Category: Color

A Happy Accident

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In film photography, so many accidents can be fatal: the accidental exposure of film, “developing” your film in fixer first, even loading a roll of film backwards so that no exposures result :-(. Occasionally though, a technical issue can result in a good image. The image below is from a roll that I developed yesterday morning, and there was an issue with the fixer chemical, leaving a fog in some frames. When I scanned the negative, however, the fog in this image resulted in a blue tinge/haze over much of the frame. Even though it was a black and white image, I scan my negatives in colour, hence the blue.

Since the subject matter is ice, the blue really fits in well. I am going to have a go at refixing the negative (since it will just get worse) over time, but in the meantime, I am enjoying this happy accident.

 

Happy Accident

GoodBye Kodachrome

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The deadline came and went yesterday: the cut-off for Dwayne’s Photo-lab accepting Kodachrome for processing. Apparently there was a huge surge of film being sent in to beat the deadline, but no more will be accepted now.

For seventy-five years Kodachrome has been used to illustrate the storyboard of much of humanity; what a priceless legacy!

The image below is one I captured on the Kodachrome Photowalk in October of this year. Nothing special about it, but as one of countless millions of Kodachrome images created in seventy-five years, it shares in that collective legacy.

Thank you Kodachrome. In a century where so much of the technology developed was for the express purpose of killing each other more efficiently and in larger numbers, your technology was made for creativity, truth and beauty.

And as a tool of creation, you are more powerful than any tool of destruction.

 

johnm012

Time-Warp Tuesday: Ghost of Christmas Past

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Christmas memories, and how times have changed, so for Time-Warp Tuesday this week I have a Kodachrome slide; I made this image, a close-up of an ornament on the family Christmas tree sometime between 1980-82.

Tree Ornament, 1982?

This slide looks pretty much like it did when I first took the image; the colours and sharpness have remained true. So much else about Christmas has changed though: relatives have passed on, and at the same time a new generation has arisen to be part of my Christmas memories.

My late mother was very proud of her Christmas tree ornaments, and her tree decorating. If such a thing as Yuletide Feng Shui existed, she was the master. Now the collection is spread out amongst various family members, so we will never see a single tree like that again. All we have are images like this one, capturing the memory of Christmas treasures.

 

A Second Chance

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You don’t often get a second chance to capture an image. This week, I had that chance; I had to be downtown early on Tuesday morning for a meeting, and the combination of the rain-slicked pavement and lights made an arresting combination. I only had my iPhone with me, and while I tried to capture the scene, it didn’t turn out the way I wanted.

Luckily, I had to be downtown again the next day at the same time, with the same rainy weather: my second chance.

Dundas Square at 7 am, December 1st

Another Cathedral Catches the Light

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I am in Cologne, Germany on business this week, and of course I am taking advantage of the location to do some photography. This morning the light was amazing for a brief interval, and it was breathtaking to see the Cathedral across the Rhine take on the ruddy colours of a red-sky morning.

Bridge and Cathedral

Gentle Decay

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While many of my autumn pictures are either focused on splashes of colour, or are black and white texture studies, sometimes I feel the need to explore the space in-between. The image below is one I captured a couple of weeks ago in the Don Valley in Toronto; the paint on the bridge is faded and blotchy, and the taggers have been busy. The image did not work in either full colour or black and white, so I turned the colour down quite a bit, and that captured the mood of gentle decay for me.

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