was the only one not taking pictures and asked why?

"I take only B&W pictures" I replied. "It does not do justice to the mountain when all in colour. Maybe next time when it is raining and the mountain is half in fog."

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Cape Town, South Africa

A small piece of paradise, this town is. At the junction of two oceans, it has as much variety in is topography as its demographics. To anyone holding a camera it offers compositions and outlooks that are very unique.

But to a street photographer using only B&W film, the ocean, beaches and colourful houses are not the primary focus. My quest for a composition that also tells a story about Cape Town was the challenge during last year's trip.

The first is a composition of horizontal and vertical lines, the ocean in the background and a social moment in the marina. The platinum-blond woman provided the perfect contrast, as well as the visual disruption through the patterns of her bag. I did some dodging in the darkroom to enhance her presence.

The second picture is a typical street shot: I saw the hat-seller lady walk on the beach and hoped to frame her between the couple having lunch. While this was planned on my part, the perfect positioning of the pigeon atop her was not! And that is what those of us still using film and 1950's mechanical cameras hope to achieve based on what H. Bresson called "le moment decisif" or the deciding moment: to frame and click just when all actors and elements are about to tell a story.

Of course the lighting was much less than optimal: against the sun and reflections from the sea and sand. But I did not think about the technical quality of the picture, just the story it may tell. Both pictures taken with a Mamiya 645 1000s and a Mamiya-Sekor 80mm 1.9 lens. The film was ASA 100.

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Streets Belong to Dogs, Too

I have always looked at streets as a place for people. Well, that may not be totally correct given how many people are at the other end of a leash. Other than cute puppy pictures, I find it difficult to take pictures of dogs as part of my street photography. The traditional search for "master looking like his dog" does not excite me.
I have however taken a few dog pictures in an attempt to define a social moment. Be that an old bulldog waiting for his master who is visiting a shop, or a proud mix-of-a-dog wearing a painter's beret at a dog show, I always try to make the dog a representative of the story rather than the subject of a photograph.

The first photo was taken with an Ukrainian Salyut medium format camera and an expired Chinese Lucky film. The defects on the negative seem to make the peaceful slumber of these two dogs even more peaceful. Picture taken on a lake in Virginia.
The second is that famous bulldog waiting for his master. Don't you have the feeling that he has gone through this experience before? Picture from Fells Point, Maryland.
The third is from a Baltimore dog show. There is something cocky in that little dog's eyes, especially given the poster behind him!
The final one is about serenity and love. The wipers on the car seem to provide a perfect outlook to the snowy weekend. A split-second clicking on my Mamiya 645 to capture the tenderness. Taken in Columbia, Maryland.

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Le Petit Prince of Columbia, Maryland

There are books where we have found a piece of ourselves, but even more, that we have rediscovered ourselves when we read them again, years later. Some of these books seem simple at first; a fairy tale, a story easily read. Then, we pass through life, through streets and people, and one morning we wake up with the name of a book on our mind. A book we have read many years ago. We read it in French, in English, in Mandarin. And we look for that book once more.

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is one of these books. It is philosophical, it is dreamy, it is about love, but mostly it is about responsibility. In short, it is pure Zen.
I re-read that book in French many times, sometimes by pure chance of finding it near me, or after looking for it. The line that has stayed with me is: "Men have forgotten this truth." said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible. forever, for what you have tamed."

I took this picture on a cold, snowy day with a Pentax 1000. The moment I saw the dog getting closer to the young man, I thought about the fox and the Little Prince. And I waited for the millisecond when the "fox" would tell the line above. I am sure that is exactly what it said!

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Madrid

A cloudy day in Madrid. I was walking around with my Nikon F3 and did not take pictures for a long while. On rainy and cloudy days people seem in a hurry and often the crowd becomes an amorphous flow of human bodies with no individual characteristics.

Then, I heard almost a howling sound behind me, to my right. I turned and saw this man leafing through a magazine where pictures of Adonis's were shown full page. The howling was perhaps his appreciation of the photos, or could it have been his lament for years gone by? No matter, it was a most unusual moment. I waited till he turned another page to include the picture of a handsome man, then clicked.

It is slightly off-focus because I had opened the lens to 1.4 and did not have much time for framing as he was going through the pages fast!

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013

Kisses and Cities

It is impossible not to stop and notice a tender embrace when walking the streets. The challenge for the photographer is not to be a voyeur, but find the angle to enhance the context of a street picture by including the kiss.
I rarely use any lens other than a 50 mm for 35mm format, although when shot on medium format film (hence 80 mm lens), I can enlarge parts of the negative during darkroom work to the limits of a frame shot with a telephoto lens. In my world of old-time photography, darkroom work is what transforms a picture into a photo worth framing.

I decided to do a small collage of kisses from different cities. My goal was to show a characteristic street kiss representing the mentality of the country. Did I succeed? You decide.

The last picture is a bit of a challenge to decipher at first look. I took it from the cable car going up the mountain at Mont Tremblant. We were passing over expensive summer homes with swimming pools and I saw this couple in a romantic mood, in the middle of the pool. Consider it an aerial picture, and if you look closely going right to left, you will notice the head, shoulders and the arms of the woman. Her legs are reflected under the water. I like this picture for its visual challenge and it made it as the cover of my last poetry book "Aromance: The aroma of romance".

From top to bottom the cities are: Ferrara, Barcelona, Paris, Oporto, Vienna, New York City and Mont Tremblant, Canada.

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013