Roll 6 – Adox Color Implosion 100

It was during my walk from Portsmouth to Havant, when passing the bushes on the right side of footpath, I noticed those fluffy/puffy plants. I came closer to inspect them. Composition plays extremely important role in my photos. Each element has its place and is located in harmony with other subjects in the frame. It took me 10 minutes to decide which lens should I use (35mm or 50mm) and from which angle take the photo. One couple passed me by but didn’t stop to ask what’s so interesting is in those bushes. Now I had to load new film. My previous one, Ilford Delta 400, was still inside the camera. I turned the Rewind Release Lever, folded out the Rewind Crank and winded film back into cassette. When negative was safe I opened back of the camera and replaced films. Finally I could shoot the first frame of Adox Color Implosion.

The weather was grey and colours very dull, so I decided to try and shoot with Orange Filter 0(G). Through the viewfinder colours were very rich and intense., so it was worth trying. When frame was nicely composed I released the shutter. ..and then I realized that ISO was still set to 400 (!) and picture would come out underexposed by 2 stops. To avoid disappointment I adjusted the ISO value for the new film and compose my shot again. Click! I could continue my walk again.

I was passing a bridge above highway A27 near Havant, when I stopped and looked down on passing cars. The point of view was quite interesting, so without  hesitation I took out my camera from the shoulder bag and composed a shot. Click! With smile on my face I continued my journey.

On my way back, few hours later, I stopped again in the same spot. I’ve seen this picture in my mind of cars leaving red light’s trails on the street and I thought I could try to take a similar photo. It was late evening and I didn’t have any tripod with me, so I couldn’t go crazy with settings, otherwise my shaky hands could introduce too much blur if exposure would be to long. 1/2 a second was my limit. I used the fence as a stabiliser – I rest my body on it, hold the breath and released the shutter. Sometimes I’d love to see the results right away and , if necessary, make settings adjustments and take another, better shot. Unfortunately with film you just need to trust your guts and without much experience that not always work out.

It was a rainy day. I was on a bus trip to Southampton. I sat by the window and watched how cars were passing by. I picked my camera, set it up, and waited for an interesting scene. There was no time for thinking. When we approached the bridge I released the shutter.

I was wandering through the Southampton city and at some point I was passing a cafe bar. I stopped immediately when this frame appeared in front of my eyes. Camera was ready in my hands. Click!

Is it narrow dynamic range or I overexposed this frame?

I love Autumn. I love the smell of air and rich colours of falling leaves.

Having a colour film after two B&W rolls made me look for signs of autumn in this grey and rainy day. I wandered from street to street until I got into city’s marketing centre. In the middle of wide walkway there were beautiful trees with juicy-red leaves – not many of them left hanging on the branches, but I was still happy with what I had.

To get the right exposure was a challenging task. Wet floor reflected white cloudy sky and that tricked the light meter. My first frame was underexposed because I tried to compensate for this reflection. My second shot was a result of quick reaction to a scene in front of me and less of analyzing the light/shadow relations.

In the background you can see the Bargate – built in 1180 is a medieval gatehouse in the city centre of Southampton, UK. You can read more about it in this article from Wikipedia (opens new window).

The rain stopped and I was going through the park. I came closer to one of the trees and noticed this necklace made of cobweb with rain drops hanging like little diamonds.

I picked the 35mm for wider angle of view and ability to closer shot. It wasn’t easy to choose the right angle. I tried to eliminate the white sky (distraction) but at the same time have a good view on the subject.

Few people passed me and watched what I’m doing. I think one even made an unpleasant comment (me hiding by the trees with camera near a high school), but I just ignored him.

Sometimes it’s good to sheer of the main route and rove into unknown alleys and tiny streets, because they may take into interesting places.

The building site on those two photographs was fenced around with high wall. Nothing could be seen from a ground level of the city. I walked along the main road when a small alley watched my eye. I thought that it may be with checking it out. I try not to have a big schedule on my travels, just to have time in case of situations like this. I detoured and delve in-between old houses of Old City of Southampton. After few hundred meters I passed cool-looking pub made of wood and stone. I wish I could rest inside for a meal, but budget is my limitation. Not far behind the pub road ended like a cliff and below was this panoramic view of the building site. Another business centre was slowly raising from the ground. I took first shoot and then moved along the edge to different location to see if I can get a better composition. At the other end of the “cliff” was an Arundel Tower.

Arundel Tower may be named after hirondelle, the magical horse of sir Bevois, one of the mythical founders of southampton. legend has it that hirondelle (‘swallow’ in french) was so named because he could out- y swallows. When Sir Bevois died the horse ung himself from the tower in sorrow.

