The People’s Palace (Morecambe waits, part 4)

April 30, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

Words by Liz Corlett. Images by Phil Kneen It’s easy to sentimentalize Morecambe’s past and poke fun at its shortcomings; more difficult to envisage a positive future for the town. During our visit, we encounter no shortage of people who agree that the town needs ‘something’ but rather fewer able to identify what that might be. Local authority initiatives are given short shrift, and there’s a recurring sentiment that Morecambe has been left out in the rain by its guardians. This […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: 6x7, 80mm, camera, coco chanel, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, fuji film, fuji pro 400H, I shoot film, irish sea, kodak, kodak portra 400, liz corlett, mamiya 7II, morecambe, negative, Peak imaging, personal project, seaside, the midland hotel, winer gardens

You Could Be Anywhere (Morecambe waits, part 3)

April 29, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

Words by Liz Corlett. Images by Phil Kneen “Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.” The beauty of Morecambe’s body may have been in a protracted decline but its soul is replenished twice a day. Morecambe Bay, and those tides which come and go in long, deep breaths, are genuinely remarkable. Covering over 120 square miles, the scale of the bay in relation to the town verges on epic; it’s like stepping through the back door […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 6x6, 6x7, 80mm, camera, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, I shoot film, irish sea, kodak, kodak portra 400, liz corlett, mamiya 7II, morecambe, personal project, phil kneen, portrait, The Old Pier Bookshop, tony vettese

Beyond Frontierland (Morecambe waits, part 2)

April 27, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

Words by Liz Corlett. Images by Phil Kneen Seaside resorts give you everything up front; there’s no waiting game or charms withheld. This can lend their ‘off duty’ quarters a curiously unfinished quality: leave Morecambe seafront and walk three or four streets deep into the town, and the quietness is singular, as though there’d been an emergency evacuation only moments before. In the East End, time itself has been ushered out of town: a detour through the side streets leads […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 6x7, 80mm, camera, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, fuji film, fuji pro 400H, liz corlett, mamiya 7II, morecambe, Olympus mju II, personal project, polo tower, seascape

Morecambe waits…

April 23, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

Words by Liz Corlett If ever there was a town which looks for silver linings, it’s Morecambe. And just occasionally, that delicate gleam is not the promise merely of more rain. On my first stay in Morecambe, I’ve only been in town for half an hour when Ian Pashley, who works at The Midland Hotel, tells me how the West Pier was swept away in storms in 1977. It wasn’t all bad, he says: unfettered one-armed bandits disgorged money all […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 6x7, 80mm, camera, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, fuji film, fuji pro 400H, I shoot film, irish sea, isle of man, kodak, kodak portra 400, liz corlett, mamiya 7II, morecambe, negative, north west england, Peak imaging, personal project, seaside

Bonzo

April 21, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

My new Epson V750 scanner arrived yesterday. The first thing I did was take to the negative carrier with a hacksaw and a file. These carriers are never quite big enough to scan full frame, so a bit of DIY is always required. This image of Bonzo was shot on a Mamiya 7II with 150mm lens using Kodak Tri-X rated at 800 ASA.

Categories: Photography • Tags: 6x7, art, black, black and white, bonzo, camera, epson v750, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, hair, I shoot film, inventive, isle of man, kodak, mamiya 7II, negative, Peak imaging, personal project, portrait, push process, tri-x, white

The arrow of time…

April 15, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

Spring 1989, I was 19. I’d been working in a local pottery making reproduction Staffordshire figures, hideous tat. My boss had been looking for an excuse to sack me for weeks. Has opportunity came one Friday afternoon when I decided to come back from my Wednesday lunch break, two days late. So, I had two weeks wages, a second-hand Olympus OM1 and a Honda 125cc motorbike. I decided I was going to ride to Scotland. I got on the Isle of […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 125cc, art, black and white, camera, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, glen etive, honda, I shoot film, kodak, motorbike, negative, personal project, phil kneen, road trip, scotland, sligachan hotel

35mm London

April 7, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

I had the most fantastic long weekend in London last week with my lovely wife, Helen. We did all the tourist things – London Eye, The British Museum, The War Museum (where I saw the amazing Don McCullin photography exhibition), we ate-out and spent a lot of time in various pubs with good friends, Amber and Loz. I really didn’t want to come home! I took three cameras, a Mamiya 7II medium format, a Nikon TW20 compact and an Olympus Mju II compact and 10 rolls […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 160nc, camera, colour, england, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, I shoot film, inventive, isle of man, kodak, kodak portra 160, kodak portra 400, light, london, london eye, mamiya 7II, museum, negative, Olympus mju II, pavement, Peak imaging, personal project, phil kneen, portrait, pub

Mamiya 7II Portraits

April 7, 2012 by Phil Kneen Photography

I’m having a love/hate relationship with my Mamiya 7II at the moment. I love the quality, but its under-generous minimum focus distance is causing me problems. I’m also finding the rangefinder to be a bit of a pain in low light, in fact, I tried using the M7II with a flash attached in very low light, but found it impossible to focus. I’d use a Hasselblad, with its lovely bright focus screen and close-up capability, but I had a 503cx […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 503cx, 6x6, 6x7, 80mm, art, black and white, camera, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fine art, hasselblad, I shoot film, isle of man, kodak, kodak portra 400, Kodak tri-x, large format, mamiya 7II, negative, Peak imaging, personal project, phil kneen, portrait, rangefinder