Wandering in confinement 20

Sometimes, black and white is better. In these streets of Prague at night suddenly appeared a strange figure looking more like a character from a German expressionist film of the 1930’s. He was probably a very nice person but he did inspire fear. The graffitis on the door of the building enhanced the feeling and the graphic lines of the walls of this narrow paved street sent me back almost a century ago. This is why a decided to process this picture in black and white while I was taking it.

Wandering in confinement 19

May be I am obsessed by low light photography. Here the feeling of quietness is the exact opposite of the busy streets of New York. We are in Le Havre, and it is still rather early but we are on typical winter evening. The sun has just disappeared but the sky is still red and I am amazed by the capacity of the digital cameras to record contrasty scenes. I kept the foreground relatively dark but the amount of details in these shadow areas is surprising. The leaveless trees fill up the top of the frame to enhance and surround the enlightened sky. No tripod, I was in the middle of the street, cars were coming towards me and I had to be fast.

Wandering in confinement 18

The feeling of in between, that is what got me to take the previous picture in Hong Kong. We are now in New York and the same thing happens. I am going up the stairs leading to the High Line and suddenly I get overwhelmed by these lines of cars that seem to on the verge of falling. Like Hong Kong, space is at premium in the great city. I have always been fascinated by the parking areas of New York. The real estate is expensive but it is still a good investment to spare some space to park the many cars that arrive in Manhattan. The feeling of perpective was disruptive and the wide angle a necessity to get as much depth of field as possible. Shooting at night increased the sensation of complexity New York always gives me.

Wandering in confinement 17

French beer in Hong Kong. I have never seen such a huge billboard anywhere before. It is really strange in such a tight environment. It seems to be more appropriate in an empty landscape like the American West. It takes almost half of the space in the frame. And it appears to be designed for the configuration of this city. It is shot from above the street since there are many mid level passages crossing the town. Life is happening on different altitudes in this vertical city. Space is so precious that they managed to use it at its most. It matches perfectly the scene, the colors are responding to one another, the blue of the background of the poster with the blue walls of the building opposite, the gold of the glass with the warm illumination of the street below, the green of the bottle with “The Best Hamburger in Town” just underneath, the verticality of the glass and the bottle matches the narrowness and the height of the constructions typical of Hong Kong. It impossible not to raise the camera and press the shutter.

Wandering in confinement 16

Viewing from above can be deceiving. Drones have made the thing very easy. But it never conveys the sensation of being there. Here, I am on the top of a building, I try to translate the real sensation. The rooftop of the China Club in Hong Kong is quite an exclusive place, positioned right in the nervous system of the city. I arrived just in time to see the last of the day light. This is a magic place. The building dates from the 1930’s and although high, it is surrounded by towers of glass much more impressive. I just had to wait for the right moment - and it came as no surprise - to catch enough day light to fill up the already nightly atmosphere. Not really difficult… The point is not to forget the camera in your hotel room. That’s all.

Wandering in confinement 15

After the sunset in Hong Kong, I thought of the end of the day in Grenada, Spain. The only thing that I wanted to get was the red sun on the snowed Sierra Nevada in the background. The illuminated Alhambra just below added a touch of mystery and the white building on the bottom left helped making the dark mass of the trees less heavy. Once again I shot hand held thanks to the modern technology of the camera. I thought of Ansel Adams who would have used a large 8 x 10 inches camera on a heavy tripod for a black and white picture exposed to perfection thanks to the zone system he invented. I learned a lot from the wonderful technical books Ansel Adams wrote, but I realize that now, all this sophisticated practice is no more necessary. Yet having it integrated in my mind certainly helps to take fast decisions.

Wandering in confinement 14

Looking through the reserve of photos I have gathered for this confinement exercise I immediately picked up this one. For no particular reason and I still wonder what brain mechanism produces this immediacy. Anyway, it just came to my mind that when I look at a painting, I don’t need any explanation to observe and gather the informations contained and wanted by the painter, consciously or not. But when I look at a photograph, I do need to know where it was taken, when, why and how it happened. Does it mean that a photograph contains less information than a painting ? Or that the realism of the rendering commands a supplement of information ? Here I was in a small island in Hong Kong, waiting for the ferry to take me back to the main city. It was shot with a Leica and a 35mm lens, but I don’t remember the exposure. I could look it back on the EXIF, but who needs to know ?

