Murcia

M and I were in Murcia at the weekend. It was rather warmer there than it is in London at the moment.

Like much of the Spanish Mediterranean coast there's huge development in Murcia. Everywhere seems to be springing up new apartments. Many of these are being purchased by English, although when you go out at night there's not a single English person anywhere (at least, in San Pedro del Pinatar, where M's parents have a house). The English stay at home and have BBQs, while the Spanish frequent the bars.

M's brother and new girlfriend, as well as M's father had come across from Madrid to be there at the same time. We spent a lot of time on the beach, and an equal measure eating (mainly seafood). It's not a bad lifestyle!
I'm finding increasingly that while I have my film cameras with me, and M ostensibly has the digital SLR (after falling on her digital compact whilst snowboarding and breaking it) in fact what I'm reaching for is the digital. At least, for the "snapshots." It's just so easy. All the "good" shots I take with the film cameras, and especially, in the evening, take out the Leica with either the 50 or the 35 Summilux on the front of it. But when it comes time to sharing photographs I've never got around to developing and/or scanning any of the "good" photographs so it's the snapshots that make their way onto the blog, or sent around via email.

I'm facing the same dilemma that I've been coming back to for the past couple of years - do I allow myself to be swept away by digital, or do I stick dogedly to film. Obviously the film equipment I have is so much better than the one digital SLR that I have, and the quality of the medium formal portraits, for example, is so much better - but for ease of use and ability to share and weight and so many other reasons the digital wins hands down. I know the answer is that I'll just keep using both, but how long it is before the Leica starts collecting dust in the cupboard because it's always just so easy to go digital I don't know. (I could, of course, buy the new Leica M8, but that might be slightly indulgent...)

A perfect example of all this is this very blog post - I'm posting about being in Murcia at the weekend, with a few snapshots, and I haven't even got around to scanning the photographs from Sicily a few weeks back (the ones I thought had been lost in the floods) and odds on by the time I get around to it it'll all seem like old news.

Wedding

M and I were in Cambridge last night, for my cousin A's wedding to J. It was a lovely wedding but one thing struck me... At the ceremony, held in a small chapel at Robinson College, there were a few signs up saying, "no photography during the service". And then, during the service, before A & O were due to take their vows, the celebrant (I don't know what to call her - she wore a dog collar, but is she a vicar? A Father? A something else? Don't know) said to everyone something along the lines of it being a very sacred thing and that could we have no photographs taken at this time please...

At the reception afterwards the wedding photographer asked me if I'd managed to take any photographs at the service. (I presume he saw the Leica hanging around my neck, he wasn't just asking me out of the blue) and I said that no, I hadn't taken a single photograph and he told me what an uppity woman the celebrant was who was unmovable on the "no photography" rule. I thought to myself, I can understand if the church wants to limit the number of the congretation who want to get a picture of the vows (even though every single person attending is a friend or family member) but to even limit the official photographer? Especially when this is something that A and J would no doubt like a photograph of. What is she afraid of? Camera going to steal her soul? We might not get the significance of the whole event just because we're also recording it? I don't understand. It's irritating that someone else should see fit to impose their own limited understanding of photography onto everyone else.

My conversation with the wedding photographer got me annoyed - not at him - at the celebrant dictating when images should or shouldn't be made. It seems to be happening more and more in different situations - someone deciding that photographs shouldn't be taken of a particular building, a particular person or a particular event... things that are going on in public, that we can all see but apparently can't record. It allows people who don't understand it - or who only understand it in a limited and constrained way to limit and degrade photography - to reduce it to something dirty, or obscene or degrading or somehow negative. For those of us for whom photography is important, thoughtful, useful, uplifiting, artistic... for those of us who understand it better - this limitation is an insult.

I thought the celebrant's little homily on love was a good one. I enjoyed it and it did make me think about marriage and the nature of love. But would it have been degraded or would I have understood less if someone had also filmed that homily? Or photographed it? I don't think so. I'd like to debate with that celebrant why she's wrong about photography but something I've learnt about people who hold these sorts of limited views ... they usually can't see.

(PHOTO GRAPHI NOT ALLOWED ON BOAT, Mumbai, 2002.)

The photos are not lost

So, the photographs turned up in the post... a week late, but there nevertheless. M was right, of course.

Now, I just need to get around to scanning them...

A few (digital) Auto Views of Sicily

Sicily ... and England.

M and I went to Sicily a few weeks ago - several days of sunshine, good food, good company and relaxation. Although we had a digital in tow, I also had my usual clutch of Leica and Mamiya and happily shot off lots of rolls of film. Before I continue have a look at this:

This is not Sicily - this is London from the balcony of my flat. London from the balcony of my flat the day before I happily plopped a big package of films for developing (lots of Sicily, large format portraits of my parents who were here a few weeks ago) into the post to be developed. Pitiful misfortune that the processing house I send my films off to is based in Sheffield, which is currently under several feet of water due to the 200 year flood. (I don't know if that's what they're calling it, because I don't actually watch the news, but if they're not then this is what they should be...). And my photos haven't come back, several days after they would have normally, and a work colleague has told me that Royal Mail has thrown out loads of post due to water damage...

So of course my thoughts at the moment are not with the businesses that have been flooded, the houses that have been ruined, the people displaced and the lives lost and the cattle stuck up trees (not sure about this one actually) ... no, my thoughts are with my little package of photographs - a couple of dozen large formats, ten rolls of 120, three rolls of 135 - that might never make their way home to me.

I know it sounds a little trite and out of perspective, but I've often wondered how I'd cope if my house burnt down and I lost all my years and years of negatives and transparencies. I've read about photographers to whom this has happened and felt devastated for them so I cannot imagine how I would feel. I think when I have attached so much importance to photography the idea of it all going is like the idea of losing a close and dear friend.

M has been the voice of reason, telling me that it is more likely that the package is delayed, and not destroyed, and I hope that she is right, of course. In the meantime I have no particularly interesting photographs of Sicily to show as they're all ...(sigh) ... so instead I must show you this digital. I was going to write something about how mad all the drivers are in Sicily - a fact which escapes no-one in Sicily I'm sure (not even the Sicilians - I do wonder how they must feel when they arrive in somewhere as ordered as the roads of England. In Australia they must think it's equally mad, in the reverse, but I digress...). But I can't muster much enthusiasm for it all because I feel such a funk about the potential loss of my photographs.


ps. It wasn't raining in Sicily. It was hot and sunny and bloody gorgeous. Because it's summer! It's summer here in England too but you wouldn't blimmin know it.

Whinge, whinge, moan, moan... etc etc, ad infinitum...