Pinhole Landscapes - Take 2

I recently uploaded some scans of various pinhole landscapes but hadn't actually printed any out. You can see some of them here and here. I spent a few days in the darkroom the other week and was surprised to see how well the prints turned out. They have a richness, drama and depth of tone completely lacking in the scanned negatives, which now look rather flat in comparison. Of course, looking at an actual print and looking at something on the screen is a completely different experience, but I had never really thought that there would be such a wide discrepancy between a scan of a print and a scan of a negative. Or perhaps it just demonstrates that my darkroom skills are superior to my Photoshop skills!

I now feel encouraged to continue developing my darkroom work and to expand my pinhole photography repertoire, perhaps exploring the urban landscape. I might even try colour......

Pinhole landscapes

After a gap of nearly a year, I took my pinhole camera out again last week. Of course, I had to go back to square one and re-familiarise myself with the instructions though being a very simple camera, it didn't take long! I used different film this time - a roll of Ilford HP5 about 15 years past its use-by date. This is not a film I use very often - I tend to prefer Kodak Tri-X - but it seemed to have suffered no ill effects and actually the results were pretty good. So far I've been using up whatever film I have to hand and most of it is out of date, so this is hardly a controlled experiment.

Looking back at my previous pinhole efforts, I noticed that a lot of the negatives were over-exposed and had to be heavily corrected in Photoshop. This time I cut the exposure right down and the resulting negatives are better. I've been using an app on the phone called Pinhole Assist to calculate exposure times. This seems to work really well and has built-in reciprocity curves for the longer exposures required for the pinhole, saving on having to work it out for yourself! I also took more care with the composition - the best results seem to be when there is something in the foreground close to the camera. I do really like the sense of depth in the images - you feel like you are being sucked into the photograph towards the vanishing point.

Some of the same scenes feature in a previous post where I used the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. You can see them here and compare the effect - obviously quite different as the phone ones are very dark and dramatic whereas these are lighter and more ethereal, especially No 3 below which is actually a double exposure by mistake where I forgot to wind the film on. I will persevere with my efforts - the sense of satisfaction from using film, the concentration and mindfulness required, the feeling of being totally wrapped up in the moment can't be matched by the ease and instant results of digital!

RIP Lone Tree

This morning I went out walking on one of my usual routes - I hadn't been this way for some time and the going was heavy. Over two grassy sheep fields, is another large arable field which has a lone tree in the middle of it. The field had been ploughed over the winter into huge furrows and I felt momentarily disoriented as I scanned the horizon for its familiar outline only to find it missing! I felt sure I had made a mistake - perhaps the tree had been in another field after all. But as I walked round the edge, it became clear to me that it was definitely no longer there. Perhaps it blew down in stormy weather or more likely it was removed by the farmer to make ploughing easier. It had always been a landmark which showed the direction of the public footpath across the field, usually hidden by crops or ploughed up in the winter. No longer will it be there to point the walker in the right direction or to offer a bit of welcome shade on a hot sunny day. Another small change in the landscape, probably not noticed by many but sadly missed by me.

I have taken many photographs of this tree over the years, with various assorted cameras and in all seasons. Here is a selection.... RIP Lone Tree!

There and back II

Another day, another walk. This time across fields and taking in three ponds and some derelict farm buildings for added interest. The fields are heavy with mud which sticks to my boots, the wind is bitingly cold and my hands freeze but it feels good to be outside as my lungs fill with the fresh air, blowing away my mental cobwebs.

The ponds are a feature of the landscape round here - I know of at least half a dozen. They are fed by springs which trickle down from the Edge Hill escarpment, the same escarpment where the Royalists camped out and surveyed the battlefield in the Civil War. I have done this walk at different times of the year, but it is in the winter months that their stark and mysterious beauty is most appealing....

There and back

Walking and thinking at the same time are ideally suited. In fact, I just thought of doing this occasional series of walking related posts whilst out on a walk this morning!  Going for a walk gives you time out from daily concerns and frees the mind to wander, just as your feet wander down the road. It's also good for you!

One of the things I find most frustrating about living in the middle of the countryside is the boredom that sets in, walking the same road and paths day after day, month after month, year after year - so much so, that I've virtually stopped going for walks round here. My eyes have become lazy and immune to the subtle changes around me. This morning, though, I thought I would try and turn that feeling of boredom into an advantage and make an effort to observe my surroundings more closely, to see if I could find things I hadn't noticed in the past, or to picture them in a different light. 

No two days are the same, depending on the hour, the weather, the season. At the beginning of my short walk this morning the sky was a cloudless blue but on my return, the clouds were rolling in from the west, casting dramatic shadows over the landscape. Things also take on a different appearance on the route back compared to the route out. In theory this should mean there will be something new to photograph all the time. I'm seeing this as a sort of challenge - to try and make an interesting photograph out of the banal and everyday. We shall see!