Posts Tagged ‘photographer’
Family summer time in 6×6 format
Few days before with my family we left for summer vacation to a seaside I’ve bought a “new” camera Mamiya C330, so I was excited to try it out. I never liked the square format, as a student and as a young professional, but I guess it’s because square format was a trade mark of Hasselblad, that I couldn’t afford 
I looked at my bookshelf, thinking who is a master of square format photography. My first pick was Mary Ellen Mark and her book Indian Circus, then I checked The Hasselblad Masters awards. The Hasselblad awards didn’t inspire me (I can do better), but with Mary Ellen Mark I found some good clues how to deal with the square format.
I was thinking… Square is a stable, boring format and to make the image interesting I must brake this stableness with composition. My first rule was to fill the image with the subject all the way to the borders and even across the border. That was the idea for the picture published above and on the left side. OK, I admit, I didn’t discover America, but playing with concepts and aesthetics is inevitably leading us to new “discoveries” as I call personal micro revelations
Second inspiration was the book On Photography by Susan Sontag. I’ve read it twice, but that was some time ago, so why not follow the Atheism 2.0 commandment to repeat the lessons over and over again. It’s the basis of every religion so it must make sense. While reading Sontag’s words on how photography is surreal, the most appropriate medium for modernistic art, I understood everything. World make sense if viewed through a lens of a camera.
Last but not least, this adventure back to black and white analog photography is bringing good old memories from Prague’s Famu Academy where I earned my BA in photography. I know I’m repeating some lessons from history of photography, but I don’t do it because of the love towards the history, but I’m doing it for the love of photography and to the love to my family. More of my Family Album project you can see on my site www.borutpeterlin.com.This is not the end result it’s just warming up! I’m inspired as Apollo 11 rocket!
PS: Under comment leave a link to a site of a photographer who work in an inventive way with a square medium format camera. I want to grasp as much info as I can.
A creative portrait of Matic Zorman, a photojournalist
Matic Zorman is a young photojournalist whose work was noted many times. In this issue of Mladina weekly, we are publishing his profile with my portrait of him. We had a such a laugh while working on this image. It’s done in Wet Plate Collodion technique, format 4×5″. We did it during Fotopub festival and Miša Keskenović and Matej Povš were helping me a lot. THX!
I’ll do my own B/W photo material
Today I was in Samobor, Croatia in Fotokemika company where they were from year 1947 producing foto material of all sorts. Last week they stopped the production and workers are unemployed now. That makes me very sad since they were producing excellent films and photo-papers under brand EFKE, but also under brands ADOX (Belgium), Rollei and who knows what more. Few months ago I decided to learn how to make my own photographical gelatin emulsion and so I went there and bought pure photographical gelatin. I laso bought infra red film, just to try it out and roentgen ortho-cromatic film for camera obscura experiments. By pure coincidence I’ve met there a friend Damir, that also drop by to buy some rentgen film and he explained me that you can use it for normal photography with some specific difficulties. For instance, I didn’t know that roentgen films have emulsion on both sides and they are very contrasty, which is perfect for salt print contact prints!
PS: On the end of the day I must say that this stuff is not that cheap as you would expected. Like for all that I payed 280 EUR. But that is a half a year stock if I’ll be shooting a lot. On the other hand, analog medium format cameras are from 200-600 EUR and digital medium format cameras are from 3000 – 12.000 EUR. For the difference in prices you can buy quite a lot of films & scans
After Fotopub festival
A group picture participants and mentors of Fotopub 2012 festival. Photo: Borut Peterlin & Miša Keskenović
Last week we had the 12th edition of Fotopub festival with many exhibitions, lectures and foremost workshops. All together we had 61 participants of different workshops. Miša Keskenović and myself we were running a workshop of Wet Plate Collodion photographic technique. Everything went well and smooth and here are few pictures that we’ve made on the workshop. We had 11 participants working with five cameras, from my Kodak Folding Brownie 3A, Plaubel 13x18cm, Shen Hao 4×5″, antique wooden camera 18 x 24cm to Miša’s mammoth camera 40x40cm. We had two sets of chemicals so the work was really intense and people created many, many plates that they took home. On the last day we decided that we’ll be making more weekend workshops on alternative printing process from gum-print, cyanotype, salt print, albumen print to digital print and camera obscura. fun, fun, fun…
Wet Plate Collodion portraits
Tilen by the pool.
