Photos from my Shady past

I thought it would be a bit of a giggle to have a look at some photos I’ve taken for previous projects and in my spare time, mainly to see if there is anything I can learn from them that can be applied to my current project but also because I though it was about time I put some actual photographs on it.

All of these photos are either shot on my trusty Canon T-70 or Pentax K1000 using a wide-angle lens or a zoom, off the top of my head I’m not sure about the focal lengths. Some have been tweaked a little in Photoshop to improve contrast and remove the odd scratch but that’s the extent of any digital meddling. These where also all shot on film, most developed by the lovely people at Boots but I did develop some myself and where I did I often used a purple filter to improve the contrast.

So, here we have a lovely picture of a burnt out car in a field, this passes for fun with all the cool cats in my neck of the woods. Lets have a look at it then, well I took it because I liked the contrast between the manky car and its surroundings, a bit cliché perhaps but ho-hum. The horizon line is quite nicely placed in the lower third of the picture, making the car look nice and insignificant, like it was part of the surroundings.
I do have an annoying habit of just standing there when I take a picture, mainly because I get a bit snap-happy and I have another annoying habit of finding myself in the middle of nowhere when I go off taking pictures and don’t fancy straddling a load of barbed-wire to get the perfect angle, I am trying to be more brave though. I think the picture could have benefited from being shot from a slightly lower angle to make it that bit more interesting.

Here are some pretty ferns, not a practically challenging picture to take but it was a right pain to keep my feet out of the picture. The original was lacking a bit in contrast which I later tweaked digitally but if I’d been thinking on the day I could have used a filter to jazz it up a bit.













Not a bad picture, the tree on the left is bit annoying and if I’d taken it from a lower angle I could have got rid of that hill which messes up the silhouette. There is a bit of a silhouette theme going on because some of these pictures where taken on a particularly sunny day and I didn’t have a polarizing filter, so I went silhouette hunting instead.











Ooo, crazy over-exposure and I don’t know what was going on with the framing. I do quite like the over-exposure bit though, especially where the tree at the back fades off into the shadow. Something like this in my project would be quite nice.












I’m not sure what it is about this picture that I don’t like but I don’t like it, maybe it’s just a bit boring. If you could actually see the stream disappearing off into the distance it might improve it. And once again a lower angle would be good.The background is under-exposed too.













This picture had the potential to be a nicely framed shot but the tree on the right messes it up a bit as does the ridiculously bright patch of grass in the foreground. I do like the hill fading into the mist in the background though. I’m not too sure about the lens flair, I think it would have to be much more exaggerated to look good, lens hood would have been a better option.






This picture is quite nice and spacious that big shadow right across the foreground is a tad annoying, perhaps if I’d come back later in the day it might have gone away. The sky is also lacking a bit of contrast.








What a nice post, not very exiting though.

















Quite a nice pretty picture, it might have benefited from a slightly lower angle to exaggerate the hill. The main focus was supposed to be ruin, which is completely lost, but I still think its quite a nice picture.







I do like the great big rock thing in the foreground, its just a bit of a shame that the castle isn’t in focus.















This was a bit of happy accident that occurred because I had two prints of the same picture. I really like the crazy ass distortion that’s going on, I’m not so sure about the leaf though. It could have been better to over expose the shot slightly to make everything glow a bit too.













This was an experiment that I did using double exposure, the look I was going for didn’t really happen because I was layering exposed areas of negatives on others. It has made quite a nice moody picture though and if I where to bung it in Photoshop to darken up the hedge on the right you needn’t know it was a double exposure.



I really like this picture, its nice and abstract thing very moody and quite sinister, very Quayesque (sorry to keep banging on about the Quay brothers). This picture was achieved by simply over-exposing everything. This look is the sort of thing I want for my project, I might have to go off and invent something to put in the set to make nice silhouettes like this.





I would like to think that shooting this reflection of some trees jazzes up what would otherwise be a pretty normal shot of some trees. I quite like it but I’m not sure if the fact that it’s a reflection adds anything to the picture.





Little tree meets big trees. Yet another silhouette I’m afraid, the foreground needs darkening up a bit but apart from that I think it looks ok.







Another experiment with double exposure, which I tried to use to create something, that was a bit abstract. The post is a bit annoying but I think that could be easily Photoshoped out.















This a series of photos that I took round the house one day when I was a bit board. I was doing some experiments with some more extreme camera angles and deliberate over-exposure and I really like the results. This is the kind of look that I want to try and get on my final project.
















A quick snap which I think was taken in London. It had the potential to be quite good but the angle is a bit crap, it would have been better if I could have got closer to the wall.