Horizon(tal) Fliptych II
The other day I posted some diptychs that explore the ideas I have looked at with single frames from the DSLR. The two versions I presented there are from three images that were taken as a triptych, which is what I show you today. These are made by flipping the camera 180 degrees between shots, and on the half-frame Olympus Pen, they have nice proportions that go well together, especially as triptychs.
The first shot differs from the others only in that it is presented ‘upside’ down compared to them. All are from the same scan of the negative, and treated variously in Lightroom and Topaz B&WEffects. The second shot has the least processing in Lightroom only – the usual, dust spotting, clarity and contrast adjustments. What I think works particularly well in this group is the white band of lighter sky along the horizon which is about the same width as the black bands between frames. It adds a lot to the banding and makes everything more abstract.
I will be shooting more of this kind of thing – I have already tried but the next roll of film after this one suffered from a film advancing problem so will have to try again.
Click on any photograph to get a much larger version, and then I guess rotate your screen!
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Fliptych I have defined here and others can be found here. My horizon(tal) series can be found here. This is also another in the larger category of half-frame photos, and can be included with the other triptychs.
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Olympus Pen, half-frame camera, Efke KB50, ISO50, 1/50th, ~f5.6.
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burnt embers 
Oh, yes. These are great! There is a Mark Rothco feel to them, especially the coloured ones. This one leapt out when I did a search! http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/mark-rothko/no-5-no-22
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PS. When you called me PJ in another reply to a comment on another post, I thought you’d mixed me up with another commenter but of course it is short for my blog title. Very cute. I like it, Mr E!!! I have a lovely (sad) friend who is PJ (Peter John) and in the plural it is what we always called our pyjamas until an episode of The Goodies (have your heard of them?- Brit comedy from the 1970s) when one of characters, Graham, called them Piggy Jim Jambos, and that kinda stuck. Talk about a tangential ramble there!
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Did I call you PJ? I might have, but for me PJ refers to my favourite childhood cat who was born in my bed and grew up to be a very large (long), sleek and handsome grey tabby. So, even though I might have shortened Katherine to PJ I would have had a little flicker of cat go by at the same time. If that makes sense.
But no thought of pyjamas would have been there, though in fact that is the derivation of the cat’s name – there was a PJ Bottoms and PJ Tops, but we only kept PJ Bottoms from that litter and he soon became PJ.
I am surprised I did not use PBJ, which seems more natural. I don’t know about Australia, but in North America PBJ refers to a sandwhich – peanut butter and jam (or jelly).
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Cool, not hear that PBJ is that type of sandwich. We would call it peanut butter and jam, only as jelly for us is what you guys call jello and that doens’t appeal on top of bread!
I love your pussy cat story. PJ Bottoms and PJ Tops makes me think that maybe they were born on your bed and on your pyjamas?
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Born in my bed down by my feet, before I got up and let their mother have the space she so clearly needed.
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That is a wonderful memory to have!
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Thanks Katherine – you are not the first to point out a similarity to Rothko’s work. I was not familiar with most of his work, though I was very impressed by an exhibit of his I saw in London in 1977 which has stuck with me as a rather veiled memory – it was very dark and mostly purples so I did not make an association with his work and mine. But, it could be seeping through.
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It is! I saw most of the work that I know of his in NYC. The gallery at MOMA is very atmospheric and shows off his talents incredibly well.
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Pingback: Horizon(tal) in Negative | burnt embers
Beautiful set!
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Thank you Mark – I am glad you like them. I have been waiting for similar conditions (with that narrow band of light at the horizon) to get some more negatives to work with, but of course it turns out to either be a rare condition, or one that won’t cooperate with my camera.
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The first of these is definitely the best, IMHO – firstly because it is in colour and secondly because the base is a darker tone. Very clever idea too.
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Thanks Andy, I am glad you like the idea. I could not make up my mind which order these should be in. And I would have to look at the negatives to confirm which order I took them, though I think dark at bottom was first (that is, the first shot was very likely a ‘normal’ one, not upside down), and that means that the one you like best happens also to be the order I shot them since the first in a vertical series is at the bottom. My default for rotating a camera 90 degrees is to put my right had to the top, and landscape mode in this camera requires a 90 degree rotation. I was just entering untoned versions of some of these frames in a competition, and your comment made me add a colour one to my submission.
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