A set of tourist snapshots captured while on a short trip to Berlin. It is a fascinating city with a rich, complex and often tragic history, and it would be interesting to have time to undertake a more in depth photographic project there. All images shot with the Leica M10 and 50mm Summilux. I did take a wide-angle lens as well, but never used it because 50mm always just seems right.
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 […]
To finish the sequence, a shot of the NDK.
Everywhere McDonalds signs. Sofia, Bulgaria.
I really liked the juxtaposition of the child and bicycle with the controversial communist era monuments and NDK.
Storm channel, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Peep show, cats and cleaning in Sofia, Bulgaria.
While running around to try to repair the camera, I have been catching up with the scanning and processing of some sets of photographs taken at the end of last year. This is the first of a short sequence of black-and-white film (HP5+) images, taken just before Christmas in Sofia, Bulgaria. This was a working trip, and something of a disaster photographically. One mis-loaded film meant loosing most of a day of images (grumble grumble superior Leica engineering…), while the second film was partly destroyed after opening the camera before rewinding the […]
To finish off the sequence “Relics”, some photographs and information about the hotel and surrounding area where the pictures were taken. Unusually, we have a mix of colour, black-and-white, digital and film images all shown together – reflecting the diverse photographic subject matter in this area. The Hotel Relicário is a strange place. The lasting impression is of a mountain refuge crossed with an antiques museum. It is one of the most unique places that we have ever visited, and one of the few that we would without reservation (or possibly with) return […]
Some more holiday snaps street photography, from two markets in Belo Horizonte. The first set are from the Sunday Market, which mainly sells clothing, toys and arty things alongside the Parque Municipal and Palácio das Artes: The second is from the central market, which sells just about anything you can imagine (although I am not sure about the bird-cage hats): All images were shot with the Ricoh GR in TAv mode using auto ISO and fixed focus. The indoor market shots are a bit of a stretch – to get […]
Some images of the Edificio Niemeyer, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Quite an elegant design, and one which looks ideal for the hot sunny climate here. All images taken with the Ricoh GR, with the last one framed and cropped to help reduce perspective distortion.
Some street images from some short walks in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I hope that these capture some of the diversity of the people here in a town which spans everything from the mining communities to upmarket tourism. These were all taken on a short visit to the town, while wandering around looking at the sights (and sites) rather than actively setting out on a proper project. It would need a much longer visit to do this really well. Also, a couple of almost-but-not-quite street images that I quite […]
A short collection of images illustrating the open-cast mining, just north of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This is historically the primary source of wealth and power in the region, and even today the mines feel more like city states than industry – characterised by their high security and ever present patrols, all neatly badged with the company name and emblem. These images were taken just a few kilometres north of Ouro Preto. This short excerpt from Google maps’ satellite imagery (CNES/Spot) shows some of the scale of the open-cast […]
A rather wet arrival in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The hail and rain on arrival was bad enough that the streets became more navigable as rivers than as roads, although fortunately the bad weather vanished as quickly as it had appeared. A short collections of images of tourist snaps from the town. These are not particularly curated – most of the narrative shots were taken on film that is still a long way off being developed.
Some images from the central market in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, where stalls sell various forms of Cachaça (a spirit distilled from sugar cane), fruit and vegetables, and also some handicrafts and rocks and minerals for the tourists.
Transient Eye 