portrait – tim dobbs photography

I don’t take portraits … well maybe I do? .. latest zine project

I have been making my own zines for a few years now and find the whole process very enjoyable especially when you get a finished copy of your work in your hands.

“I don’t take portraits” is my latest offering and is a slightly misleading title as it only features portraits that I have sort of unknowingly shot over the past few years.

What I mean is I never intentionally go to shoot portraits but I have seemed to have accumulated at least one frame from most of the rolls of film I have shot either as a way of testing the film/lens/camera combination or just to start/finish a roll.

Last month I went totally out of my comfort zone and agreed to an interview with Euan over at Biblioscapes … https://biblioscapes.com/ to talk about this new zine.

I don’t usually do this type of thing but Euan made the whole process very relaxed and easy.

Biblioscapes is a great site featuring a wide variety of photographers and styles and I enjoy listening to all of the interviews, I am honoured to be amongst such good work.

Here are the links to my waffling if anyone is interested ..

https://biblioscapes.com/in-discussion/tim-dobbs

and the zine itself ..

https://biblioscapes.com/library/i-dont-take-portraits

I had the zine printed by the wonderful Mixam who always do a great job.

Here is a link to the online proof that they generate before it went to print.

https://mixam.co.uk/share/6161d5d06810b6546dda72c4

Comments on the zine and my waffling all about it will be gratefully received.

Also I still have a handful of copies left so if anyone of you would like one please get in touch either through Twitter .. @timdobbsphoto or email .. timd.photography@gmail.com for details.

I have a few spare zines left from previous and I will be giving one free with each Portrait zine.

I don’t take portraits … my latest zine

A slightly misleading title but it is something that I did believe until I was going through my archive of images a couple of months back looking for an older image to print for someone.

More often or not I seem to take at least one image per roll of film especially on 35mm either deliberately or as a test for the film if I have not used that film/camera/lens combination before or as a last shot off the roll.

Anyway they all seem to build up when you go back through the numerous folders/years in my Lightroom catalog.

I have taken peoples portraits when asked or if I am doing some sort of project but it is not something I have ever steered my photography towards, I did shoot a few weddings a couple of years back and didn’t really enjoy the overall experience .. shooting was the easy bit ha ha!

So I decided to pull together all of my film portraits and attempt a zine which is different to every other zine I have produced so far.

Whittling the images down to what would be a nice little zine was hard and it eventually ended up 52 pages and could have easily doubled that.

It is A5 size saddle stitched, Soft touch laminated cover, 52 pages B&W/Colour on 150gm matt stock printed by Mixam Print.

As per usual the twitter film community responded to it well and most of the 30 copies sold pretty quickly which was nice as when I do a zine I use the monies from the sales to go for my next zine that way I seem to be able to produce more zines almost free of charge after my 1st zine.

I still have a few copies left and if anyone is interested you can DM me on Twitter .. @timdobbsphoto or email timd.photography@gmail.com or I have an etsy shop too … https://etsy.me/3vd9H4p .. for the last few copies I will be including a free 2nd zine featuring a friend who makes Lovespoons which is also in my etsy shop if you want to take a look.

Anyway here is a sample selection of the portraits featured in the zine ….

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek

Sunny day walk with my Daughter & some Kodak Portra 400VC …

I have been working all the way through this pandemic lockdown which is a blessing as I think I would have gone nuts if I had to stay home so on the weekends I make the most of it by going on a long walk here in our lovely Garw Valley.

Most weekends if she isn’t working too I have been joined by my daughter who has been eager to explore the many different walks we have here in our vicinity.

I bought quite a few rolls of Portra 400VC from Mr Cad ages ago so I thought it was about time that I shot some of it so I loaded my trusty Mamiya 645 and went out on a hot Saturday morning to do a 8 mile trek around our valley.

After developing the roll I had some issues namely strange light leaks in different places and of different intensities so I immediately thought the camera was at fault even though I have never had a problem like this on any other rolls.

After posting on Twitter asking if anyone had any idea what it could be most people suggested the camera which would have been the obvious choice so I loaded up a roll of ilford SFX and shot that the following day under the same sunny conditions only to find they were all perfect … no leaks so on this occasion I think the problem was with the film itself.

