by Tim Gander

Worst. Tourist. Ever.

I just can’t do it. Send me on a nice break, and I’m constantly looking for the gritty photo, or at least something with a bit of a story to it.

At the end of January my wife and I took the Eurostar to Paris to visit friends who live just outside the city. It was nothing more than a long weekend, so we packed extremely light which meant I wasn’t especially interested in taking a film camera, lenses and film. Besides, I’ve fallen a little bit in love with my Lumix GX9…

mmmmcheese

What we couldn’t resist during our trip, apart from the astonishingly good cheeses and cakes, was a visit to the newly-restored Notre Dame Cathedral. I can honestly say, it is well worth getting there if you can, but be prepared; prepared for crowds, queues and smartphones in every view.

The last time we visited Notre Dame was in 2014, and although there would have been tourists taking photos then, it wasn’t an impression which was stamped on my memory. This time around it felt like the smartphone-wielding had gone a bit OTT.

Rear view of a female tourist in an orange knitted hat raising her iPhone to take a photo of a holy mass underway in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, with one of the beautifully restored circular stained glass windows visible out of focus beyond.

Tourist captures Holy Mass on her iPhone in Notre Dame Cathedral

I’m not a religious person, but if I visit someone’s holy place, I hope I tread carefully and with consideration of where I am. At Notre Dame there were people poking their phones through railings, taking pictures in places with ‘No Photography” signs right next to their elbows. Maybe this is nothing new, maybe I should mind my own beeswax.

Maybe it seemed worse because it was incredibly busy – perhaps unsurprising as it’s only been open a few weeks, but when a Holy Mass got underway, there were people filming the service with phones on selfie sticks, small gimbal cameras and the like. Is this normal? Maybe it is.

While I wasn’t there to pass judgement (as I seem to have done, whether I like it or not), and not there to gather a story, rather than poke my camera into every nook and cranny of the cathedral I focussed on the visitors around me and tried to get a sense of what it was like to be there, more than what the space looks like*.

The result you see here is the best of a handful of photos I took during the visit to Notre Dame. In a single image I’ve tried to bring together the iPhone experience so many people have of places now with how such use can feel a little insensitive. At the same time, I wanted to make it fairly obvious where the image was taken to give it context.

A Dame Good Photo?

I’m not sure how successful I was in this. Perhaps if I’d had more time I might have managed to capture a sea of phones-type shot, but filling the background with a single spectacular rose window would have been impossible, and here I feel it helps add impact to the image. And on the tourist’s phone you can clearly see she’s lining up for a photo or video of the Mass, rather than an architectural aspect of the space. If I’d got multiple phones in-shot, you wouldn’t see what was on any single one of them, and this would have diluted the impact further.

Either way, however successful/impactful/useful it is, the shot scratched my itch to make a different kind of image that day, so I’ll settle for that.

Having had this semi rant, maybe I’m the worst tourist ever. While other people go to places and do their thing, I feel compelled to document them doing their thing rather than going to a place and minding my own business. And doesn’t that make me slightly hypocritical?! Or perhaps it’s healthy to take a step back from the crowd and show what society looks like, rather than copy what everyone else sees. It’s certainly a minefield, and one I’ll probably spend the rest of my life picking my way through.

For the camera nerds, here are the image specs:

Camera – Lumix GX9

Lens – Olympus 45mm f/1.8

Exposure – 650iso, 50th sec @ f/1.8

*It is incredible. The restoration has been done with astonishing care and attention to detail. There is far more lighting than was evident in the pre-fire cathedral, but this means you can now see all the beautiful carving, all the way up to the beautiful vaulted roof. Just go, you’ll love it.

in My News / Personal Work / Point of View 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

The Most Personal Yet

My regular readers will already be aware of the importance I place on personal photographic projects, without which I don’t think I’d be the photographer I am.

For the most part I tend to use film for this work because I prefer the change in workflow. However lockdown has presented its own challenges. With limited funds, do I keep shooting film, or save it for when I can next visit Salisbury Plain?

And without the ability to roam about taking the pictures I would normally look for in a personal project, I’ve retreated to the most personal subject of all, my own home life.

Yes I have shot some film, but found myself reaching for the digital camera and developing a new theme: The Home Front.

The Home Front is my deeply personal reaction against the war rhetoric which has been liberally applied to the Covid-19 crisis, in particular by our politicians. I’m a firm believer in the importance of language and how it is used, and since we are not at war, I find it inappropriate to use conflict terminology now.

Apart from anything else I believe it sets a combative tone in the national psyche, and this can have unintended consequences in society. Too much of the “don’t you know there’s a war on” attitude can lead to unnecessary conflict between individuals, or groups.

