A new cityscape photographer in the circle

Hi everyone. Though it's the first time I say hi to you, actually I've been submerging for some time and acquired a lot of information here. Then I got a little curious and think it might be a good idea to share my work with you.

Ok, the principle is, I'm a cityscape photographer. I work in BW, and I'm quite influenced by the German impressionism.

Here's a link to an online PDF presentation I did last year in a little projection. I present to you this series, My Angst.

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AUKcy6Wgu0jzZGd4ZDI4eG5fMTA3YzU1dDJyZ3E&hl=en

Some of these works are retouched and could be seen at Dead Link Removed

These cityscape are mainly done in China. While I'm currently based in Paris, I will be releasing quite a few metro shots in the following days.

Thank you for looking at this, and hope you like it

Jing W

One word: the My Angst series was done using mainly very pushed HP5 and point & shoot camera, namely a nikon 28ti, and a nikon F3 with 105 2.8 micro nikkor.

Now that I've changed to Leica M4-p, summicron 50 rigid, minolta tc1 and Plaubel Makina 67, I still own the 28ti/ 35ti and F3. I find these cameras work seamlessly: I could use reflex when it comes to macro and tele work, point & shoot when discret shooting is required, middle format for nature morte and finally leica for just everything.

I push a lot HP5 and Trix, HP5 is my better choice honestly, since it can be quite violent when pushed up with high temperature.

Forgot to mention that the My Angst serie was preselected by Bourse du Talent 2010, in China. Didn't win the contest because the french juries wanted "Chinese photographers". And though I'm indeed a bloodly Chinese (cross finger), my style was regarded as "too occidental". Quite ironic, I guess, that after several decades, people still imitate Marc-Riboud when it comes to photographing China.

Now I'm looking forward to publish my first photo book, I will have to pay it for myself but hopefully if I could sell a few hundred copies I could already support myself doing this.

The excitement just never ends.

Hello Jing, welcome to APUG.

I viewed all 58 of your photographs, and there are many that I like very much. I also like to do street/cityscape photography, and it would be good to see a bit more of that here on APUG.

This site is fairly hard core about staying purely analog, especially when it comes to posted images, so it might be a good idea to share your post production techniques.

Best regards,

Dave

Hi Dave, thanks a lot

In fact I worked in a very spontaneous way when I started. I didn't read any text books which tells you plenty of "must not", and my only teacher was a friend who told me "you throw in some D76 and fix it when it's done". I was quite careless with films, and intentionally give them a good scratching when it's fixed with high temperature. For example, this shot Dead Link Removed appeared in the very first several rolls of my entire shooting life (rather short, really). It was highly pushed with 45c D76, constant agitation, and some good scratches on an iron bar when it was done.

All the scratches you saw on the pictures are done in such a manner. I wasted A LOT of frames, but got several very good ones which I believe will be a signature in the long run.

The reason I did all this is that I treat the whole BW work as a form of plastic art, where you should experiment with anything you can imagine and just in your own way. I didn't do the scratches for no reason: shooting or developing themselves are not sufficient to express the dark tone I wanted, then I realized I could just do it on the film. I worked in a very liberal newspaper in China, and yes the great tension (political, living) gave me something that could only be expressed in this particular way.

I suppose, contrary to many people, that one should not limit himself too much in the old school criteria of BW: sharpness, clean negative, delicate print, etc. It's a form of plastic art, and should be experimented to suit one's own personality. But yes, I did experimented with digital post production a little to do things I can't with traditional BW, for example, this Metamorphosis series: Dead Link Removed. For the record: I DID not twist the content of these photos, I did not combine anything, they were done on a highly pushed film with multiple exposures from holga. The digital post production only contributed to the tonality.

Now that I'm based in Paris, the city smells different, and I adjusted my shooting and processing to suit this. Different things will appear on film...

Thanks again for appreciating my works.

Jing

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Welcome Home Jing !
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hi jing

very nice body of work you presented, thanks for the links,
and welcome to apug !

john

Hi, it's so good to see you guys here! Actually, I rarely know any photographer working in Paris, since I just arrived three months ago. I'm getting a bit lonely.

I'm working on finding a gallery or agency who would represent me. If you have any idea, please don't hesitate to mention it, films is crazily expensive here, anything else equally so.

A big thank you to everyone!

Jing

Hello and a warm welcome to APUG! Like your work.

Jeff

Jing - hello and welcome to APUG.

Thank you all!

In fact I forgot to mention that a good part of the My Angst serie is done by a role 35 classic titanium edition. It has the most competent lens I've used: fabulous contrast, very dark toned render of the scene, etc. I totally love it's 40mm lens, and I find it rendered the achetecture shots with mighty and powerful distortion. I know we usually don't use these terms when talking about distortion - we usually look for NO distortion. But this 40mm lens's distortion, when used properly, can give the architecture shots an overwhelming power.

I'm having a love hate relationship with summicron 50. The thing is, it's a bit narrow for me, and also this lens has its own character which is hard to control. I don't want people look at my photography and instead of praising the photography itself, keep on talking about how this summicron contributed to the aesthetics. So I find myself constantly, intentionally shooting things totally out of focus or with very slow speeds, because if in focus and tuned, the lens just come over me and render MY photography like other millions of summicron users. Also, I work a lot in post production: unconventional developing, usually very high push to gain grain and contrast to ensure people don't see that it's a summicron.

Also,I recently sold the mikon 28ti because I find it too big and clumsy. Now for wide angle I use a minolta tc-1. I did a search on this forum but didn't find any related topic on this machine. For the record: it's the camera of the greatest value I've seen (lens sold in leica m mount for over 1500 usd), and at the same time, a most fragile & expensive camera. It's lens totally surpassed anything in 28mm range, I abused mine with 100 rolls in the two month ownership. Now it's in japan waiting for repair (300 usd I presume including shipping fees). But I love it so much that I will totally pay this repair and (ab)use it again.