St Ives - through my eyes

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St Ives - One would say quintessentially Cornish, picture postcard views and one of the singular most popular seaside towns in the UK. Its colourful, great out of season and very photogenic. But as photographer like most, often see what others don’t. Tourists will continue to take those typical St ives seaside shots we all see and love, but personally, I prefer to see a different side to it whilst at the same time, seeing different views.
Enclosed are just a few of what I see……

I tend to search out colours, use different film formats and a selection of film stocks to mix it all up.

A cliff top view here overlooking Porthmeor beach before the crowds arrive and the emptiness disappears. i often find that the morning light delivers the best light, thats always providing the clouds stay away

At low tide, St Ives offers free food for all. I refer to Cornish muscles if your a seafood lover. Remember though, go safe and be careful of the rocks and watch the tides etc. Im certainly not going to tell you where I harvest mine from, but wherever it is, I get the biggest muscles time after time.
There is a saying that you should never harvest muscles in the months with an “r” in them. Ive never found that an issue

They’ll always be somewhere to point your camera in St Ives and there’s always a different view, if you look for it. Colour will always stand out here, even in the off seasons. St Ives will always remain popular with tourist and locals alike. I’ll continue to look for more ways to shoot more content here - but always at first light and when the place is empty

Camera & film stocks used :
Pentax 6x7, Hassy 500 cm & Konica Hexar. Portra 400vc expired, expired ultramax 400 & Kodak Gold 120

I came back - Automotive

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After shooting automotive content over a number of years for several automotive publications and media outlets, I gave it all up. It just became too easy and I got fed up with the mags cropping my imaging, paying me when they wanted too and some of the owners of that automotive content telling me how good their rides were.

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However, more recently Ive become re interested in that area of photography due to the premium quality and varied volume of content I now find myself shooting again. This time it’s different, no more of that digital rubbish as I now only shoot film.

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Sadly, print based media only takes digital content as they are after that pin sharp pixel crap that we as a nation have been programmed to believe it’s best. Here’s the thing though and this is directed to those blinkered magazine editors of the world, medium format film can be super sharp too and being film, it brings something that digi never will, a real texture and organic quality and lovely grain. Stick that in your digital pipe and smoke it.

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Please note: All of the images contained within this post and other posts, and on my site are free from Photoshop, Lightroom and presets. All my imaging is real

Im not just a colour man. I do shoot b&w too

Whilst I have an overwhelming love of shooting colour content, I still have a love for black and white imaging. I think its that deep contrast of black and white film that works for me plus the grain of course. Shooting this way can often give an image a timeless feel to it if you have the right content.

In the early days, I use to shoot HP5 and FP4 but a couple of years ago I discovered Kodak double X. Such an ace stock. It has the subtleties in tone scale that you’ve come to expect from Kodak. This is a general purpose black & white negative film original used by the motion picture industry and has an excellent latitude and low grain, ideal for documentary work. Try it!

I document it all - evens bee's

As a documentary film photographer, Im constantly on the look out for content to shoot that interests me in anyway shape and form, and on this occasion it was bee’s! Now, I had no idea that this opportunity would face me until I open my back door and saw the post box opposite swarming with bee’s. Clearly they too had something to post, I guess it was something along the lines of wax and honey…..

Now for those of us who felt the need to post something that morning it proved rather difficult. However, I knew a man who dresses in a white suit from time to time, has a selection of bee hives and it well versed on the bee front. A phone call later and Tris appeared to cast his eyes across what was going on and then re appeared with a blue box

I wont go into the fundamentals of how one removes a large number of bee’s from a post box, but it was all very interesting what Tris shared with me, thanks Tris. My small but creative brain couldn’t quite absorb the vast amount of knowledge he shared with me. Visually, it was great to watch and document an expert at work. The bee’s did get a little angry with Tris though, see image below, afterall they didn’t get to post what they wanted.

Please note: No bee’s was hurt in shooting of these frames nor did Tris harm them in any way. To conclude then, they are all now safe alongside the Queen of course in one of Tris’s lovely Cornish hives. Cheers Tris, Queenie, all the workers and or course Royal Mail for opening up the box - no one got stung either. RD

How very British of us....

Crown green bowling. Without doubt, quintessentially British and a familiar sight during our summer months. What I like about this shot is that it tells its own story. A game in play, the hands on the hips and the looking down motion studying the outcome. It also give the impression by the players themselves that its an older boys game. That might be the case here but the I can assure you all that the female element of this world love it too - generally speaking in the same age bracket that is.

