This week Paul set the Photo Challenge, and he chose “abstract colour“. The short version is that we have to take some crinkled foil and shine coloured light on it to create an abstract sea of colour.
These are my two favourite attempts at the Challenge. The first one used a blue light source with a star filter on the front of the camera. The second one used two light sources of different colours.
Blue foil
Blue foil
2p coin
This week, the Photo Challenge was a surprise to me, because Paul set it. It’s a nice feeling, because I get to participate like everyone else. The Challenge was called the 5 Minute Photoshoot:
What I want you to do, is find a location (any location, it doesn’t matter. It could be your front room, your garden, a local park or the top of Everest if you happen to be in the area!) set your timer or alarm for 5 minutes. Then start shooting!
Take as many different photos as you can in that 5 minute period.
When the timer goes off, stop shooting and put your camera away (no over running!) When you get home, go back through what you’ve shot and show us the one you like best.
I decided to challenge myself by attempting an area of photography that I rarely venture into – still life. Once or twice in the past I’ve entered the Photo Challenge with a picture shot on film, and I managed it again this week. Shooting with a macro lens on film is hard because you can’t see how it looks, so I was pretty much flying blind. Here’s what I did:
I hadn’t planned any particular shots in advance, so each shot was done in a very free and easy way. I just placed each camera on the backdrop in turn, and looked at it, trying to pick out an interesting feature. I rattled through 36 exposures in under 5 minutes so there wasn’t long, but I don’t think the photos look hurried.
I love the grainy look of the film, and I’m pleased with the subject matter and the way they’ve come out. Out of the 36 I took, I thought 15 were good enough to publish here – that’s a hit rate of 42% which is significantly higher than what I’d expect from shooting digital. There are even some picture here that I plan to print, frame, and hang on my wall.
I’m pleased with the lighting, too. No real disasters, but there are some bits of glare here and there that could have been avoided if I had been shooting digital – although not within the 5-minute window we were allowed for this Challenge!
However, I did learn some lessons from the experience:
I was playing about with the spark plugs on my cooker, and my Tamron 90mm macro lens. I’m quite pleased with the results.
Spark plug
Unfortunately the sparks themselves are slightly out of focus. They looked OK on the camera’s screen and it wasn’t until I viewed them on the computer that I realised. Oh well, next time!
Some time ago, Paul challenged me to do the numbers challenge. (This isn’t related to the Photo Challenge, by the way).
The numbers challenge is simple. You put a film in your favourite camera, and take photos of numbers in order. On a 36-exposure film, you’d take pictures of the numbers 1-36 in order, as shown on your film counter.
Then, when you’ve finished the film, develop it and make a contact print of the whole lot, rather than scanning each frame individually. The final result is a unique piece of art.
I managed to squeeze an extra frame out of my film, and shot the numbers 0-36. But I could only fit 30 negatives on a sheet of 10×8″ photographic paper, so I had to make do with that. Some time soon I hope to get round to printing the whole series on a larger piece of paper.
Unfortunately the exposure is a bit “off” in some of these. Individually, they are not nearly as over- or under-exposed as they look. It’s just that some are below average and some are above average exposure, and this doesn’t turn out well in the printing process. If I scanned or printed them individually, they’d all come out fine
If you’re interested in the subject matter, here are the notes I’ve been keeping since September.
Lessons learnt
Last year I bought a Canon underwater camera for a holiday. Unfortunately the boating lake was too murky to use it, and so it has sat on my shelf ever since.
Recently, I decided to mess about with the camera in my bath, and then I set the self-timer and put it in the dishwasher for good measure. So if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a dishwasher looks like when it’s running – this should help you.
Most of my photography these days is analogue – i.e., shot on film, and printed in the darkroom. The only electricity consumed in the entire process is the light bulb in the enlarger. I usually scan the negatives in to have digital copies, so I can post them on my website, but it’s not quite the same.
This week’s Photo Challenge is to take a picture of one of your photos on display, in some form or another. I decided to take a picture of one of my favourite prints. This picture was taken at the Avon Valley Railway in 2010, but the print was made recently, in June 2011. There’s already a scan of the negative on my blog.
This photo shows that I have mounted it in a hardback album and attached a caption label. No matter how easy it is to store, find and view digital photos, they just can’t compare to the experience of looking at printed photographs – especially analogue photographs. I often find myself flicking through this album, and studying the detail in the photos.
Drop me a line if you’d like a traditionally-printed copy of this picture.
Jonathan Gazeley
Geek info: Negative shot on Ilford FP4+ using a Canon AE-1 Program camera with a Canon 135mm f/3.5 lens. Print made on Ilford Warmtone RC paper and toned in Agfa Viradon.
I managed to catch the evening light behind a glass of red wine for this week’s Photo Challenge: fruits of the vine.
For ages, I’ve wanted to make a decent roundograph. I’ve tried on a couple of occasions in the past, but the result has always been pretty bad. On this occasion, I appear to have succeeded in making a decent planet.
I will definitely revisit this, and endeavour to find a more interesting landscape than a field and a row of trees.