Wandering in confinement 13

Forget the illuminated buildings of New York. We are confined. In Paris, a lot of families have fled to their country houses or to their parents living somewhere less dreary than a city where all cafés, all restaurants, most shops are closed. And from this Paris flat, I can see that most windows are dark. Very few signs of night life in this picture. Well the Eiffel Tower is trying to animate the landscape, but it is still sad. At least I am lucky enough to see it. Many apartments in Paris don’t have this kind of consolation. And don’t think I am free to travel to Paris from where I live for pleasure. I have to brave confinement rules to attend dreary tasks that I would prefer to avoid. But since I always carry my faithful camera all the time, I had to take this shot using a 35mm lens which is probably ma favorite focal length. In this case, it fits the scenery. A wider angle lens would have changed the proportions of the foreground. ( I have tried !)

Wandering in confinement 12

Let us stay in New York since I have not been able to go there for a while now. Usually I pay a yearly visit to this great place and I miss seeing my daughter who lives in Brooklyn. Here I was in a lucky moment on the High Line. This place is usually packed with people but I was late and it was cold so I could wander quietly between the new buildings. I am addicted to night photography. It totally changes the proportions of the constructions and makes them look more like containers than concrete blocks as they tend to appear by daylight. It also eliminates the choice of the hour of shooting, no more moving shadows that can transform the buildings. Here, you want to get inside, see how the volumes of the apartments are. Maybe because it was getting cold outside…

Wandering in confinement 11

I definitely have a disorganized mind to induce me a jump from Istanbul to New York. I just follow the free wanderings of my head and it has no link from one thought to another. I guess it must be the same for everyone. Here, in this exercise, it is not a problem but if I had a task to do, it would perturb my actions, maybe make me hesitate at the wrong moment. On the other hand this kind of freedom is a blessing. This diner on 10th Avenue has been there for ages. I discovered it in the late 70’s. It was already a landmark in the city but not as fancy as it has become today. But what made me press the button was the white poodle on the far right. It looked in such a hurry that I almost missed it. And his master was probably quite ahead of him.

Wandering in confinement 10

Why do I chose this picture of nowhere ? This is the very first picture I took on my arrival in Istanbul a couple of years ago. It could have been taken in Le Havre, in Paris, in New York, but no, it was in Istanbul. The atmosphere was very strange. The street next to it was bustling with restaurants and a lot of people. I turned the corner and there was this huge construction site. A big truck was moving out, the noise was deafening, and it was quite late at night. So that was the moment I pulled out my camera and started shooting. How can I explain arriving in a beautiful, exotic town and get interested in something you can see anywhere near where you live ? It is probably due to the fact that it has become possible to take this kind of night picture and get plenty of odd details, like the back of the truck leaving the site, hardly visible yet significant of what is happening inside this place.

Wandering in confinement 9

Another busy picture back in Paris. That was my childhood neighborhood so I can say that I know every stone of every street in this small area of the XVème Arrondissement in the west of the Ville Lumière. And many lights there are in this image. A typical exemple of the density a wide angle lens can provide. That is what I would call filling the frame. You just have to find the right location. Most of the time, there is something you would prefer to avoid in the scene, but once in a while, it works. In this motionless traveller’s journey I understand that it is in fact a double motionless exercise since we are looking at stills, not videos.

Wandering in confinement 8

Here I am still in Hamburg, near the harbor. This time I deliberately chose to use the extreme contrast of the scene. I could have brought details in the shadows, but I wanted this silhouette effect to convey the “technical” feeling of the place. The more you approach the river, the tougher it looks, far from the almost romantic neighborhood of the Aussen-Alster lake which has miraculously escaped from the war bombings. Here again, the wet road makes it easier for the photographer. Revewing these old pictures, I realize that I am more attracted by complex composition than by simple, graphic patterns, but it is a quest that I find difficult. It implies the use of wide angle lenses with the inevitable consequence of allowing more things in the frame.

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I had been wanting to return to Hamburg for quite while. My memory of it was the big lake in the center of the city, the Aussen-Alster that I found so attractive on my first visit about thirty years ago. I was lucky to find a hotel in the St Georg area right next to the lake. And I was not disappointed. When I am in such a place, my eyes see the leaves of the trees distinctly as well as the clouds. Again the ability of the sensor allowed such a shot. With the old color films, the contrast would have been impossible to control and the trees would have been pitch black if I wanted to get the richness of the sky. I do not have to compromise anymore to get these old style compositions inspired by landscape paintings. With film, I would have decided not to take the picture.

