Tourist snap of Notre Dame de Paris. I was disappointed that the buttresses on the cathedral didn’t actually fly. There are a few more pictures from inside the cathedral after the break – although not great, it was surprising how well the phone managed with the dark interior.
A loose corollary to the previous post, and a hint of some more architectural images still to come. Shot with the Instagram app and processed using the XPro filter, which helps give a sense of timelessness to this image.
Street photography with children has obvious ethical challenges and, much more so than with adults, we seem to be wary of people taking such pictures. Notions of censorship from both the general public and also from within implicitly colour what we choose to image. I spent quite a while photographing this installation (lots of concentrically rotating coloured glass, with people wandering around inside and out), and although no one troubled me I started to wonder if I was going to attract attention. Sometimes the censorship that we apply ourselves is the […]
Ad-hoc table and chairs with purple carpet under a bridge in Paris. This is something that I never thought that I would see in a major European city. I first encountered people living in make-shift tents and mini-houses under bridges in Kyoto. In Paris, it seemed that almost every bridge with space housed some temporary shelters, whether made from cardboard or actual tents:
If not the city of death, then surely the city of love! And possibly some monsters too. Some more slightly NSFW and poorly captioned images on this theme after the break. I think that at this point I was giving up trying to make quality pictures and just shooting anything that didn’t move. I was actually hoping to get some street photographs of people kissing, but I think the slight rain meant that there were no opportunities in the short time that we had.
Cheating somewhat, all the following Instagram/phone images this week were shot in Paris. I suspect that Paris has some kind of photographic distortion field that makes it impossible to take uninteresting pictures, even with a phone. This is something that should be easy to test… For reasons that are unclear, all these posts are named after Dr Who serials. City of Death was shot (partly) in Paris, and like the production of these images also featured a lot of fairly aimless running around the streets. I have already given up trying to use WordPress on the phone […]
For something different this week, I am putting together a series of images taken using a phone and the standard Instagram app. I am usually very careful about digital image quality, but if there is one tangible outcome from lately shooting so much film it is the realization that almost anything that takes pictures is good enough for online use. Shooting with the Instagram app is almost impossibly quick and easy compared to shooting film or using a DSLR. So can an iPhone and and an app really replace a […]
Three string chairs, at a cafe on the beachfront near Barceloneta. Minolta XDs with MC 24mm f2.8 and Ilford HP5+ processed in HC110 1+63 (dilution B).
The Design Museum, Barcelona. The wooden scaffold is a sun-shade from the adjacent square. Minolta XDs with MC 24mm f2.8 on Ilford HP5+ processed in HC110.
Old books at the Els Encants market, Barcelona. This is a market whose origins date back to the 14th century, yet which is now housed in a new ultra modern permanent building. Despite the architecture, the market retains much of the character that you might expect if you were to mix a 14th century trading style with 21st century goods. The aim was to capture some candid images of people browsing the second hand books, furniture, ceramics and general bric-a-brak:
Three images of the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona. Still very unsure if this is inspired or terrifying architecture, although all I can think of when I see its military grey straight walls is all those 70’s dystopian science-fiction futures. All images shot on HP5+ with the Minolta XDs and 24mm lens, for a change of perspective.
Basilica di San Giacomo, Bellagio, Italy.
Landscape (lakescape?), shot on Lago di Como, Italy. The ghostly halos around the reflections are the rendering from the Zeiss C-Sonnar lens, which was used here with a stack of ND filters to allow it to be used nearly wide open while not burning a hole in the M7’s shutter curtain… Shot on Delta 100, processed in HC110 at box speed.
Reflections on a journey with doors and cobbled streets. Taken in Bellagio, Italy and somewhat out of sequence, due to vagaries of processing and scanning… Leica M7 with Zeiss C-Sonnar 50mm and Ilford Delta 100 black and white film processed in HC110.
“We are Narcissus” – temporary art installation at la Parc de la Ciutadella, Barcelona.
Some shots from a wine tasting event at Passeig de Lluis Companys during the Mercé, in Barcelona. Here you can by a set of tickets which can then be exchanged for glasses of wine from many excellent local producers. However, given the quantities of wine being tasted (see above…) I think that it is more accurate to see the event as a kind of giant open-air wine bar… The photographs were all shot on HP5+ 35mm film, pushed two stops to ISO 1600 by processing in Kodak HC-110 1+31 (Dilution B) for 6:45 at […]
Transient Eye 