The view to Il Giumello
View towards il Giumello from somewhere above Crandola. The mountain is surprisingly bald, due to grazing by cows and goats. Canon 5DIII with 100mm macro, which doubles as a nice short telephoto for landscape images.
Observatory
I am not entirely sure what this hut is used for, at least when it is not snowing. Alpe Paglio, Italy
Sotto Valsassina
Barite mine at Cortabbio (Primaluna), which is literally almost underneath the previous photographs. This is now out of use and just figuring out some means of opening to the public as a museum. Click below for the full gallery and more information…
Alta Valsassina
Rather too pristine alpine houses, reflecting the rise of tourism in Italy. The luminous colours are again the result of using a polarising filter, which here also helps cut through some of the haze to the distant mountains.
Track
Path, walking up in the mountains around Alta Valsassina, Italy.
Church
Modern church at Pian delle Betulle, Italy. The colours are from using a polarising filter – this was even desaturated in Capture One. Still have not finished the film scanning…
Madonna
From somewhere in the mountains of Italy. Ilford Delta 100 in Ilfosol 3 1+14 4:30, 26c.
Rooftops II
Ilford Delta 100 in Ilfosol 3 1+14 for 4:30 at 26c. Taken with a Lecia M7 and Zeiss C-Sonnar 50mm f1.5. [Edit] As an aside, I have a equivalent image of this scene taken with the Olympus E-M5 and Panasonic 25mm f1.4 (a lens which has some connection with Leica, but which is nonetheless made by a company better known for its vacuum cleaners…). The u4/3 camera was shot at ISO 200 with a roughly equivalent aperture of f4, vs f8 on the Leica: In comparison, the digital image completely blows away […]
Mountain Life
Still-life, from the Italian Alps. This was taken with Ilford Delta 400 processed in Ilfosol 3. It seems to be marginally sharper than HP5 but otherwise very similar – I think that a lot of the more subtle differences between films (particularly tonality and differences in grain) are lost after scanning and processing digitally. As an aside, you might have noticed that almost all the films we shoot now are from Ilford. Unfortunately, it is becoming harder to find good films at a reasonable price here in Spain. And online prices for […]
Ilford SFX200 Infrared Sensitive Film
Some shots from a test roll of Ilford SFX200. This is a specialised black and white film with extended infrared sensitivity. The film is interesting in that it can be used to shoot fairly conventional images, while use of red and infrared filters can produce very exaggerated effects on sky and foliage. The above image was shot in daylight with a dark-red filter. The sky and foliage (both foreground and on the distant mountains) have come out very dark compared to the people and stoney path that they are sitting alongside. I […]
Lemon Soaked Paper Napkins
“We are currently awaiting the loading of our compliment of small, lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment, and hygiene during the flight, which will be of two hours duration. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits… again.” Just back from ten days of fairly exhausting travelling, so the blog will be on hiatus for a few days until we will have had time to pick up the pieces back here in Barcelona… The photograph is a view over Valsassina […]
The Old Dairy
The walk from Pian delle Betulle, in Alta Valsassina, to the Larice Bruciato (burnt larch) is a lovely trail through a beech forest and pasturelands. On the way there is the Alpe Ortighera, a summer pasture, where there is the old dairy illustrated in this post. This is the main room at the entrance of the dairy with the churning machine to make butter (the stainless steel drum on the right) and some of the season production of ricotta, a whey cheese. The forms on the shelves are left to […]
Fragments and Scenes
Random fragmentary memories from the North of Italy. I quite like using small contextless fragmentary images as opposed to something with more context and depth. The image becomes more about the texture and pattern than the content. I like that the fragments are completely detached – but even more contextualised images (such as the ones below) can be sufficiently alien to take on a similar character if the view is not familiar with the area being photographed and the subjects are not well known: All images were taken with the […]
Valsassina Panoramas
Three images of Valsassina, looking up towards the head of the valley from the side of Monte Giumello, Italy. These are stitched panoramas using a 50mm lens with a polariser. By careful rotation of the polariser it is possible to bring out a lot of detail in the storm clouds, and also significantly change the apparent colour of the sky. Sadly, this did not allow us to change the weather…
Green
A slightly different post from normal, with some images of greenery from what was the wettest August I have ever seen in the Alps. When not being deluged with water we were usually embedded in the low clouds, making any walking and photography interesting in the best proverbial sense. One thing that really stood out visually was the presence of the colour green. The plants were clearly enjoying the weather better than the humans (and cats) and the foliage produced some very vivid colour while wet. These photographs are not […]
Italy
A small set of images taken in Milan and Lecco from a few days spent in Italy. All were taken with the Ricoh GR using manual focus. I think that these have a very different feel to the street photographs from Barcelona – although I am not certain if this is due to the subjects or the photographer…
Transient Eye 