I bought about 20 rolls and have shot 7 or 8 previously and all were fine except this one.

As most of the leaks occurred on the edges I managed to salvage quite a few frames with a little cropping which was pretty easy as it was a 6 x 4.5 frame.

See this original scan sample here

Anyway here are the final images … please click to view larger ….

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

Eventually trying my 1st roll of Silberra Ultima 200 …….

It must be a year or two back that I supported a Indiegogo campaign for Silberra where I received 2 rolls of film … Pan 200 & Ultima 200.

You can see my Pan 200 results here .. Silberra Pan 200 …

So here is the 2nd roll Ultima 200 … I shot it using my Nikon F100 and processed it using Rodinal at 1+25 dilution for 8 minutes.

The film was a a bugger to load onto the reel in the darkroom and was also a pain to scan due to how very thin it was .. that said once scanned I was pretty happy with how it looked.

The contrast and sharpness was nice, not bad tonal range either and to my eye the grain didn’t seen as pronounced as the Pan 200 I had shot before.

I doubt I will be shooting any more as it doesn’t really bring anything new to what I shoot that HP5 or plenty of other stocks that I regularly use, also I won’t miss the loading/scanning problems.

So here are a selection of images ….

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

My 1st roll of the New Kodak Ektachrome … all 36 frames

I have shot most of the available and discontinued slide films over the years and processed them in E6 and cross processed in C41 and it never fails to give you a great feeling holding up some slides to the light.

So obviously when Kodak announced that they were bringing back Ektachrome I couldn’t wait to get some to play with.

Once I bought a few rolls I decided to load the 1st roll into my Nikon F100 as it gives me pretty much spot on exposures when I shoot slide film.

As you can see from the 1st shot on the roll I began shooting on March 30th and I took about 4 months to complete the roll as I wanted to try it on a range of subjects and lighting conditions.

I had the film developed & scanned by AG Photographic as I didn’t want to mess up the developing and get unreliable results.

I have to say the film lived up to my expectations … colours and sharpness were great and even shooting into the sun worked, also portraits came out good too.

So here is the complete roll in the order that I shot them … comments welcomed.

Please click a photo to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

100mm focal length as a walkabout lens ……..

I have had my Canon FD 100mm f2.8 for ages but I have never really given it a proper runout, I have shot less than 20 frames with it in total so just to try and give my photography a different slant I decided to shoot a whole roll just at 100mm.

I mounted it on my Canon T90 and loaded up a roll of the lovely Lomo CN400 and went out for a walk.

Viewing the world at 100mm was a bit strange at 1st with a lot of backing up with the compositions but after a bit I started to get used to it.

I decided to get the roll developed and scanned by Filmdev and when the scans arrived I was very happy with the results, Lomo CN400 colours especially in good light are gorgeous.

To be fair the lens isn’t the sharpest wide open at f2.8 but still looked great and focussed spot on most of the time.

It was fun just shooting at this focal length it definitely puts a different perspective on my usual look, I need to take this lens out a bit more whenever I use any of my Canon FD cameras.

I have an FD adapter for my Fuji X cameras so I may give it a go on one of them next.

Anyway here are the images …

Please click a photo to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

“Kevin Sinnott” .. Reflecting on a life in painting exhibition

On Sunday 3rd December I was invited to the opening of reknown Artist and friend Kevin Sinnott’s 70th birthday exhibition Reflecting on a life in painting.

It was held at his gallery “Studio 18” here in Pontycymer where it featured his most famous painting “Running away with the hairdresser” which was kindly loaned back to him by the National Museum of Wales for the length of this exhibition.

The exhibition runs until January 21st 2018 and is well worth a visit.

Here is a little selection of the afternoon …

Here is a link to my blog post featuring Kevin at work in his studio

London, New York, Pontycymmer … Artist at work .. Kevin Sinnott

Also some other links

Martin Tinney Gallery
http://www.artwales.com/artists-detail-mtg-en.php?artistID=49
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Wales online link
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/kevin-sinnotts-new-paintings-go-4891977
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Studio 18 link
http://studio18.wales/
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Youtube video link

Anyway thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek

London, New York, Pontycymmer … Artist at work .. Kevin Sinnott

Over the last few weeks I have had the pleasure of spending time with world renowned artist Kevin Sinnott who lucky for me lives here in Pontycymmer where he also has his studio and his most excellent gallery “Studio 18”.

