In Virgin Gorda we passed this stand of trees every day, and every day it caught my eye, as it seemed like a corridor in a cathedral. I took many pictures of it, and I think this is the one that best captures the impression it made on me. For this image I used my Mamiya medium format camera, 55 mm wide angle lens, and Ilford Delta 100 film.
There were a lot of fascinating trees in Virgin Gorda, including one that had basically taken root and grown on top of a boulder. I couldn’t get a satisfactory shot of the entire tree that I liked, so I went in closer to focus on the gloriously messy root structure. I used my Mamiya, and a combination of Ilford Delta 100 film and Xtol developer; this could become my goto combination for a lot of photography!
This image was created on the only cloudy day we experienced on VIrgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. On a island known for sandy beaches and sun, I found this rocky beach fascinating. Much of the smaller rocks are actually old weathered pieces of coral that have washed onshore, along with small shells or broken bits of larger shells. Amazing textures, that demanded to be captured in black and white, so out came the medium format Mamiya, loaded with Tri-X.
I am continuing to work through the images I took in the British Virgin Islands, and while many of the photos are colour-centric (to be expected in a place where the ocean is a melange of breathtaking shades of blue), I do like the black and whites images I took. I’ve only had time to develop one roll so far, which contains images taken at “The Baths”, a famous beach on Virgin Gorda.
Virgin Gorda is not only a place of amazing colours, it is also a place of amazing textures and shapes, and I am looking forward to developing the other black and white rolls I shot during my week in paradise.
Last night I got back from a week in the British Virgin Islands. A business meeting, but no shortage of fun, and time for photography! (Both film and digital). The image below is one of my favourites from the trip: a couple living and loving the moment. Just for a moment, I felt like I had bottled joy.
Today’s image is from the summer of 1977, and I again go back to my grandparent’s acreage outside Truro, Nova Scotia. This old see-saw, like everything else there, is long gone. Only the silver in the negative seems to be immortal.
I don’t remember if I ever printed this negative back in the 70’s, and certainly never looked at it all that closely. What amazes me is the sharpness of most of the image. My old Yashica TL-Electro was very much a budget model, a few rungs below the Nikon, Canon and Pentax classics of the day. But the 50mm f1.9 lens that came with the camera had a reputation for amazing sharpness, and that reputation was deserved.
This is an image I created back in 2004, on a family vacation in Prince Edward Island. I used my old Canon Digital Rebel, and although the original picture was captured in colour, to me it didn’t really come to life until I converted it to a toned black and white image; only at that point did the light start speaking to me.
I was tempted to make the theme of Monday images digital manipulation, but the jury is still out on that one. The image below is an example of a photo that is digital from start to finish; digital camera, manipulated with an HDR plug-in from Nik software. Both “digital” and “HDR” are red flags these days in these eyes of certain purists (and I am guilty of dissing HDR as over used). Scott Bourne once wrote that the only thing that matters is the image. A very simple statement, but a very profound one. Does the image, however produced, deliver on what the photographer was trying to do? This is the only metric that matters.
I took the image below last week in Cologne. The image is looking up at the Cathedral in Cologne. This structure is large and imposing, and dominates its space, in a not entirely positive way in my opinion. I joked with some folks (perhaps unfairly) that this massive structure would not out of place at the gates of Mordor. This image, with some HDR added, captures this feeling I had, better than the straight image does. And that is the only justification I need.
In a couple of hours I will be on a train to Frankfurt to catch a plane back to Toronto, so time for one more image of Cologne. I have crossed this bridge at least a dozen times this week, so it (and the cathedral in the mist) have become iconic for me. Photographs make the best souvenirs.
My Third Eye 