This portrait I’ve done yesterday. I’m still not satisfied with the quality of ambrotypes I’m getting, but this one is quite good. Actually I cheated a little and I add some blacks and some contrast – digitally 
But I didn’t altered the image. It’s sort of “I smoked pot but I didn’t inhale” excuse, I know. Anyhow today I managed to gather my large format portraits and wet plate collodion portraits of my family, so if you’re interested please take a look on my site. LINK. This series A Family Album is a series about love. Towards photography and towards people. It doesn’t pretend it will change the world, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it will. Depends on a viewer. It’s exhibited in Frančiškanski samostan as a part of Fotopub festival. Fotopub starts this Monday, don’t miss lectures and exhibitions, if you’ll not participate at the workshop!
New creative portrait, Lucija Stepančič
Lucija Stepančič, a painter and a writer
Photo: Darko Sintič,
Koncept and post-process: Borut Peterlin
Last week I had super fever with body temperature up to 39,6C and I couldn’t go to Ljubljana and make a portrait for Mladina. I asked a student of mine Darko Sintič to take a portrait and I explained him what I need. I took his images and chop them into pieces and polaroids from them. I used poladroid software. After I finished with post-process I was in a state of high fever dreaming whole night this images. I realized I should use dropshadow on polaroids and probably I should use some sort of texture for background. I wasn’t really sure if it’s OK, but now, with time distance I’m satisfied with the result. Ladies and Gentleman, Lucija Stepančič, a painter and a writer.
PS: I’m healthy now. Today I’ve carefully jogged few kilometers and I’m great. Great feeling, great energy!
My best portrait in Wet Plate Collodion – Boris Cavazza
Photo: Borut Peterlin
A special edition of Mladina with interviews was issued and I’ve done quite a few portraits. My best one is without a doubt, a portrait of Boris Cavazza, the legend of Slovenian theater. Recently his biography was published and his life’s story under pen of writer Vesna Milek is extraordinary indeed! It was sould out three times and eventually I’m sure it’ll be translated into English.
This portraits I’ve done with two cameras. Portraits on wet plate collodion on glass plate I’ve done on a Plaubel format 13x18cm and other B/W portraits I’ve done on a Shen Hao G45 format 4×5″. Wet Plate Collodion portrait I’ve done in VIST studio and Darko Sintič was assisting me. THX Dare! The portrait is so dead sharp because I illuminated with flashes. During portraying at Park Zvedza in Ljubljana, a photographer Marko Šinkovec came by and took few behind the shoot images. THX Marko!
Anže Kopitar / LA Kings, back in Slovenia
A bouquet of white roses with Anže Kopitar and fans. Ljubljana Airport, Slovenia.
To keep my promise to post pics more regulary, here is a picture that I’ve shot few hours ago. It’s taken when Anže Kopitar famous hockey player that won with LA Kings the Stanly Cup. Picture belongs to my Flower Power series, where I document flowers on news events in a way that I don’t celebrate politician or a famous person, but I focus on a flower and the famous person on the picture is degraded to a disturbing background. If you don’t see the concept in this picture, please take a look on my site where Flower power project contains flowers with Putin, Bush, DalaiLama, Mubarak, Merkel, Powel, Jnaša, Drnovšek, Turk,…
PS: Actually the picture above is straight from the camera. Here is a bit fine tuned version. 
New pictures for my Family Album
I haven’t been blogging much lately, since I am in a very productive period of my life. Unfortunately I can’t afford to be focused and I work on many, many different fields, mostly for commercial clients, but in this days I can’t complain about that, right. Also this blog gained quite some attention, although you don’t comment much so I think twice what am I publishing. But this formula just doesn’t work. Now this is my only second post this month and I decided to go back to my old habit to publish what I make during the day.
My niece Enja had a birthday party so I took few photographs on collodion and on film. I used my ShenHao 4×5″ camera with a fast lens Linhof 135mm f/3,5. How do you like it? Leave a comment, rate, like and Rock&Roll!
PS: More family portraits on my site www.borutpeterlin.com.
Cover page of Mladina weekly 22/2012
Let me publish the new cover of Mladina weekly, just so you don’t get an impression I discard my digital equipment. Perhaps it’s not very obvious to a foreigner, but the shape of the orange is as the silhouette of Slovenia. The text of the cover goes that after 20 years of transition Slovenia is like a squeezed orange.
I was working on this on my own and I didn’t had a model, so I dyed my hand black and with the other I was triggering the camera with autofocus. Complicating I tell you. Because of this my wrist is not black, I couldn’t rib it with dye.
Photo: Borut Peterlin
Graphic design: Damjan Ilić
Creative director: Robert Botteri