There’s another element here that makes this shot what it is, and thats the fact its shot on film, like all of my work. The depth, grain and contrast of a roll of Agfa Vista in this case works really well. The camera on this occasion was the epic little Olympus 35mm trip. One of the best point and shoots ever made, Ask David Bailey - remember the ad’s? the greatest camera ad’s ever made.RD

Norway or bust - 5000 kms of bliss (Part 3)

Throughout the whole of this trip, Norway and its landscape continued to amaze us. Ever tunnel and bridge we crossed and every mile we drove, there was more and more to see. We still experienced that feeling of isolation due to the lack of people, cars and the empty roads. In our view, we couldn’t of picked a better time to see this lovely land.

The further we drove north, the better our trip became. The whole trip felt like we had Norway to ourselves. We covered over 5000km but none of those kilometres felt tiring at all. We fished, camped, got up when we wanted and never really planned the next day. The only element of the trip that restricted us was our return date.

We made a list of the following as we’d never experienced a country quite like Norway in terms of its infrastructure and how one navigates it. Reflective views everywhere

number of tunnels we drove through: 143
number of bridges we crossed: 57
number of fjords we saw, drove over or drove under: 47
number of rolls of film shot: lost count

For those of you considering visiting Norway do it! Our advice would be, put a road trip together. This was not a trip for us, more so an adventure as nothing as such was really planned

Norway or bust - 5000 kms of bliss (Part 2)

And so we drove on for hours with no real idea as to where we were heading. We’d never been to Bergen before so this was are first port of call. Not that we enjoy visiting major cities, I think it was just the fact that we’d thought we’d have a nosey around to see what was what. We were met with some classic colourful scandinavian housing, street art and waterfront scene’s. There was some sort of National day on at the time, the place was crowded so we left pretty quickly and moved on heading north into some lovely Norwegian country side.

With no real route planned as such other than heading north, we never really knew where we were going so we just continuing driving to see where we might end up. We had a map with us and as we looked further, a set of little islands caught our eye so we headed there. One of the islands we thought we’d try was called “Fedje”. Why, we had no idea but that’s where we were heading and I have to say, it was one of the best decisions of our journey. We had no idea what to expect and arriving at the ferry stop, we thought we were the only people heading there. Another car or two rocked up but that was about it. 30 minutes later and we were there. What a find! I can only best describe the place as , you now when you get up super early on a Sunday morning and no one else is around, it felt just like that. To top it all off, the island was empty apart form a few locals. One tiny shop, a brewery which seemed a little odd and that was about it, apart from some lovely colourful homes, second ones I might add.

What an incredible place Fedje is, known locally as “the village in the ocean”. All we did for the week we were there was walk, fish, drink coffee and relax. The sun never stopped shining and we hardly ever spoke to anyone. its seemed like the place was closed

to be continued…….

Norway or bust - 5000 kms of bliss (Part 1)

It was only a question of time before me & wifey decided that it was time for another decent road trip and we wanted to cross off the final Scandi country we’s not visited/traveled too. That country was Norway.
A bit of forward planning was a must for us as we were heading there out of the normal touristy seasons and on the back end of their winter. This time period for us proved to be the best choice we’d ever make. Please read on and you’ll see it all panned out..

So, the route. We live in Marazion, 50.1251° N, 5.4640° W, thats 20 miles from the most southerly point on mainland Great Britain, 49° 57' 30" N, Lizard Point, so some element of our route to get us to mainland Norway needed pre planning. It started with a ferry trip across the channel into Ostend, a few further hours driving up to Eemshaven, then an over night ferry to Kristiansand. Once we arrived Kristiansand, we had no further plans as such other than to drive and see where it takes us.

When Im travelling anywhere, or anywhere at all really, Ive always got my cameras with me. As a photographer, I’ll always find something to shoot but never any of those dreadful standard tourist type shots we so often on IG. Coming into port for us meant that this was the real start to our trip.

