Thomas Birke

Hello,

as you may have known I have been to seoul for a week to shoot the city on large format and add footage to my 100 Cities project.

Here are my top and bad 3 about the city:

TOP

1. The air is super clean, I suspect this is due to the massive amount of trees spread all over the city - there are so many forests, you just need to take a quick stroll and you feel like there is no megacity around. When there are no or only light clouds, the sky has an awesome blue and the far sight must be at least 50km. There is no smog in the air and this is of course perfect for photography!
2. The subway system. It is the most efficient I have ever seen! And it is dead cheap at 50 cents a ride. The trains were crowded most of the times, but never as fully packed as it is the case in Tokyo or Paris, where you sometimes have to wait for the next train to take the ride. I suspect they have a very good crowd management system. All the tracks on every station are walled, so no one can fall on the tracks - the doors only open when the trains arrive. The best thing: in every station there are map stations with huge touch sensitive plasma screens, where you can scroll and zoom the google earth like map with the touch of a finger - they even have street view. This is by far the best orientation system I have ever seen, called daum digital view! http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/4449540861_af4dc2c3e6_b.jpg
3. Family Mart or 7/11 - this is existing in every asian megacity, but it still is the coolest thing to be able to grab a snack or a beer anytime you want - perfect for jetlagged europeans!

BAD

1. The North Korea Situation. Basically, they are still at war with only a cease fire in place for 50 years. You notice this on every corner, especially as a photographer with heavy equipment. I have been told several times to pack and go away, apperantly because there were some military installations around and they were afraid of spying. This is so stupid! When I would like to spy, I’ll check google earth or walk around with a pen camera - not with a ton of equipment that takes 10 minutes to assemble. Climbing a mountain, totally wasted and full with sweat - and then beeing told to not take pictures there is such a bad experience…
2. Noone really seems to speak english - it had been a great problem for me to communicate, especially to security guards and bus drivers.
3. The trees. I know, they are good, but for photographers they are a pain in the ass! Seoul has a lot of great hills with fantastic views, but most views are shaded by a gazillion of trees - it is so hard to get a good view without trees blocking the way. They should at least crop the trees at some viewpoints!

All in all Seoul is a very enjoyable megacity and a great place to live I think. Close to the quality of Tokyo - they know how megacities can do it right!

I hope some of my pictures show it - currently I am uploading them into my Seoul flickr set, so check it out from time to time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/move_lachine/sets/72157624187670400/

Hey my dear fellows,

I have been terribly busy the last couple of weeks. This is of course due to my need for constant money from a daytime job. Anyway, I have some cool Months ahead of me.

13th of May - 17th of May I will be in St. Julians, Malta

22nd of May - 30th of May I will be in Seoul, South Korea.

19th of June - 27 of June I will be in Hong Kong, China.

If anyone wants to meetup and show me some cool spots, go ahead and mail me.

So expect some new Images starting early June. I am so curious about Seoul, since this seems to be one of the most underrated cities in the world related to it’s size. I know some people that love it though, and flipping through some images on flickr and Google I might become a fan too! Lots of density and high-rises, hills for good views and lots of traffic - looks like perfect ingredients for my images.

So long, I’ll keep you posted.

I did some calculations and defined the final equipment I will need to perfectly produce super large prints of urban landscapes.

I made the following observations:

1. I like 8x10 and it is a good way to achieve my goals. But after trying different print sizes I get the feeling, that 1,50m by 1,20 meter is the largest I can go and still have unlimited sharpness - meaning you can go as close as you want to the image and never get the feeling the detail goes no further. I mean at a 1,50m printsize you can really examine the print at 5cm distance and still see every smallest detail.
2. I do not like the 8x10 aspect ratio - it is not made for the human field of view. The human eyes want wide screen images, like cinema scope.
3. The highest and largest quality print in the world can be achieved by an OCÉ Lightjet 500XL - it has a maximum print size of 300x180cm.
4. The 300x180cm print size is ideal to create the feeling of “beeing there” - I have tried this and it is amazing!

