Microflexin'

Already a while back I was able to acquire an old Microflex camera on one of London's numerous flea markets, a twin lens reflex camera producing mid format photos. Built in 1958 as a copy of the famous Rolleiflex cams, the thing is still working like on day one. 

the cam with original packaging

The special thing about these TLR cams is obvious: different perspective, most of the people won't even notice when you take a photo, bigger negatives (equals more details) and the quadratic format. Furthermore it is just a damn joy to shoot with these cameras! So when you stumble across a working one on a flea market, get that thing...

Below is a quick selection from the last four rolls of film I winded through the Microflex.

Toby slaying a rail in the heart of Ljubljana

after-crash-smoking

A block of wax in ROG skatepark

The 2nd floor of ROG after a sesh

Nature is taking back over

Lake Bled and its island

After the rain....sunshine

Good good shoes

the zapornica

Remains of an extensive dark room sesh

Goran Karacic is floating around in Zagreb

photos and text: David Tiefenthaler

Goran Karacic Interview (+Clips)

A few weeks back, Tobias Mayer and me went out on a little Balkan trip to Ljubljana and Zagreb, where we met up with Goran Karacic who is doing his very own thing on a scooter down there. 

Though I never met Goran before, after exchanging some hasty words on FB we realized we absolutely have to shred Zagreb together. And after spending a few days with him in the Croatian capital, I was even more fascinated by this guy. OG Karacic showed us some of the best spots in Zagreb (for both riding and getting beers), big thanks again for this. 

He decided to share some elevated thoughts with us in this interview below and we even managed to film some clips of him on various spots in ZG, scroll dooown.

Goran riding his hometown's rough concrete

-How long have you been riding a scooter? What did actually make you pick up a scooter and try tricks with it?
Been riding faaar too long haha. I skated around 2001. and got my hands on a scooter around 2002. but that was just, messing around a bit. Got full time on a scooter sometimes around 2004. since it was a perfect mix of skating and bmx and it made a shitload of fun, just like today.

-For the people that aren't in the game for so long: what was the scooter scene like in the first years after you started riding?
There was scooter resource and everyone knew everyone pretty much. It was crazy. You'd come back from school and there was a new trick invented. Oh and everyone put out mini videos haha. Most of us spent more time reinforcing their scooters than riding, but it was well worth it. Good times!

-You saw the sport growing for a decade. How do you see the rapid growth of the scene (and the industry) in the last 3 years? Is scootering developing in the right direction?
Blaaah, I was afraid of such questions. What's right, what's wrong? Should we only respect street, park, vert? Meh... The scene is growing and scooters are putting a smile on kids faces, I think that's what counts. But there's one thing I always wanted to happen more on the scene, and that's rider owned companies. It's cool to see that happening, otherwise, no matter how it evolves, I'll keep riding cause it's fun, nothing will take that away from me.
 

chilling with the locals

-Zagreb isn't a really big name when it comes to scootering. Who are you riding with and how does the croatian scene look like?
I'm riding with every one, be it skaters, bmxers, bladers and reccently even scooter riders. The whole extreme sports scene was so tiny in Zagreb when I started, we couldn't really afford to hate on each other. But lately there have been more and more scooter riders like Jakov, Tin, Alkemičar... hope they stick around and grow into real shredders.

-What kind of stuff are you riding down there? Park, street spots or DIY stuff? The only spot I knew before visiting you was the DIY pool near the railway, tell us a little bit about that thing!
Yeah, I always declare myself as a vert rider, but honestly, I'll ride pretty much everything I get my wheels on. Zagreb has some pretty neat spots, and I think it's pretty cool street wise, even tho I spend most of my time at the park, on the vert. The DIY pool has cult status in Zagreb, handmade by the local skaters we managed to keep it even after the student center management tried to take it down. It's sketchy as fuck, the transitions are weird but damn, it's sooo much fun to ride. Always enjoy session there and I'm really glad we managed to keep it alive for so long.

