Al Kaplan (1942-2009)


Four years ago today Al Kaplan passed away from complications following a heart attack. Al contributed to several online forums most notably The Rangefinder Forum (RFF) and Photo Net. The threads on the forums following his death attested to the great respect the online photographic community afforded him.

Al gave more than he received. Willing to teach those who asked for advice and he was always ready to share his knowledge with new and long time photographers. He contributed a lot of information and advice for setting up my Project Double-X web site.

Al shot with rangefinders and medium format film cameras. He was an accomplished darkroom worker and did all his own developing and printing.

He was well known for his staple diet of cigarettes and coffee! The members of the RFF forum produced a t-shirt and mug depicting Al and the proceeds went towards a photography scholarship set up in his memory at a local university.

So many wonderful stories, so much skill and knowledge lost forever. However, Al's family have kept his Blog - The Price of Silver - alive and it is still a good read.

I know Al is shooting in a perfect light and place now and I hope for their sakes they have good coffee and smokes!

Thousands of starfish this week following a couple of big storms.

Every day I walk along the beach for 2-3 hours and snap the objects that wash up. I publish a set of ten images every Sunday under the caption Beachcomber on my Tumblr blog.

Post-christmas syndrome....

Beach on Boxing Day.

The three square buildings on the horizon are Dungeness nuclear power station. The beauty of having the station on our doorstep is the ambient temperature is 20c in the winter and the lack of street lights is not a problem as everything glows in the dark anyway - including the people!   ;-))

Santa Susie really nailed it this year. This tome is excellent on so many levels.

Shades of The War of the Worlds.

Concrete thingy for 'The Lady of the North'. 

Alchemy!

No not Nigella's private stash. Making up some TD-201/D23 two bath developer today.

Then some D96 for my favourite film - Kodak Double-X. If you don't know Double-X then I have a web site.

It is the only film I use these days, have done for the last five years or so. Have a stockpile of 30 cans in the freezer which comes to 12,000 ft.

Should last awhile......

Funny thing. As soon as there is a bit of a breeze - well Gale force 8 - all the fair weather walkers disappear. Mind you I'm not complaining. Me and the Beagle enjoy our solitude.

Out to sea, lies a section of the concrete Mulberry Harbour built during 1944 for the Dunkirk landings in the Second World War. This section became detached from its tug and drifted back in to the bay. When we have the spring tides you can walk out to it at low water.

I am planning a little trip.

A 6 month trip to Tokyo by rail through Europe and Russia with a ferry from Russia to Japan.

I have always had a hankering to follow in Paul Theroux's footsteps in the tradition of 'The Great Railway Bazaar' and 'Ghost Train To The Eastern Star' but venturing too far East these days is not easy and fraught with hassle. I don't do hassle anymore.

The idea is I buy a mixture of European Rail Passes and Point-to-Point tickets and just go where the fancy takes me. One site I found that was very useful is:  Mark Smith's - The Man in Seat 61. An absolute oracle on European and world rail travel.

I am looking to do it in 2015 or possibly the following year.  Start off from Ashford International to Paris, then through France, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Russia. Once in Russia it is the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok and then ferry to Japan and finally train to Tokyo.

The return trip is a reverse of the Russia to Japan but once back in Moscow it is on to Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France and back to Ashford. Lots of planning to do obviously but plan to keep it simple and lightweight.

Be nice if it all comes together.

The story of my M2


My very first posting in the Navy was two years in Singapore (1968-1970).  The 40 or so lads in my training group all got UK shore bases or ships in UK/European waters. Me, I got to go 'far flung' to the Far East station. Had to fly there with the Royal Air Force stopping for fuel at  Dakar (Senegal), Gan (The Maldives), and Dhaka (Bangladesh).

Singapore was another world, literally, for a 17 year old lad. It seemed to me that two worlds existed side by side. The Chinese/Malaysian one and the dying British Empire. Outside the dockyard was Sembawang Village which only existed because of the Naval Dockyard. The rest of the area was jungle. Sembawang Village is long gone now and has been developed beyond recognition.

The Naval base and dockyard were situated on the north shore of Singapore island. The Club in the Naval Base was colonial style with a big veranda around the first floor with a view across the Jahore Bahru strait over to Malaya. We used to sit on the veranda in the evenings drinking Tiger beer and sipping Tom Collins or Singapore Sling cocktails whilst watching the crickets matches and stunning sunsets - the British abroad!

The RAF base at Changi had the luxury of their own sandy beach in the base. Saturday nights were usually spent getting drunk down Buigis Street where I first learnt that some men like to dress up as very, very convincing women!!!!!!     Sundays were spent in the Tiger Balm Gardens nursing a thundering hangover in the peace and quiet of those beautiful, tranquil gardens.

During my time in Singapore the world was dominated by the Vietnam war. A few of the photojournalists who were over there used to take their R&R in Singapore. At this time I was photographing with a Nikon F which I had bought in Singapore. Cameras, watches and audio gear was so cheap there and you could haggle and get a real bargain.

