Bristol, Summer 2022

These three sets were taken in the summer of 2022 Portbury These were taken at a place I simply didn't know existed - it's the site of the WWII air defences for Royal Portbury Docks, where the remains of the gun emplacements and barracks are slowly falling apart. I was there twice during the summer as the archery club arranged air rifle shooting days there, one of them on about the hottest weekend of the year. The black and white images were taken with a strong infra-red filter on the digital camera, and there are a couple on the Ondu panoramic pinhole camera. Severn Beach Another place I keep going back to. Several here with the infra-red filter and plenty of use of the fisheye lens as well. King's Weston House I've only been to King's Weston House a few time - one of them for a speed awareness course, which was actually the only time I've been inside! Apparently you can rent the rooms, which might be...
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Bristol 2022, part 1

Yes, 2022. I realised that I blogged absolutely nothing last year, so I'm going to make up for that. It was a strange year - I was made redundant in April, although the process started the previous November and my departure was confirmed in February, and I started a new job in late September - and I didn't really do that much photography. And it has to be said that what I did do wasn't anything special, to be honest a lot of it was probably therapeutic as the redundancy process wasn't enormously pleasant. Blaise I spent a fair bit of time in the first part of the year walking around Blaise Estate in Bristol, close to home - I needed to get out and get some form of exercise. Most of these were taken in January and February, with a few in spring/early summer - it's probably quite easy to tell which as the winter ones are quite bleak, cold, dark and muddy....
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Large Format Photography

Is this the end? I started with my large format camera in mid-2016, having ordered an Intrepid 5x4 on the back of their Kickstarter campaign in late 2014.It's a beautiful bit of kit - I even have a black cloth to put over my head while I focus it. No exploding hand-held flash though. Large format was one of those things that had been at the back of my mind for a long time as I experimented with photography, but it was always way out of reach because the cameras were so expensive - Intrepid changed that. I hadn't shot much film beyond a little bit of pinhole work for several years, but I couldn't resist when I saw the Intrepid Kickstarter - it was only £130 on the original offer, although they are now £280 now, on the 4th version of it. OK, I had to buy a lens as well (I eventually bought a second), and I had buy some...
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Severn Beach 2019

The logical follow-on from Aust photos is Severn Beach - just along the Severn estuary, and another slightly bleak landscape. These were taken in March and April 2019, and are all on film - I probably went out and shot film more times than digital last year.These are a mix of 35mm (when I was testing my dad's Pentaxes), medium format (Hasselblad) and large format. You will notice one recurring subject - that tower, hugely photogenic. Well, for my definition of photogenic anyway.One on 35mm, one on medium format, one on large format! ...
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Further Adventures in Film

Following on from the posts earlier in the year about getting back into film (see here and here), I thought I'd give a progress report after having bought the Hasselblad. There's also the Intrepid 5x4 to consider.Once thing that's quite interesting is how little 35mm I have shot (with one exception, which we'll come on to later) - it's mainly been medium and large format. But when you've got a Hasselblad, why wouldn't you concentrate on that? The HasselbladI managed to cram the Hasselblad into my luggage when I went to Amsterdam, but somehow managed to mis-load the roll of B&W film I shot - no idea how I managed it, but it meant I lost half of the film images from there.The next block of photos are from Caen Hill Locks (see Day Trips), which I think worked well - exposures all looking pretty good. On that note, the photos I took at the Pershore Confetti Fields weren't so...
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