So the first thing that struck us within driving for no longer than 20 minutes or so was just how empty the place was. It was like a Sunday morning before anyones up, but this continued for hours. Here and there we’d see the odd car but there was no one about at all, sort of a ghost country you might say

to be continued……

Grainery vs Newgrain

As photographers, we all remember many years ago the first real introduction of a place where we could share our photo’s with the world, that was Instagram. Since then, it was bought out by the greedy Yank and his mates and the shift on photo sharing as such has long gone in favour of money and making as much money as possible. I refer to their ad’s, reels and full on advertising which photographers like myself have no interest in. So what are the others choices for us photographers these days who don’t see Instagram as the future of sharing. Well, here’s my findings

First of all, let’s take a look at Grainery first. Here’s an app, and a desktop version too, thats been designed with us film photographers in mind. No digital here thank you. The developer is a guy call Kyle Johnston. He launched back in 2022 with great intensions Im sure to develop it further but as its progress over the years on the r&d has fallen flat. No improvements, no real shift in its flexibility just pretty static if Im honest. Don’t get me wrong, any new photo sharing app is a blessing in relation to Instagram. In Kyle’s defence, a one man operation such as his, with a limited pot of money is going to suffer, and it has.

Im not a smart phone user but Im told that its a bit glitchy to say the least. On a desktop, there are some issues there too but its still a great way of displaying your photo’s. There are of course some similarities to the Instagram’s design and lay out but that works.
So, two years down the line, Kyles not really moved forward to a degree. There is no support with this app, and I mean, no support.

Whats the future for Grainery. I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

And so we move onto Newgrain. Here’s an app, and a desktop version soon, thats is the brain child of founded by Tim Issenmann, a passionate film photographer himself. He launched in early 2023 and its content is building at speed, just as did Grainery in its early days. However, what seems to make Tims app a little more robust is the fact that it’s not just him working on it and I understand he has some funding behind it. So when it comes to the r&d and development front, Newgrain is always going to be ahead of Grainery.

For me personally, Newgrain already has the edge. It is always about what suits you best I reckon. Im not going to go into the in’s and out’s of costs, which are part of both these app’s. You can have a look yourself and make your own judgement.
Here’s something to remember though. Photographers such as myself are moving away from that greedy little mans platform and looking for something different that has one main goal in mind, sharing images alone. RD

Kodak Instamatic - the results

Some time ago, I picked up a Kodak pocket Instamatic 100 at a local car boot sale, put a roll of film through it and here are a few of the results, finally. Sorry for the delay.

Firstly, a little background on this little point and shoot fella if I may. It’s a very basic snapshot camera that introduced the 110 format. This format is still available from those lovely people at Analogue Wonderland, both black and white and colour. The spec on it is a 25mm lens, f/11 Triplet shutter, shots at 1/60f with a developed image size of 13 x 17.

With all that in mind, here a just are just a few of the images I took with it.

Yes, they are grainy! What would you expect from a tiny plastic lens. Remember this, its a very basic point and shot compact film camera of the period, the 1970’s. I wasn’t expecting anything less than heavy grain. But here’s the thing, the camera handled colour well and Im happy with the results. They do have a period look to them if Im honest which is rather engaging.

So, the conclusion of shooting a roll of 110 for me with this little fella was all about having a bit of fun. I love to see how old cameras and formats look today and in some respect they looked like they did the 70’s, when the only choice was film. Today on the photography front, it all seems to be all about how sharp your image can be rather than value as an image. Would I use it again? of course I would. RD

Shooting Kodak Vision 250 3 D

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For those of you who are uncertain as to what Kodak Vision 3 is, its a 35mm colour negative film originally made for motion pictures. The film's standard development process is ECN2 and Im told it can also be processed using the C-41 process. Double check that. I chose to go down the ECN2 route which is more costly one and you’ll need to search out someone in the UK who does specialist processing. I used Nik & Trick ( www.ntphotoworks.com), excellent service I might add. You’ll need to wait a little longer than the standard 2/3 days turn around time on this stock though. Factor in say 2/3 weeks to get your shots back.

So, the first set of images here are from the first roll I shot. I had no real subject matter in mind at the time other than to just roll off the film at whatever

Camera: Konica Hexar

Roll 2
On this occasion, i looked for more variety and colour to further test this stock and I found subjects that it suits, and perhaps others that it doesn’t. For me, the portrait shot below is fine in its composition but I can see yellow and slight green ish tones to it.
Given I know the subject well, the skin tones and studio walls colours, are not correct.

Further evidence of those yellow and green ish tones are highlighted here when I shot this image in low light conditions. The film was shot at stock and the light reading was fine, its just Vision3 that gives it these tones especially in low light

So, is it a stock Id shoot again? Hell yes! I like the fact that Vision3 for me seems to offer colours and tones that other stocks don’t as such. It’s never going to be one of my top 5 stocks but I will continue to shoot it

Please note: All of the images contained within this post and other posts, and on my site are free from Photoshop, Lightroom and presets. All my imaging is real