What The Home Front sets out to illustrate is that while we are facing undeniably difficult times, there is also a great deal to be thankful for. There is also beauty in the small, normally un-observed corners of domestic life.

I know I’m particularly lucky to have a home with a garden, and to be living with someone who is may absolute first choice of lockdown partner. Not everyone enjoys these simple luxuries, but I wanted to illustrate that whatever one’s situation, we are not being shot at or bombed.

The Home Front has been featuring on my Instagram feed this week, and if you’d like to see the set to the end you’ll either have to follow me there, or keep an eye on my Facebook page. In the meantime, here are a couple of the images posted so far.

Window light casts the shadow of the window frame onto a bright yellow wall. A chair in front of the wall sports a bright, burnt orange cushion.
The Home Front.
A piano in the background with someone's feet in the foreground, wearing yellow socks and resting on the red arm of a comfy chair. I green leaf-pattern lamp hangs above.
Helen on the phone to her parents.
A green leaf of a house plant is back-lit by the sun against a dark grey wall, creating an abstract cameo from a household object.
Late afternoon sun hits the leaf of a house plant.
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 by Tim Gander

Christmas came early!

My film foray continues, and with it new ideas about how I want to work and the personal projects I want to use it for.

For a few years now I’ve had a hankering for a camera which had no reliance on batteries. Unbelievably, in all my 30 years as a photographer, every camera I’ve ever owned has needed at least a couple of LR44 button cells to make the shutter work.

It was never a problem, but when looking at secondhand film cameras now (s/h being the only option since nobody makes a 35mm SLR or rangefinder film camera any more), we’re talking about cameras between 20 and 40 years old which all have electronics in them, and circuit boards being rather delicate, specialist parts, it’s less likely they’ll be repairable in years to come.

My very electronic Canon EOS 1N cameras are going well and I’m confident they’ll keep going for several years to come, but an all-mechanical camera, albeit an old one, is still more serviceable than one packed with fine ribbon circuit boards, motors and silicon chips.

Which is why when a Nikon F2 popped up in my Facebook Marketplace, I stopped in my tracks and took a good look.

The Nikon F2 is something of a legend, but I won’t bore you with the full history of this model right now. Suffice to say, it was ‘the’ camera of choice of photojournalists from the early 1970s to the 1980s (when the battery-reliant F3 came out) and finding one in good condition now is getting tricky; they’re actually becoming collectible (aka stupidly expensive). It takes a couple of button cells, but they only work the meter. The shutter is completely mechanical, so if the batteries die, I still have a working camera in my hands.

The particular one which popped up in my Facebook feed looked to be in fantastic condition and even better, it wasn’t a million miles away from me. So I dropped a tentative line to the seller about having a look at it, while assuming I’d never hear back.

Nikon F2 camera with D-11 metering prism and 50mm f/1.4 lens.
Hello beautiful
A man in the foreground walking to the right of the frame, carrying a Sports Direct plastic bag, is followed by a smart bearded man in a tuxedo and bow tie.
Piccadilly street scene.
Black and white portrait of a black girl with curly hair looking directly at the camera wearing an Adidas sports top.
Street portrait, London
Self-portrait of Tim Gander with Nikon F2 camera in bathroom mirror.
Testing with flash in bathroom mirror

Far from it, the seller called me almost immediately and we got chatting. Long story short, we met an hour later and I bought the camera (with 50mm lens). An early Christmas present to myself then, albeit one with some serious intent.

Even though it’s had little use since it was bought in 1973, the camera will need a service. The slower shutter speeds are a little dodgy and it’ll do it no harm to have the original lubricants cleaned off and replaced along with any decayed foam seals (though the film door and mirror box foams look incredibly good).

The camera is already booked in to be serviced by the one person in the UK who specialises exclusively in servicing and repairing Nikon F2s, Sover Wong. Sadly his waiting list is over a year, but he’s assured me I should be fine to use the camera while I await my slot.

The downside of it being a Nikon is that I can’t use any of my Canon lenses on it, but that would have been the same if I’d bought Canon’s last mechanical camera because Canon changed their lens mount system for the EOS autofocus cameras, so my EOS lenses don’t fit older Canons. Complicated, ain’t it?!

Thankfully, I’m only interested in using a very limited set of lenses with the Nikon and I can build these up over time.

In the meantime, I’ve put a couple of rolls of Kodak Tri-X through this amazing machine and I’m happy to say it seems to be working just fine. Even the meter is accurate, which isn’t bad for a 45-year-old camera. Yes, it’s only 7 years younger than me, but it looks prettier and less wrinkly.

In time I’ll be using it for personal projects and personal work where the scream of my Canon’s built-in motor-drives are perhaps less appropriate. Keep watching for updates!

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