Text from a leaflet Visit Southampton – click here for more details about the Old City (new window).

Apparently on a clear day you could see a sea from this place.

Here I took another shot.

After a quick rest I continued my exploration alongside the west wall of Southampton’s Old City.

If you’re interested, here you can find some more details about it (Wikipedia – opens new window).

(…) the windows on the west side of the gate are the original medieval designs.

I’m not passionate about history; I find difficult to remember important dates and names of places, but when I find an interesting subject, I like to know a littlest more about it.

All people are creative. Not only music, paintings, sculptures or woodwork can be classified as an art. It’s enough to look at your neighbour’s garden – nothing is there by accident, all ingredients create a whole. That’s why I like to look into peoples private places. I don’t always take a picture (it hurts when I see something beautiful, but can’t photograph it) because I respect their privacy, but if something is exposed to a public, like these hanging flowers, I take it as a permission from the owner to take my shoot.

This particular place is inside one of the Southampton’s Old City alleys.

The seafront was not the most exciting I’ve ever seen. I got into Mayflower Park, which is nothing else than a big lawn with parking spaces and few benches closer to the sea.

I slowly headed into the water side to inspect it for any interesting subjects to photograph. On the left side was a old ruin of a Royal Thai Pier which was fenced due being to dangerous. I’d love to get inside for closer look.

I turn back and slowly moved to right side of the “park”. Apart from mother and her son feeding tens of sea birds, there was nothing to photograph…until I got to the edge/end of the green rectangle. From this spot I had an overview on the City Cruise Terminal which was located next to the park.

At the time I got there, a massive ship was getting ready for its cruise. After few ear-blowing signals it slowly moved of the coast. Watching it was an amazing experience, something I never seen before in that scale. Ship was moving away of the land but still in a parallel position to the coast. Behind me people start to gather and taking pictures with their smartphones. I stood with the camera next to my eye and shot the first frame before the Big Boat moved and then waited, carefully composing the frame. I had to be very careful because despite I was away from my subject, it was very long piece of ship so once it started turning I had to make sure its edges will stay inside my frame… I’ve checked it later in Google Maps and by comparing it to the scale it came as 300m long – slightly shorter that a whole park I was in at that time.

The name of the ship was Celebrity Eclipse – check it here for more info.

I photographed this fence because something attracted my eye in it – maybe colours, maybe texture (sharp edges, rugged metal) or the text on a yellow plate: “DANGER – PROTECTED BY RAZOR WIRE”

It was quite windy evening and water was very wrinkled. I walked along the shore of this small marina and when I found the best spot, I rested my arms on the fence to help prevent them from shaking. I froze while waited for air to stop moving and water surface to become more reflective. It took few long minutes because wind was alternately increasing and decreasing. Next to me young lady had a break with cigarette (we were outside a building located in from of the marina). She didn’t say anything, but quietly observed me. When finally wind stopped and water became reasonably steady I took my shot. I’ve been waiting for about 15 minutes.

I was passing this gate on a late evening. When I’ve noticed this magical-looking tree, I stopped immediately. I stared at this magnificent view for a few minutes. People were passing me by, but no one seemed to interested to check what am I looking at. After initial observation, I started moving little left, then little right, lean down – It has became automatic now that I try to find the best spot for photograph. When I chose the best option available (and tried 35 and 50 lenses to see different perspectives I think I went with 35; it was too dark for 200 f4) I set up my camera. It was late evening and only fast lenses were suitable for this shot, and even with them I ended up shooting around 1/8 or 1/15 sec – hence the blur in the shot. Unfortunately I have no records for this image.

After photograph was taken I went inside the gate and there were 3 other photographers! They were shooting with professional gear and tripods – I regret I didn’t have mine. I was looking how they move from spot to spot, searching for the best composition. I joined them in this slowly dance around the Magic Tree, but none of my lenses were suitable for the close-up shot without introducing too much distraction from the grey sky or background, and it was too late to shoot without tripod. I had my shot and I was happy with it. I left them  with peace in mind.