See the following image with me in front of an 300x180cm print at my last show in October:

you can find the image here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/move_lachine/2831249098 (sorry for the look, I was a bit drunk)

So, what conclusions du we get? Exactly - the perfect format to cover 300x180cm perfectly sharp is 12x20in. The aspect ratio is just right and the resolution as well.

OH MY GOD.

12x20! Only the toughest and meanest guys in the world go that large. And if they do, they mostly shoot landscapes from close by their car. One guy whose work I recently found and admire is Clyde Butcher, check out his website. I do not want to imagine the trouble of airtravel with that monstrous equipment, I think carrying it alone will be impossible. So these are the obstacles I have to overcome in order to shoot my dream format:

1. build a decent 12x20 camera -  I do not want a wooden camera, since I do not trust them - my CNC milled Sinar is just perfect - I imagine having a custom Sinar 12x20 back made
2. Find some plastic factory that can copy the Fidelity Design and adopt it to 12x20 - again, I do not want to go with wood
3. Find a light and stable Bellows
4. buy the most expensive LF Lenses on the planet to cover the Format with movements
5. get an assistent to help me carry the gear
6. Get Kodak to produce a batch of 12x20 cut colour film e100g or 160nc for me - they do this for large orders in the $20K range
7. Get a hell of a faster computer - mine has 16GB RAM right now and 8 cores, and totally kneels in front of a large 8x10 scan - impossible to think of a 12x20. I fathom I need at least 128GB RAM and certainly some Fibre Channel Disks to accelerate the swapping.
8. New Baggage, probably custom made cases because you wouldn’t get a single component in checked luggage, eccept the lenses maybe.
9. An Airline Elite Member Status that allows to carry 40kg of luggage, I do not want to pay 30€ per kg per leg - that would be insane

But hey, at least I already have the following to start from:

1. a light meter :)
2. a sinar p2 8x10 - a very sturdy base for ANYTHING
3. a Heidelberg D8200 Drumscanner and a big 212mm drum that can take 2 sheets of 12x20 film at once

I fathom the following lenses:

1. Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Symmar XL 210mm
2. Schneider-Kreuznach Fine-Art XXL 550mm
3. Schneider-Kreuznach Fine-Art XXL 1100mm

Alright, I am glad I got that of my chest. Now I can bury this post and look at it when I have assembled my FINAL equipment.

Inspiration from My Bookshelf #2

TODAY: Peter Bialobrzeski - Neontigers

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(this series is about books I have in my bookshelf that inspired me a lot)

I don’t even know how I first took notice, but when I discovered the Neon Tiger works of Mr. Bialobrzeski, I was instantly hooked. It didn’t take long for me to buy the book. It is at least something, since I could never afford a print. I flipped the pages a thousand times, tried to reengineer what he would have done to obtain that look and find the locations. I still didn’t found out completely, but the quest helped me tremendously in defining my own style and find new locations. All I could imagine is: a) he uses low contrast print film, like portra NC and b) overexposes a lot, probably more than two stops than what I would expose. And c) probably some color correction in Photoshop, it seems like the black contrast got exaggerated in CMYK to obtain the details while maintaining the overexposed look. But that doesn’t really matter, lets take a look at the cover:

The book consists of 113 Pages, has been published by hatje cantz (ISBN: 3-7757-1394-8) and contains 40 Images. It features an Introduction by Florian Hanig, which I would copy one to one for my first book ;). The printing quality is very good, you can make out lot’s of details when you look closer.

The locations are amazing, and I wonder how he obtained them. In his book, Mr. Bialobrzeski talks about using PR Managers of hotels and a lot of own scouting, maybe that is one way. Maybe I get a chance to ask him one day. Let’s take a look at my favorite pages:

See more inspiring images at his website! http://www.bialobrzeski.de/ (this also contains images not in the book)

For a complete reference of contained Images look: index 1 index 2 index 3 index 4

And finally, an image I found on the web, that shows him during work. Seems like he uses an older Linhof 4x5.

