An attraction to record vision...I never imagined I would start my first blog by talking about the past. This simply because taking photographs is always about the moment. Then of course that moment is gone and suddenly the image is a record of a that moment in time and it becomes a historical document. It becomes either a record or a piece of art depending on certain criteria. So here are a series of images taken by my grandfather. He and his mates would travel and camp across Australia and take photographs with old plate cameras. So as I look through the remaining albums of his and its images I can feel the same passion for travel and recording moments and relationships that is also within myself. We share the same DNA. Looking at these images I feel the same sense of moment and composition that I feel is inherent in myself. perhaps that is presumptuous but I feel his framing and balance is exactly what I would have sought. The image of the children on the wagon is not a moment but rather a setup, and here I sense the same reality that helped me as an advertising photographer, where you were hired to set up a shot to convey a statement or message. It was all about capturing the image when you pressed the button. No post production, no Photoshop, just the instant. Of course they didn't have the benefit of rolls of film back then, so the moment of capture was even more critical and more the mark of skill and excellence in the medium. Today you can shoot hundreds of files, delete instantly or manipulate instantly with a vast array of applications. The 'art' of photography or image capture has been compromised and cheapened immensely.
So as I sit here and write I am aware that around me in the studio I have folders and folders of B&W negatives and boxes and sheets of transparencies of my life clicking moments in time. They are slowly decaying or fading and I know I must transfer them to digital if I am to preserve my visions. And what is a vision? All these images correspond to a blink of my eye, the same vision that is or was registered in my brain, a retina moment. Why is it so important to value them? In a thousand years from now will anyone care, or see, or value any of them? Then I think that perhaps my great children or whoever will look apon some of them the same way in the future as I am looking back at these and relate. Its like now, when we look at old images on Facebook of locations and we delight in how simple and amazing things were before all the buildings and all the rules and laws. Perhaps that is enough reason. Robbi
13 Comments
13/3/2015 06:24:13 am
Please click on any of the images to expand the pictures. I will be showing more of these images in a further post
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Susan Logan
13/3/2015 10:50:07 am
Great Robbi and very interesting. Congrats. Look forward to seeing more images.
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Lind
13/3/2015 04:07:36 pm
Timeless. Priceless. Noticed patience is necessary after clicking on image and waiting for turning wheel to allow image enlargement.
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RobbiNewman Light&Vision
18/3/2015 07:54:06 am
Is that because you live in the hills John?...no worries when we get the NBN :)
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Lizzie
14/3/2015 01:04:49 am
Great start Robbi and those pics are ace - look forward to more X
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RobbiNewman Light&Vision
18/3/2015 07:52:39 am
Lots more to come :)..tnx
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Letitia Graves
14/3/2015 07:40:39 am
Well put. It is good to connect the past to the present. Shooting film held hope, patience and surprise. It was always a surprise when a shot appeared that was good. Thankful to have had a film beginning. I still wait to the end of the day to go thru my shots for that surprise. Time to go look.
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RobbiNewman Light&Vision
18/3/2015 07:52:05 am
Thats right. The trip to the lab was such a part of growing up with film. Throwing the sheets on the lightbox and running over with a lupe and marking the hero with a dot. Also sometimes discovering a hair in the shutter or whatever as well :)
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Michele
14/3/2015 11:02:56 am
Wonderful old photos.
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RobbiNewman Light&Vision
18/3/2015 07:49:11 am
No it wasn't..but his cameras and albums were around the house, so it was an influence for sure. At the first chance I could I harassed my mother to buy me a box Brownie and that was it.
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Heidi Herbert
18/3/2015 10:00:45 pm
We are closing a circle....Photography, from the beginning to now....and onwards with your thoughts....we marvel at your pictures....each one of them....unique. However....Digital (in all its glory) feels more like Instant Coffee....not the same as the real thing.
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Bliss Swift
24/3/2015 06:56:25 am
Brilliant! Love the history and DNA connection!!
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16/11/2022 07:55:11 am
Thus seat or. Sure economic song both door. Pay guy friend student.
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Robbi Luscombe NewmanOver 40 years extensive experience in the International market working for many of the major Airlines, Tourist Boards and Advertising Agencies of the world. I have a global and universal outlook, preferring to see the world as borderless and full of life set against the extrordinary physical palette of this planet. ArchivesPhotography |