I love photographs of people. There was a time when this was my ultimate goal – become the portrait photographer and capture the true personality and beauty of a person. I believe that everyone’s body is exceptional – eyes, lips, nose, jaw line, body shape. Add to this expressions and behaviours, which speak for temperament, sense of humour and sensitivity and top it up with taste for fashion and colours and you have a personality (off course there is much more to that, but these are only few examples). Its not easy to capture it because when you stand in front of someone with a camera, your tool creates a barrier, a distraction that makes the subject uncomfortable and if you, photographer, don’t have a skills to help overcome these feelings, such as sense of humour or other “people’s skills”, then its very likely that you won’t be able to capture person’s true individuality. And that’s were I stand. I’m an introvert with very little “people’s skills”, so I gave up on my dream and replaced it with another one, which is the same if not more important to me – traveling and exploring. But from time to time I stumble upon a situation where I can take a little cheeky shot of someone’s fraction of personality, whether it will be a girl listening to music with closed eyes, guy chatting with his friends or a lady reading a book.

These pictures are also this kind of shots – you can’t see the face expression, but you can feel the mood; you can imagine what this person could be like by the way it chose its clothes, matched the colours and by the shape of the light that falls onto it (if that makes sense). How would you describe its “personality”, if I would tell you that behind this white mask is a real person’s face? At least I like to ask myself this question each time I take photographs of this type of subject…

To capture these particular shots I had to wait until a father and his daughter move away from the shop’s display window, otherwise I could look weird to them (not that I care much). It was outside. I sat on a bench few meters away and waited for about 15-20 minutes. It was dark and the only lights were a weak street lamps and the ones in shops exhibitions, which were very harsh. I metered for highlights but intentionally set the camera to slightly overexpose the photo, otherwise the “face” would come out grey-ish and all the rest would be nearly dark.

What me made decide on taking this photograph was the compositional aspect of the seen I stumbled upon during one of my daily walkabouts. The curved walkway, the shape of the terrain (little hills), 4 trees lined up and a bench at the edge of the frame (covered by my right finger). I liked the transition of light to shadow underneath the trees, which is not that prominent on the picture itself, but was very appealing in real life. However, the colours could be slightly more saturated.

You never know what will catch your eye on an everyday walk. I really liked the richness of colours and contrast between red fruits, green leaves and orange/brown rust of the fence. The challenge was that I didn’t know how it will come out on the film, nonetheless I had to give it a try. I’m quite happy with the results, but lowering exposure by 1x stop could make these shots even better.

For some reason each time I look at this photograph I feel like it should be upside down as if it was a reflection of a tree in water. But it wasn’t. It was in the middle of city, in small neighbourhood. I found it quite challenging to fit all branches in frame and at the same time separate whole tree from its real background – houses, roofs and other trees. I bent down and nearly sat on the ground for the best possible viewpoint. Likely there were not many people around as my attempts could make them smile.

I didn’t put this leaf there. This was a quick snapshot (if any of my shots can be called “quick”). When I noticed this car, at first I passed it, but the unpleasant feeling of missed oportunity dragged be back to the spot. I thought about reducing reflections (of myself) by using PL-CIR filter, but when I tried it, I didn’t see much benefit for the price of loosing 1x stop of light, so eventually I stayed with reflections and took this shot.

You never know where you can stumble upon a work of art. I love drawings and paintings since I was a little boy. Every time I see a work of art, I try to stop and “spend some time with it”, study it, understand it. It’s not like this place was a gallery. It was a small street, away from main road. The fence was more like a barrier from some unused piece of land. Still, by hanging someones work there, adding colours and live to this walkway, it made a big change in my opinion.

I like how this film handled the richness of colours in the picture.

Both of these photographs were taken at around the same time of a day and relatively close in distance. How different is the feel from each of them.

I couldn’t help myself. From time to time I like to make the photo rather than take the photo. It’s not a work of art by any stretch of imagination, but it was fun during preparation and it’s just another reason to include autumns leaves in a picture (I love them so much).

Its all about fun in the end.

I walked on this pavement and this thought came to my mind when I looked at this lawn – Human vs Nature. How different they are: grey vs colours, cold vs warm, harmony vs chaos, predictable vs unpredictable, control vs freedom. Are Humans really part of a Nature?

Another Autumn photograph from my favourite routine walk. I wish there were more trees where I live.

Parks are one of the things I miss the most from my childhood city. As a young boy, me and my friends, we had so much fun climbing on the trees, running on a grass, hiding in the bushes or just sit down surrounded by nature and dream, laugh and have a great time. Near my housing estate there were 4 parks separated by main city street and river (river and street were perpendicular to each other and 4 parks were on each of the corners – like if you had one big green area and cut it in the quarters in the middle). Each of them had different feel and “purpose” – one for Fishermans along the river, other for city parties, and other for night time teenage drinking. The one closest to my home was the smallest and most of the time free from people so we could feel there as it was our own piece of land in the centre of the city.

This little park I was going through that day remained me of my childhood and this photograph is more like a captured distant memory to me.