John Blakemore audio interview.

If there are any fans of John Blakemore`s photographs, they may be interested in listening to a 12 minute interview of him.
http://www.lensculture.com/blakemore.html#

Keith Tapscott. said:

If there are any fans of John Blakemore`s photographs, they may be interested in listening to a 12 minute interview of him.
http://www.lensculture.com/blakemore.html#

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Thanks, Keith. During the '80s I thought of him as the greatest living landscape photographer. He picked me up from the London/Derby train in his 2CV, and I bought a bunch of his magnificant prints. He was just divorced and very depressed at the time, and shooting those dreadful dead tulips. I haven't seen any new work since then, though, and I just bought his B&W Workshop manual, which is about the worst written photography book that I've ever tried to read and should have sent back to Amazon, (but didn't, out of respect).

Bill Mitchell said:

Thanks, Keith. During the '80s I thought of him as the greatest living landscape photographer. He picked me up from the London/Derby train in his 2CV, and I bought a bunch of his magnificant prints. He was just divorced and very depressed at the time, and shooting those dreadful dead tulips. I haven't seen any new work since then, though, and I just bought his B&W Workshop manual, which is about the worst written photography book that I've ever tried to read and should have sent back to Amazon, (but didn't, out of respect).

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I did a workshop with John at Duckspool back in 2000, at the time I was going through a Zone system phase and dabbling with some of the more exotic potions like PMK & Di-xactol (We`re all entitled to our moments of debauchery). These days I just stick to regular off the shelf stuff and traditional methods. It was the quality of the images from John`s 4x5 that made me decide to try it for myself. I liked his landscape prints far more than the Tulip series prints, but I suppose that`s just my own personal preference.
I bought two books with the W.H.Smith book shop vouchers that I got last Christmas and bought one by Lee Frost and the other was John`s B&W workshop book. I prefer the one by Lee.
Cheers.

Glad it isn't only me then. I had great hopes, but have really struggled and just finished his book and am wondering if anything sank in, or indeed if I wanted this permeation to take place. There are a couple of impressive shots IMO, but the bulk of the text related to images which failed to retain my attention.

Am wondering if after a glass or two of something strong, I could manage 12 minutes more.

Bill Mitchell said:

I haven't seen any new work since then, though, and I just bought his B&W Workshop manual, which is about the worst written photography book that I've ever tried to read and should have sent back to Amazon, (but didn't, out of respect).

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Same here. I shelved it repeated attempts to find merit in it. Are all of his images that soft? The images chosen for the book were really not my style at all, although I suppose some people like soft images...

- Randy