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As I drove through mid-Wales, bound for Llanerchindda Farm I noticed a signpost for a church on the outskirts of Llandovery and decided to take a look. Sadly it was closed, but I still found some beautifully lit scenes in the church yard so it was still a worthwhile detour!
16 September 2021
Last week I visited Cambridge, armed with just my pinhole camera for a day of slow photography. I didn’t have a specific agenda in mind, more a case of following my nose and seeing what I found.
The River Cam runs right through the centre of the city so naturally I found plenty of life and movement there. The slow moving punts begin to look like rockets when you’re using a shutter speed of a second or more.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them
When I stopped for lunch in a café I decided to try a technique I’d seen used on Instagram by pinhole photographer Danny Kalkhoven. I carefully places my camera on the table and left the shutter open for a few minutes as I ate. The fixed elements in the frame remain sharp (as sharp as pinhole photos ever are!) while my plate and cup show signs of movement as I inevitably didn’t put them back in exactly the same spot.
Another experiment I tried after lunch was to take some more ghostly self portraits, buoyed by the success of the one I took in Littlebury Church recently. I create these by using an exposure time of a couple of minutes and I place myself within the frame for part of that time. In one photo I have vanished entirely, while in the second I’m very faint – I could have done with sitting there for a little longer. In my final image I hit more of a sweet spot, although I’m a much smaller part of the finished photo. I can see more practice is needed with these!
To finish off the day I visited the market and received a few odd looks as I set up my tripod and wooden camera near the fruit and veg stall to capture some ghostly shoppers.
10 September 2021
At Racton Fete this afternoon I gave myself a little mini project to shoot – photographing many dogs who’d come along with their owners. To be honest it wasn’t too much of a challenge – everywhere I looked someone was holding onto a canine of one type or another!
Click on any of the images to see them larger
Even better, there was a track where people could race their dogs against each other, chasing after a toy rabbit tied to a rope. This proved particularly entertaining as most of the dogs really didn’t want to come back once they’d had a taste of freedom!
28th August 2021
I’m delighted to say the glitch which prevented iOS device and Mac users seeing my pictures over on Photoblog seems to have been eradicated at last. That should make this duplicate blog redundant. Of course, I’m not going to tempt fate just now but abandoning this but, assuming it continues to work, I may well repurpose this part of my website in a week or two. Watch this space for further info!
In the meantime, here’s today’s post.....
My plan this afternoon was to have another go with the high resolution mode on my camera. However, I stupidly left it too late in the day and by the time I made a start the light levels had dropped too much for me to be able to use a low enough ISO setting for ultimate quality. This picture was shot in high res mode but at ISO 1600 its detail isn’t as clean as I’d have liked. It was as useful lesson learnt though and it made a pretty monochrome picture of nature’s use of the Fibonacci series in any case!