If you would like to buy the book, it is currently only available from some used book sharks at Amazon.com and Amazon.de - maybe you could try your luck on eBay! - The original price tag has been €39,80 in Germany.

I have a cold.

So I have a lot of time, lying in my bed and thinking about the things to come, the things I had planned. Everything has been on schedule up to now to start with 1000ppp on April. But suddenly it struck me like lightning. My plan has absolutely no room for failure, there is no time for beeing sick, no time for another hour of sleep and no time for any more hour for my daytimejob. But these things happen, as I learned right now with that dreadful cold.

I have to adjust my plan to cover these things and fit in some more. I totally left out social life, planning and preparations for trips and buffers for all other kind of things.

If I adjust the desired productivity ratio to 1/3rd, that would leave me with 10 publishable images a month - this alone is hard enough to achive, but it seems much more manageable than 30. This also fits nicely with the other math - a hundred cities and a thousand images equals 10 images per city. This means exactly one trip per month. I could separate the month - one half for taking images and scouting - and the other half for postproduction at my homebase and for planning the next trip.

The only catch would be the end date - it would have to be postponed to 2019 - I am curious if I have that long a breath! So stay with me and lets make it happen!

This is a short Reminder for myself about the things I have to do before I can start my 1000ppp project on 04/06/10. Let’s build up some social pressure to really accomplish these.

- prepare 30 publishable images, to have some advance to work with (finish by 04/05/10)
- cleanup studio, It really is a mess right now, wouldn’t want to invite any gallery owner over for a visit… (finish by 02/15/10)
- create custom theme for blog - don’t you think it’s booooring and lacking information (finish by 02/10/10)
- custom theme for shop - one identity! (finish by 02/28/10)
- develop supply chain - who is gonna produce the shitloads of images I am going to sell? I like Whitewall, but they are kind of slow… (finish by 03/15/10)
- close equipment gap - buy those things I lack in my equipment, that’s going to be the most fun part, yeah!!! (finish by 02/20/10)
- stock up on film - only have 30 sheets left…that’s 6 days of shooting at most! (finish by 02/20/10)
- create 1000ppp.com - I want to track this project on a separate page, separate from my portfolio and my blog! (finish by 02/28/10)

Inspiration from My Bookshelf #1

TODAY: Floriane de Lassée - Night Views

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(this series is about books I have in my bookshelf that inspired me a lot)

A friend of mine once strolled through galleries in Bejing and told me, he saw a Photographer that was doing stuff like like I do. So I researched a bit. It was at the Paris Bejing Art Gallery and it turned out to be a female french urban large format photographer by the name of Floriane de Lassée. Apparently she is very young and uses a 4x5 inch camera. I found out that she had a book on sale at amazon and so I instantly bought it!

The book consists of 96 Pages, has been published by Nazraeli Press (ISBN: 978-1590052280) and contains 41 Images. It features an Introduction by Virginie Luc. The printing quality is not the best luxury thing you have ever seen, but it is ok.

What counts are the images! They have been shot from rooftops and balconys in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris and Istanbul. That is what I love. And how sweet the spots are! I wonder how she managed everything, because this is my single most concern, how to get permissions for publicly unaccessible spots like Rooftops on office towers etc. To give you some impressions:

See more inspiring images at her website! http://www.florianedelassee.com/site/beijing-night-views-2008/ (this also contains images not in the book)

For a complete reference of contained Images look here and here.

And finally, an image I found on Flickr, that shows her during work. I always marvel when I see some fellow large format freak in an urban environment doing what I love. This seems so unreal, but at least it shows, that we are not alone!

If you would like to buy the book, it is still available at amazon.com - here

and I can’t do much about it. It just hurts and keeps me from doing important things. Hopefully this will be gone by the end of the week.