the infamous SC Pool Sculpture in Zagreb

-I know that you really like riding vert ramps. What is the magic of shredding a 5m high vert?
Don't know man, it's just fun. I just love flying around, doing simple trick as high as possible. I thought I'd get bored after some time and move on, but every time I'm about to drop in I get that awesome feeling I had the first time I dropped in. It's like "HOLY SHIT THIS IS SOOO FAST AND HIGH AND AWESOMEEE!!" :D

-In some places, scooter riders get along with skaters, bmxers and inliners very good, in others it is just beef. How is the situation in Croatia?
We get all along, specially the older riders. As mentioned above, when most of us started there were just a few people in every sport and we kept pushing each other to new levels. Knowing each other for such a long time, some of us even spend time together outside of the park or of the streets. It's really chill here. We don't hate on a specific sport, but we do hate on idiots.

OG Karacic in his natural habitat

We are going for some quickies:

-Best scooter video ever seen? 
The Estonian "Just a stupid video"... holy shit so much fun!

-Riders you look up to? 
Oh man, so many of them... Madis Kukk, Timur Mamatov, Alex Peasley, Eric Ostrom, Hep Greg, Dan Holm... and many more, if I continued this wouldn't be a quickie.

-City or spot you absolutely wanna ride in the near future? 
COPENHAGEN!!! 

-To finish it off: What's the coolest thing that happened in connection with riding scooters to you?
Meeting some of the most amazing people I would never meet if it wasn't for riding a scooter. Best and coolest thing ever. Hope I see some of them soon again!

To get an idea of Goran's riding, here are the promised clips, watch em in big format here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm8Z3Asy5SM

interview/photos: David Tiefenthaler

footage: Tobias Mayer/David Tiefenthaler

A farewell to...Ljubljana

Time is passing so quickly...but the light falling through your camera lens is even faster. The past year passed with an unreal speed and I am feeling thankful that I have been able to capture some of this moments as photographs. 

The time spent in Ljubljana made me pick up analog photography and I immediately got stuck, diving deeper into the subject. My work allowed me to learn old photographic processes, experiment in the darkroom and enjoy trying various aspects of analog techniques. I feel blessed getting such opportunities.

The flicks below are from the last 35mm film I shot and developed in Ljubljana. Some of this places were very important to me during my stay like the center for alternative culture, Metelkova city, or the DIY skatepark in the former ROG bike factory. Streets of Lublana, I am gonna miss you!

a strange sculpure in Ljubljana: faces swimming down the stream

speak out the truth

table decoration in Slovenia

legendary DIY skatepark: the former bike factory ROG

culture corner: museums, galleries and a wallride

the most unique place: Metelkova, former anarchist squad now turned into concert, culture and nightlife hotspot

the all seeing eye

trash talks

photos & text: David Tiefenthaler

Psychedelic dreams

My most recent experiment with the Lomo Konstruktor cam included a strange film called Lomochrome Purple. The thing is too fucking expensive (about 11 euros), so probably not your average choice of film. Anyway, it is worth trying it at least once and the results dont disappoint at all. 

The above mentioned film is one of the few autochromatic films still being produced and available. In fact, autochromatic means that the film changes certain kinds of light spectres into different ones. In the case of my film, it changes green to yellow colours to purple and pink colours.

This type of film was originally invented by the US army in the 60s, to detect Vietcong camps in the jungle during the Vietnam war. Due the sensitivity of the film to warmth (and warm spectres of light) they could easily see the camps when making photos from planes. The areas appeared red on the resulting pictures of the military, but there were all kinds of autochromatic films for various spectres and colours. Sadly, this films are not produced any more, if you coincidentally find one in your attic you can sell it for quite good money on the internet. Or you just shoot that beast yourself!

Most of the following flicks were shot on a recent stay in London, where I was kinda overwhelmed with all the impressions, but still managed to press the shutter a few times...

balcony in one of London's suburbs

an abandoned power plant in the heart of London, now containing a big ass museum for modern art, the Tate Modern

Southbank, London

the Hyde Park bathing in sunlight and turning purple

Portobello Road, London

a little bit of chaos in the perfect world of the City of London

by far the best place when meeting all the homies in Coburg, Germany

his guitar wasn't pink when I saw this guy the last time!

one of the coolest boroughs in London: Hoxton, full of old brick story buildings, little stores and art galleries

photos and text: David Tiefenthaler

Beyond the blues: Van Dyke brown printing

Some time ago I wrote some words on the blog about the Cyanotype printing process, one of the oldest photographic processes. Well, as one dives deeper into the world of alternative photography the discovery of other chemical processes is almost inevitable. A contact printing technique quite similar to cyanotypes concerning the chemicals and procedure is the Van Dyke brown printing process.