I was out with the Nikon one Saturday photographing the famous Raffles hotel when a chap approached with a Leica M2 in his hand and we struck up a conversation. He was an American photojournalist called Charlie on a break from Vietnam and staying at Raffles. He was married, from New York and was expecting his wife to fly in the next day to spend 10 days with him. He invited me in to the hotel for a drink and we talked photography, cameras and Vietnam all evening. I was in awe that this guy was able to wander around a country at war and take photos at will.

I was mesmerised by his Leica M2. I had so wanted one but even at Singapore prices and haggling they were too expensive for me at that time. Late into the evening the drink was taking its toll on the both of us and we played cards, Black Jack (Pontoon). We were playing for fun but eventually moved to money. In the wee small hours, both the worse for gin, I had virtually cleaned him out and his final bet was his M2!  I cannot describe the feeling in the pit of my stomach as we turned the cards and the God’s made it worse, as I ended up winning with a “5 card trick”.

I met up with Charlie the following day and asked him if he really meant to bet the M2. He was adamant I keep it and said he had another and a couple of Nikons as part of his kit. Beside, he could say he had lost it in the field and claim a new one if necessary.  So I showed him and his wife Barbara Singapore and we became firm friends. I met up with Charlie several times over the next two years until I was posted back to the UK. But we kept in touch via mail and exchanged Christmas cards. Charlie was killed in a car crash  shortly after he returned to the US after covering the Vietnam-Cambodia border war in 1975. His wife wrote me to let me know and said it was ironic that Charlie had covered so many wars and conflicts but ended up dying in a head-on with a drunk driver. C’est la vie.

As for the M2, I still have it. It has been all over the world with me and survived annual Artic Warfare & Survival Training in the winters of Norway. Active service in Northern Ireland, Belize, Falklands and both Gulf wars. Peacekeeping in Africa and Kosovo. It has been drowned, frozen, bombed, dropped, blasted a distance of 200 yards, covered in sand or mud, suffered desert heat and jungle humidity and it just kept going.

When I left the Royal Navy I sent it off to Leica for a deep clean and lubrication along with some refurbishment ready for a more peaceful life in 'Civvy Street'. Not a bad life for a 1963 Leica M2 single stroke and a 1959 Elmar-M 50/2.8

I kept in touch with Barbara until she died a couple of years ago. She continued to live in their apartment in New York (Central Park West) where they had lived since their wedding and although frail she was as feisty as ever and had Charlie’s other battered M2 and a Nikon on a sideboard with her little gallery of photos showing Charlie posing in some of the 'hot spots' he covered.

There is a very sad, rusting 1950's Metropolitan Coupe trapped inside there.


I am slowly despairing of internet photography forums. Tired of the digital v film debates that rage on. Funny I always thought it was about the end image.

Then there are the "that's not in focus" brigade who must have everything pin/tack sharp and anything less is not worthy.

Funny but I never hear of oil painters bashing water-colourists. Charcoal and pencil artist slagging each other off or the pen & ink brigade sneering at the crayon genre.

I actually asked my friend Christine about this, she runs London's oldest established artist and illustrators agency, and she confirmed it BUT apparently all the above are grumbling about the new generation of illustrators and artists who only use computers to produce artwork!

D'oh!

Winter sunrise yesterday morning.

Preferable to the weather 'The Lady of the North' is expecting.

Who you?


So, thought I would get this done and out the way. Born 1951, my interest in photography came from my father.  I was fascinated by the smells from his darkroom which was in a shed in the garden. Took my first snap aged 8 on his old Leica. By 10 I could develop and print in a rudimentary fashion.

My father died when I was 11 years old and as I have got older I have missed him more and more. At 15 I joined the Royal Navy to see the world and by the time I finished 40 years later I had and then some. Spent several years with the Royal Marines and had some interesting times! Throughout I always had a camera with me and amassed quite an archive alongside my fathers,

When I left the Navy in 2006 I suffered the second big loss in my life. I turned into our road to be met by shiny red fire engines and flashing lights. It was our house and the roof ablaze. The cause was the sun through the velox roof window on to some old nitrate film of my fathers. So I lost both archives and we had a house with a waterfall feature in every room.

We took stock, fixed the house and decided Sue - my wife - would take early retirement and we upped sticks to the Dungeness area (Dungeness info & Dungeness visuals). Found a nice place on the beach, did some necessary work and then converted the integral garage in to a darkroom and study.

Now I can spend my days shooting, developing and printing. Plenty of scope here and always beautiful light.

Which is nice.

I treated myself to a little Xmas present and this morning the Postie-type person delivered my treat.

The latest book from Andrea Taurisano. An Italian living in Norway with a passion for film photography, train travel and Russia.

His latest book '9289' refers to the 9,289 kilometres he travelled on his Trans-Siberian journey.


You can see more of his work at Il cimento della fotografia.


Absolutely bloody bella fotografia!

What did you expect for a first post?