It has been a hell of a long time since I updated this website. I’ve decided to shift my focus from www.davetacon.com to this one since I’m practically invisible to anyone searching for a photographer in Shanghai. I figure that the remedy is to update my blog frequently, so hear goes:
I had some good news this morning. This image, Fake Forest, shot in Chongqing, picked up the Special Prize for Highest Scoring Film Capture at the EPSON International Pano Awards, which had close to 5,000 entries from 1,258 photographers from 72 countries. Admittedly, few of them would be shooting film these days, but I’ll take it.
https://thepanoawards.com/2019-winners-gallery/
It was shot in Chongqing, with a Hasselblad Xpan camera, a nifty thing that shoots almost two 35mm frames side by side in panoramic mode. It was also shot on Agfafilm Vista 400, which, like the Xpan, has been discontinued. This film, like my Xpan camera, was made by Fujifilm in Japan and as far as I can tell it’s Superia 400 X-Tra in a different box and canister. It used to be the cheapest good film I could find at only around US$2.60 per roll. It’s quite saturated so I dragged the saturation down a little. Otherwise, it’s a straight Imacon film scan, so it kind of sits oddly with some of the images in the winners’ gallery, some of which have some pretty heavy post production.
I came across the image when I was wandering about a new luxury residential development as I tried to make my way to the Yangtze River, which I’ve been shooting a project on for the last few years.
I’d been shooting at a decomissioned power station prior to this. Chongqing really does have to be one of the best places to photograph in China. It’s such a crazy city, developing at breakneck speed. It used to be part of Sichuan Province, but it just got too big. Around 35 million people live here.
Anyway, I had to wait a while for these guys to get back to work laying plumbing as they were a bit startled by a foreigner appearing out of nowhere. I shot this frame and another as one of the workers exited the door. I’d say it’s certainly in the best five photos I’ve shot since shifting to Shanghai in 2012.
If you like my work, you can also see more at www.davetacon.com.