The Story of Lancoast

 

Lancoast is a very unusual essay for me as it starts with a concept.  The concept has been borne out of many an hour pondering what to do and how to do it.  Normally with one of my essays it begins with an accident, a happening that makes a realisation.  This essay has come about the other way.  The idea first.

Nearly twelve months ago I happened to be talking to a friend of mine about shooting some film and the discussion came round to idea that I fancied having a go at building a pinhole camera; probably a large format pinhole camera at that.  The next time we met, Bob, handed to me a Micropress 4” x 5” camera that had been broken but would make a suitable toy for me to play with.

The reason I wanted to shoot a pinhole?

I’ve long admired really long exposure images for quite some time and even played with them myself (with a digital camera).  I also love the quality of a large format photograph.  There is something very beautiful and tactile about handling one of these large negatives.  Knowing that you can get a really sharp image from a pinhole camera then this seemed an obvious choice.  The combination of a really small aperture and slow film would surely bring about the images that I was looking for.

Of course not every subject suits long exposures.  The flow of water and the movement of the sky are subjects that really become something else when this type of photography is used.

It didn’t take me long to hit on the idea of using Lancashire’s coastline as the subject.  I want something quite stark, minimalist, and monochromatic but at the same time recognisable.

I have also started to develop ideas of what I want the final outcome of the essay to be.

I’ve been toying with the idea using alternative processes to create prints for a while and it seems fitting that photographs of the Lancashire Coastline should be printed using a constituent of sea water, salt.

This is early days.  These are ideas.  Come back soon and see how the essay is developing.