Wandering in confinement 6

Northern Europe is a good place to go in the summer. Most of the inhabitants dream to spend their holiday in the sun and they drive through France to reach Spain. So the places are less crowded. But July 2020 was strange. The virus lured everywhere and the hotels were empty, therefore very cheap, the perfect moment to drive up to the North. Rotterdam is an interesting city that was entirely flattened by the Germans during World War Two and now totally reconstructed and a beacon to modern architecture. This time I used the 16 x 9 format. In fact I pressed the wrong button on my new camera and it changed the ratio without me knowing how to reverse. It did not bother me so much, except I lost a bit of the sensor surface. This cinema format is in fact even easier than the 3 x 2 standard ratio. I wanted the perspective effect of this nearly empty shopping mall at dusk and the elongated format suited the need. The mystery is why was my mind driven from Spain to the Netherlands ? I will never know.

Wandering in confinement 5

The streets of Grenada were empty. That was just before the world entered the Covid crisis. Tourism was dwindling. Suddenly appeared this neon sign. There was no other activity in the area and it made me think of an old film noir, except it was not a set constructed in the back lot of a motion picture company. The contrast was extreme and I expected problems but the latest CMOS sensors are amazingly able to record such a scene almost as the eye sees it. It may have been the reason I took this picture, just to see what the camera was capable of. I had hope to see Ava Gardner coming out of this flamenco joint, dressed to kill. But there was only one guy with a red coat checking his smartphone.

Wandering in confinement 4

Low light shooting has been the dream of many photographers for a long time. One of my favorite books, when I started discovering the media, was Brassaï’s “Paris la Nuit”. Shot in the 1930s, almost a hundred years ago, it was then a challenge. Heavy tripod, large format camera, long exposures were necessary to achieve these startling results. Today, you can shoot hand held with a digital camera and get an incredible amount of details in the shadows. You can capture the mood of the evening in a very easy way. This shot is slightly unsharp, a proof that I was not careful enough. Just to show that there are still some difficulties to overcome! But this little place in Grenada, Spain, makes me feel good right now. That is what my mind needs to remember. So I don’t care about the blur due to my precipitation.

Wandering in confinement 3

I will probably go back to Hong Kong pictures soon, but now I have Venice in mind. That is how the brain works. I needed a horizontal feeling after the sky scrapers of the Chinese city. But I cheated. Here, the rain is the main factor, not the horizontal composition. Did it make me want to enter this tempting restaurant ? No, I just had a wonderful meal in another place. The rain made me take the photograph because I am lazy. Wet pavements at night are irresistible… Not too much of an effort to get an effective shot. Stuck by the virus in front of my computer, I have total geographic and chronologic freedom to go back wherever I want to. A meager compensation for not feeling the rain over my unprotected back on a Venice evening.

Wandering in confinement 2

Now a leap of about 10 000 kilometers. Why Hong Kong ? It is in total contrast with Edinborough. Where the Scottish town spread itself horizontally in a greenish landscape, with rows of old stone houses, Hong Kong is mostly vertical and bathed in a hazy light. Modern high rises, narrow streets on a tiny island. I mainly shoot horizontal pictures, I have become lazy with my wrist. In fact I am not keen of vertical photographs, except for portraiture so my natural inclination is to keep the camera straight.The invention of the 35mm camera in the late 1910s created the 2 by 3 ratio format. I have become so used to it that I now see the world in this kind of a mind frame and I seem to be trapped in it. Here I probably wanted to Include the verticality of Hong Kong in the available horizontal rectangle. Hence the black and white poster, the two characters and the inevitable sky scrapers…

Wanderings in confinement 1

My photographic diary was interrupted for some time and I have an urge to come back to it. Today, confined like most of us, I will start a random journey in the past. Whatever comes to my mind will induce an image picked up from my archives irrespective of any logical reason. For instance, today, I was thinking of Scotland. So I extracted a photograph of Edinborough, taken years ago. In this Northern part of Europe, the light dictates you to press the trigger. The urban landscape here gives me a feeling of comfort. I could live in this city. I tend to imagine the interior of each house. I want to know how it is behind each window. I have an idealized vision of a cosy room, but I would probably be disappointed, I would want to change everything. At least, while I try to intrude in this life, I forget that I am stuck where I live.