Garry Winogrand and wonky veg

My favourite photographer’s quote originates from Garry Winogrand: “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed“.

This quote pretty much encompasses why I make many of my photographs. I’ll see something, be it a scene or an object, and I’ll be inspired to see how my camera will render it as an image. How will the lens make it look?; What if I use a different aperture or focal length?; What about the film I’m using – how will it render the contrast / grain / light / colour? etc.

I’ll still make pictures of more obvious, traditional compositions, but even then the impulse is still the same – how will it look as a photograph? It means that pretty much anything might be a suitable subject for a photograph to be made, whether a beautiful landscape, or a dirty, rainwater-filled plastic cup left on a window-ledge after someone’s night out. Anything can catch my eye. Given that all my photos are made with an audience-of-one in mind – namely myeself – everything is good. I’m sure that some people will wonder what the hell was I thinking when I raised the camera to my eye, but all that needs to be understood is that I saw a photograph that, to me, was worth creating.

Today’s photgraph falls firmly into this remit. The first shot on a roll of HP5+ I shot last weekend, depicting the box of “wonky veg” that was sat in the window of a ground-floor flat close to where I’d parked my car. The rising-sun motif, the grain of the wood, the Pepsi can, and the slightly dirty window all caught my attention.

This is the first roll of film I’ve pushed and then home-developed, and the Ilfotec DD-X has done a great job.

Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 14 June 2020