Invented shortly after John Herschel showed the world his deep-blue prints in 1842, also this process was discovered. Using a solution of ferric ammonium citrat, silver nitrate and tartaric acid, it produces beautiful dark-red, brown and black light prints. All you need is a big format film negative or digital negative printed on some overhead transparency, high-quality paper, the solution, fixer and some sunlight.

Like the cyanotype process, also here the workflow isn't the most complicated one. Coat the paper with the solution in a dim room, let it air-dry, put the negative on the paper, use a glass plate as weight and expose the whole sandwich to sunlight (or other UV light). Immediately when exposed, the coating starts to change its colour: from light green to a strong brown. After exposing the print has to be washed and fixed with normal photographic fixer for 2 minutes.

A lot of parameters are influenting the resulting picture: the negative, the chosen exposure time, the thickness of the coating and the type of paper used. It is almost rocket science to set all these parameters perfectly. But actually this is not the goal, it is more about experimenting, changing the setting, adding other chemicals and playing around with the whole process in general.

Have a look at some of my personal experiments:

Four mid format negatives with shots from Ljubljana

Print from a digital negative, about 10x18 cm

Contact print from an 6x9 film negative/sunset in Vienna

Print from digital negative enlarged to A4 format

Digital negative from a mid-format shot/doors to hell

I hope that somebody is going to pick up this printing technique, it is not that expensive at all, leaves enough room for extensive experiments and is highly addictive. Sounds good, eh?

photos & text: David Tiefenthaler

Wicked box

    Working on pinholes is always more of experimenting than a process with preset output. You win some, you loose some. And still when it comes to which is which you might never know.
    I finally succeeded in constructing a mid format pinhole that is capable of rewinding the film, what's not as easy as I thought before. Not being very confident about the light tightness of the '' magic box'' I've run a film through it. 
    

   It turned out not only to be light tight, but it also managed to take some photos-photos that don't really look like they were produced by a pinhole. Just have a look at em.

 
    Course, I knew middle format pinholes would be more detailed, but this surprised me a lot. They look more like they were taken with one of lomo plastic lens cameras. I'd better take advantage of it.
    
 

The Austrian Connection

Today we will be showing you a selection of photos from many of the Austrian homies. These guys are always down for a good session and the photos and videos resulting from those show exactly that. 

But first I will tell you something about me and our scene over here. I am from Vienna and riding scooters since 2006, so thats quite a long time. I'm shooting photos and film for some years now too, so I have a lot I can show you here. 
The Austrian scene is mostly active in Vienna. There are riders in other parts of Austria too, but not quite as much as here in Vienna. You have many of those average park riding scooter kids here, but there are some older, more mature riders as well, shredding the streets and going on trips on a regular basis. And these are the guys I am riding with.

So here we go!

Toby stallin' high in the ditch.

Georg doing a steezy grab over the hip at the ditch

In order to get to spots like that you have to do something for it, in that case hopping a fence.

Never stop hopping fences.

Other spots are some hours away, so hop a train and have a nice trip with the homies for a good sesh.

Georg on the way to Innsbruck

Georg Air to Fakie at Landhausplatz, Innsbruck

Toby chilling at LHP

Especially if youre on the hunt for some good photos you have to get creative, and maybe your photographs are telling a little story like this one.

Flo and David are getting creative in Vienna

David Overcrooking the red barrier. Sadly that spot is gone now..

Another Overcrooked. This ones on a rail and the spot is still existing.

Toby is always killing the biggest spots

Juraj has his 5050s dialed

I hope you liked this fine selection of flicks I shot. Stay tuned for some more!

Photos & Words by Max Kernmayer

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