During the inter-semester break in January I spent 7 nights in Morocco with my girlfriend (cheap flights via Ryanair). We were traveling with just hand luggage so I left the bulky dSLR at home & instead took the Canonet & a beat-up Pentax MV with a Chinese 50mm f1.7. The intention was to cut down on size/weight whilst at the same time remove the nuisance of carrying extra batteries or taking a charger & then having to worry about adapters. Not to mention that a scruffy looking old SLR doesn’t attract pickpockets & muggers like a huge dSLR!
This was the first time I had shot any film in quite a long time, apart from
the test roll I put through the Canonet, but it was a nice change. All of the colour shots are expired Fuji Velvia 100F slide film (at least 5 years past its date but kept refrigerated) whilst the black & white consists of a single roll of Ilford FP4 (cheap from Boots) & several rolls of Fuji Neopan 1600 (cheap from 7dayshop). I’d never shot any of these films before & didn’t know how the Velvia would behave considering its age, but there were no disasters. Taking 1600 through airport xrays was a bit of a risk, but there doesn’t seem to have been any noticeable fogging, apart from maybe in some of the darkest shots.
All the processing was done by Peak Imaging. One of the reasons I never used to shoot slide or black & white is because places like Boots & Jessops charge a lot more for those than for normal colour negative, but Peak charge the same no matter what chemistry. I’m a bit paranoid about putting films in the post in case Royal Mail lose them, but if you take black & white to Boots they likely post the films to Ilford anyway.
Our first stop was the former imperial city of Marrakech. Overall we enjoyed the wide range of attractions (museums, galleries, gardens, etc.) but were a bit disappointed with how ‘touristy’ it was. The famous main square (Djemaa el Fna) & the markets (‘souks’) that surround it were a nightmare because of how harassing the shopkeepers & stall owners were, not to mention the near constant stream of mobilettes threatening to run you down. In the end we didn’t stop to buy anything & did all of our shopping in the much friendlier souks at Essaouira.
This is one of the quieter & cleaner parts of the souks early one morning; most stalls didn’t seem to get going until quite late in the morning.
Despite how narrow & busy the ‘roads’ can be, there were still cars & vans that make their way down. This was by no means the smallest place we encountered vans.
Some parts of Marrakech were quite clean & kept in good repair, like here on our way to the Musée de Marrakech, but other places were a far cry from this.
A nice change in terms of architecture from coastal Scotland!
Lots of lovely little alleyways to get lost in – getting lost is one of the most enjoyable things you can do in Marrakech, though I would recommend against doing so at night on the first day you arrive as we did…
The MV, despite being a cheap body that I bought on ebay for £10, having a shutter release button made from a screw superglued in place & light seals that are more mold & grime than foam, meters well in low light & extrapolates to very long exposures. However I had no idea how Neopan 1600 would behave in low light so most of the nighttime shots I took surreptitiously whilst walking through the souks didn’t relaly come out.
We ate at the food stalls in the main square on our first night, mainly because they were cheap (25 dirham (<£2) for vegetable couscous) & we hadn't had a chance to go to an exchange. If you're a vegetarian visiting Marrakech & want to eat local food rather than visiting the abundance of pizzarias, then you'd better be prepared for a diet of vegetable couscous & tagines.
One of the alleyways on the way back to our Riad, which was only about 5 minutes from the main square.
Another one of the alleyways – quite pleased with how well this one exposed. I suspect that the other shots out in the open that didn’t come out so well are because the camera’s meter was fooled by bright lightbulbs, exposing for them & but underexposing the rest of the image.
Rather tricky to focus quickly when it’s so dark…
This is the food stalls at the centre of the main square. It’s obviously not properly exposed, but gives a feel of how busy the place was.
One of the first attractions we visited in Marrakech was Ali Ben Youssef Medersa, an Islamic school attached to the Ben Youssef Mosque, where students would have memorized the Qur’an. The students’ dormitories were very simple, so I tried to do minimalist…
This wonderfully intricate (& extensive) tilework is at the Dar Mnebhi Palace. Unfortunately I had both the Canonet & the MV loaded with black & white film, which wasn’t the most sensible idea, though the FP4 brought out plenty of detail.
The ruins of the El Badi Palace weren’t particularly photogenic above ground, but some of the underground passageways had a certain charm to them, although I had to skulk about for a while until the other trippers walked out of shot.
After getting completely lost the first time we tried to find it (we actually ended up at an entirely different garden), we visited the Jardin Majorelle at the end of our 7 nights when we came back to Marrakech for our homeward flight. All of the stonework is painted electric blue, which was certainly different, as was seeing graffiti on bamboo… Unfortunately we arrived just as a tourbus was arriving, so I couldn’t take any wide shots without capturing a load of tourists in the frame.
This probably deserves explanation – they were cleaning one of the pools!
I’ll be making two more posts soon for the other places we visited in Morocco; Imlil & Ait Souka in the Atlas mountains & Essaouira on the coast.
Rewinding back to the beginning of the walk here. I dropped the colour from most of these after I scanned them, but for some reason I left this one with the tint it ended up with after the scan.
I took the dSLR with the 100mm macro as it had just rained (& still was a bit) & I was hoping to get some clichéd close-ups of droplets on leaves, but with most of the walk in the shade of the trees, the sun behind the rainclouds & the fact the 100mm macro is only an f4, I couldn’t really get anything without cranking up the ISO into noisy territory.
Luckily I grabbed the Canonet as an afterthought as I was heading out the door & was glad I did as even though I still had to shoot most things with a very slow shutter, the combination of f1.7 & not focusing on subjects less than 30cm away meant I at least came back with some usable snaps.
I had it loaded with Tri-X & with a yellow filter screwed on. Of course the filter wasn’t of much use with no blue sky about & I think it actually caused the washed-out almost IR look to the foliage, but at least it didn’t completely ruin the shots. A lot of them would’ve looked better if I wasn’t forced to shoot wide open because of how dim it was, but hey – at least I got something.
This might’ve come out nicer with a longer shutter (& no ugly sandbag wall in the background), but even managing to get it this slow handheld was a feat!
Likewise with this. I might go back at some point with a tripod, cable release & a set of NDs or something.
Really need to start taking more attention to my framing. Even with more DOF this would still look bad with the end of the branch jutting out at the bottom.
Not really the sort of subject I wanted to shoot at f1.7.
This came out better than expected though. The almost IR like quality to the foliage helps it I think. But then I am biased.
Wanted to finish the roll before I started retracing my steps on the way back. Time for bench shots.
Just look at how this is perfectly framed so the angle of the bench draws the viewer’s eye… straight off the edge of the photograph in the opposite direction to the rest of the image >.< It takes some skill to be able to frame a shot so badly after actually stopping to consider the framing.
