The picture above is of a girl called Carol who I went with to St Martins in the Scilly Isles in May 1977. I did loads of drawings there and took lots of photos of her in landscapes – but I can’t find them.
“ Tricks are I’m sure what landscape painting is all about.” Read more…
Here is another negative I found that isn’t perfect. Taken in 1977 on Dartington railway station. This reminds me of the movie ‘The Omen’ – each victims photograph had a white line through them, one was decapitated another, Father Brennan attempted to seek shelter from a storm in a church, but the door is bolted shut. A lightning bolt strikes the church steeple and is impaled by a large steel rod which falls from the roof .
I wish I could remember the woman’s name in the stripey hoodie, the other was my landlady of the time Evette.
I took this image on the family dining table, the table cloth was used as a drape and the lighting was provided by a bedside lamp.
I took 24 images of the same setup moving the skull (and a bottle) in and around the wooden structure. I was trying to investigate perspective – not bad shots, processing and prints for a seventeen year old Stourbidge College of Art student. More images from this series can be found below.
Tri-X was once one of the most popular films used by photojournalists and many amateurs. It was manufactured by Eastman Kodak in the US, Kodak Canada, and Kodak Ltd in the United Kingdom. Kodak data-sheets used to recommend different processing times depending on where the film was manufactured. Its sales declined in the 1970s and 1980s due to the falling price and increasing popularity of colour film.
The pinhole camera used to take this photograph in Havanna in 1999 was handmade by the photographer(?) for the purpose of taking photos of tourists. In its simplest form, the photographic pinhole camera consists of a light-tight box with a pinhole in one end, and a piece of film or photographic paper wedged or taped into the other end. A flap of cardboard with a tape hinge can be used as a shutter. The pinhole is usually punched or drilled using a sewing needle or small diameter bit through a piece of tinfoil or thin aluminum or brass sheet. This piece is then taped to the inside of the light tight box behind a hole cut through the box. A cardboard box can be made into an excellent pinhole camera.
These images taken of Woolacombe were done using a Pentax SP1000 35mm camera. This camera was my father’s, who bought it from new in the 1970s. All Pentax Spotmatics (SP) use the M42 screw-thread lens mount. The lenses are focused at maximum aperture to give a bright viewfinder image for focusing, then a switch at the side stops the lens down and switches on the metering to enable the exposure to be set prior to shutter release.
I’m really getting into lens flare which is usually caused by a very bright light source, either affecting the image or shining into the lens, which produces a haze. I also like the slightly over cooked vintage feel of these images, scrathes, dust, and fibre strands -35mm film is far more fun than digital.
The image above was taken in Ilfracombe – June 2012