My first thoughts about this series of images was to shoot it completely on film which after my initial test shoots was not going to show how I pictured the project in my mind where I had some sort of control over the colours of the paintings.

So I used a mix of film & Digital hopefully to give a good overview of a working artist.

Before we start here is a very brief snippet about Kevin that I procured from the web….

Kevin Sinnott

Born in Sarn, South Wales in 1947, Kevin Sinnott is a contemporary Welsh artist with a truly international reputation. He trained at Cardiff College of Art & Design, Gloucestershire College of Art & Design and at the Royal College of Art, London. Kevin remained in London throughout the 1970s and 80s, building a very successful career, and exhibiting at leading London galleries, major galleries in the USA and mainland Europe.
Kevin’s work is collected worldwide and he is represented in many important public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His large canvas, ‘Running Away with the Hairdresser’ has proved to be one of the National Museum and Galleries of Wales’s most popular acquisitions.
Kevin returned to live in Wales in 1995 and has quickly established himself at the forefront of the renaissance in Welsh painting. While his work is primarily concerned with human relationships, the influence of the south Wales landscape is strongly felt in his paintings. He was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in 2007.

I will include some links at the end of the post to various articles featuring Kevin that may be of interest.Hopefully this will be the start of an ongoing project where I hope to spend time with artists in their studio or place of work where I can document the process of their discipline whether they are a painters, photographers, illustrators, musicians, sculptors etc

This 1st post may be an exception as Kevin gave me unlimited access to him and his studio for which I am so grateful.

I was very lucky with my timing as Kevin was in the middle of a painting on the day we arranged for me to pop over to do the studio shoot.

I was privileged to watch him work and then re work the painting “SuperMam” which will feature in most of the following images, please excuse the slight colour variations as obviously they are a mix of Film & Digital.

The paintings need to be seen in life to appreciate them 🙂

The images were shot on a mixture of Kodak Portra 400, Fuji Pro 400H for the colour and ilford HP5+ and Kodak T-Max for the B&W.

Cameras used were Nikon F100, Mamiya 645, Mamiya C330 and Leica M2.

Digital were Nikon D600, Fuji XT-1 and Fuji X-Pro1

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National Museum link
https://museum.wales/art/online/?action=show_item&item=1671
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Flowers Gallery
https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/view/kevin-sinnott

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

All my #SummerFilmParty “August” images together …..

As I said in a previous post I have been taking part in a Twitter competition called #SummerFilmParty … only using certain film types then posting the results and if chosen the participating photographers get to vote for the winner.

Last month I managed to get 2 images shortlisted (didn’t win) which was well pleasing given the calibre of the other entries.

I shot 2 films .. ilford Pan F in my Nikon F4s and some expired Fuji Sensia 400 in my Nikon F100.

Here are the entries plus a couple that didnt make my cut ….. in no particular order

This was the last #SummerFilmParty but other parties have been planned so watch this space.

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

I love shooting expired film ……

Last week I managed to source some of my favorite colour negative film Fuji Reala from ebay and along side of the Reala the vendor also had some Kodak Vericolor II which I also bought to give it a try.

I have previously shot a roll of Vericolor III that I had been given and really liked the muted tone that I gave so I was hoping that this gave similar results.

I decided to take the Mamiya C330 for a run out as I had been neglecting it over the Yashica Mat 124G recently, I used both the 80mm f2.8 and 65mm f3.5.

Here are the images, only 9 as the other 3 were bracketed shots …. It was an overcast day with glimpses of sunshine now and again.

I rated the roll at 80 iso with my Sekonic meter which was pretty much spot on.

If I shoot the next roll in brighter conditions I could probably rate the film at 100 or even box speed as it didn’t seem to have lost a lot of sensitivity even though the 2 boxes had expired back in 1994 🙂

Thanks for looking ….

Click on an image to view larger

All images are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