The Spying Game

I know what you’re thinking…what’s that new tab at the top of Wayne’s page?….there’s the ‘Home’ tab…the ‘About’ tab….the ‘Image Gallery’….and…oh…what’s this? ‘The Spying Game’? Tell me more Wayne…

Ok then..I will. And thank you for your curiosity.

I have decided rather than to just blog this in the usual place, I feel the work I have put into this project deserves its own special place on my blog rather than get lost in amongst the other posts. The post is in four parts so it’s easily digestible. Like a lovely cake. You want it all but would feel like a pig eating it all at once.

I guess I should tell you what it is…

As you may have already seen in the last post, over the summer, I was given a project to do called ‘Live On Location’ – the first part of which was about Witley Court. The second part of the project was about creating your own brief for a fictitious client and being able to incorporate location work into it. It was to be totally self-directed and created independently of any tutor guidance. So with that in mind, I started to think about what I wanted to do and most importantly where I wanted to go.

At this point, I could have totally taken the easy route and just done some street photography but I chose not to. Instead, I wanted to do something that would challenge me, broaden my photography skills and maybe even teach myself something. I’d had an idea about going back to the fantastic Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes. I’d been there before and for those of you who don’t know what Bletchley Park is, it is the former headquarters of the British team of codebreakers that during World War II, cracked the German Enigma codes which some suggest, shortened the war by two years. It is probably more recognised these days, thanks to the recent movie “The Imitation Game” as being the place where a certain Mr. Alan Turing worked.

So now I had my location. But somehow it didn’t seem enough. The whole thing was missing something. After some deliberation, I decided that if I broadened the scope of this project and looked at it from an intelligence point of view, it might just give me something to work on. I was thinking at this stage about other buildings that may feature and almost immediately thought of the SIS building in London. The SIS building in Vauxhall, London is home to MI6 and if you haven’t seen it before, it is a very striking looking building on the banks of the Thames. Some might say completely the opposite type of building a ‘secret service’ should have as it is nothing of the sort!

Now I had my second location. But I now had a new problem. How could I link them together? The most obvious link was of course their British Intelligence roots but this wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds. The natural path from Bletchley Park to MI6 has to flow through G.C.H.Q as this was the place where many of Bletchley’s workers ended up after the war had ended. So I had to go to Cheltenham where G.C.H.Q is based and that, I assumed, would throw up a whole new set of problems.

From G.C.H.Q, I could then come to London and to M.I.6 but if I was coming to London, I had to include M.I.5, the U.K’s other security service. So I needed to build into my schedule a stop at Thames House, the home of M.I.5. I now had all of my locations for this project. I had the link that bound them all together. All I had to do now was to try to convince Britain’s top secret intelligence agencies to let me photograph them.

This was going to be interesting…

No colours any more, I want them to turn black…

…..or cyanotype….or gum bichromate…..or infrared….or even solarised…..

No chums, I haven’t been at the absinthe or smelling the ether…..They are merely descriptions of various photographic techniques you can use either digitally or manually to create fantastical and wondrous images.

I’d better explain myself….

So there I am, sitting in my college class when my tutors introduce a new topic with the heading “Darkroom vs. Digital”. At first thought, I was thinking it was the latest Pay Per View on Sky Sports, but no – it was a different battle. A war between the paint and the pixel; the computer and the chemical; Steve Jobs & Bill Gates vs Edward Steichen & William Henry Fox Talbot…(although that last battle would have needed one hell of a team of doctors, some witchcraft and a tremendous amount of portable heaters).

So this topic was to find out which method was the best, which one could cut it, which would stand the test of time. The process would involve testing technology against alchemy and then standing back to admire the result. In the red corner, good old reliable Photoshop; maker of worlds, rescuer of blemishes, saviour of over exposures. In the blue corner, many concoctions of various (dangerous and sometimes noxious) chemicals, painted on blank paper and left in the sun…

There are quite a few processes to tell you about so I’m splitting these posts into two parts. Rather like an enormous photography cake. You would be quite sick if you eat the whole cake in one sitting and quite frankly, I’m not cleaning up your mess half way through, so here are the first few slices….

Lets start with a slice of cyanotype.

So what is it? Cyanotype is a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate & potassium ferricyanide (wow, look at me being all sciencey!) and mixed together. When painted onto something like water-colour paper and exposed to UV rays, it produces a strong blue image. This image is my Photoshop equivalent.

Next, let me tell you about cross processing. Not to be confused with cross dressing. Or cross contamination. Or even Criss Cross, the short-lived, pint-sized 80’s rap duo…..

Cross processing is the procedure of deliberately processing a certain type of film in a chemical solution intended for another type of film. Yes. You read it right. Deliberately. Now, before you start doing this –

the process is intentional because it produces unpredictable and interesting combinations of colours. Like this –

That’s cross processing. Pretty cool eh? I would imagine those of you familiar with Instagram (or “Instagramers” I believe you like to be called) are high-fiving each other right at this very minute….

Next, I’m going to peel back the curtains and let you into the world of infrared. Turns out, infrared isn’t just for the likes of MI6 and the C.I.A. You can use it to take some quite fantastic photographs! The human eye cannot see infrared so when you use it in photography, you open up a while new world, new colours that you would otherwise miss.

Here’s my offering –

BTW – he’s not laughing at you…rather than “with” you…

If I said to you “tilt and shift”, would you lean to one side and then move out of the way? Probably. But if you know your photographic terminology, you would know that I’m talking about the process that mimics miniaturisation. Some call it the “toy town” effect. But it gives you much more that just some fancy toys in your picture. It gives you some really quite good shallow depth of field effects too.

Now if you know your lenses, you will know that some tilt / shift lenses are V.Expensive but thanks to your old friend Photoshop, the effect can be replicated digitally and at a fraction of the cost. And now even smartphones are getting in on the act. Here’s my digital delectation –

A miniature Birmingham. Like a little toy town. Not sure if Noddy and Big Ears would get the same reception if they moved here though!

My last slice of this rapidly melting cake of part one deals with the somewhat comically named diptych & triptych. Now before you ask, they are not Slovenia’s entry for Eurovision 2015. Or indeed are they a couple of breeding Chinese pandas. I’ll explain..

A ‘diptych’ is a presentation of two images that have something in common or tell a story with their imagery. A ‘triptych’ is a presentation of three images that do the same. Simple. What’s that? You want an example? Oh, go on then….

A ‘diptych..’

And a ‘triptych..’

So there we are. Are you full? I certainly am. I couldn’t manage another bite. I’ll wrap the rest of the cake in foil and we’ll have the rest later. There’s quite a lot left. There’s some gum bichromate, liquid emulsion, Polaroid lifts and a bit fat piece of selenium!

But for now, I’ll settle for a cup of tea. I think it’s your turn to put the kettle on…..