Owen Phillips

Some more images from my second pack of PX100 Silver Shade. A Mixed bag. Things are working much better indoors where the light is a lot more controllable, it seems. I’m going to continue posting all the results, good or bad. It’s a process of experimentation.

I’ve also just taken delivery of some PX600, which is faster (600 ASA as opposed to 100 ASA), and should provide some different results. The packs need customising to work with the SX-70, which is designed for the 100 speed film. Some scalpel-whittling to make them fit, and the addition of an ND filter to the top of the film pack to ensure correct exposure.

I’ve also got some of the Impossible Project’s TZ Artistic Paul Giambarba Edition colour film. Results of that to follow once I’ve finished this pack of PX100.

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I’ve just received possibly one of the most exciting birthday gifts ever. Adele has hit the jackpot and spoiled me rotten with a beautiful 1974 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, complete with leather case, original box and instruction book, and original-boxed accessories including tripod mount and close-up lens.

The way the camera opens up, and then closes neatly back into an oversized zippo-esque oblong of brown leather and brushed chrome, together with the satisfying clunk of the reflex mirror and the reasurring mechanical whir of the motors as it ejects the resultant print make it a joy to use and an object of fascination. They certainly don’t make things quite like this anymore.

Unfortunately, the supply of available film is a little limited. Since Polaroid went to the wall a few years ago, supplies of film became scarce. It was only when a group of artists and ex-Polaroid employees stepped in to save the world’s only Polaroid instant film manufacturing plant from the receivers’ hammers that a future of any kind was preserved for the medium. The Impossible Project, as it became known, aims to reproduce the old film and allow the format to continue on.

These shots are taken using The Impossible Project’s PX100 Silver Shade film. It’s an unpredictable old Hector, highly sensitive to light, even for a few minutes after exposure, and with evolving colours and saturation, depending on temperature and storage conditions of the print… It’s nice to experiment with, but unfortunately at £2.50 a shot it’s going to cost me…

Each pack holds 8 shots. Here’s the first. More results to follow.

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A few more shots taken recently, the landscape varying in the space of a few days between icy cold, grey and dreary, and beautiful crisp and clear sunshine.

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Having done a bit of reading up, and perusing through people’s flickr libraries, I’ve gone and got myself a grad ND filter, in an attempt to achieve the more realistic balance of exposure obtainable vie HDR, but for a single shot and without the intensive post-processing.

The weather here at the moment is spectacular – snow getting up to my armpits in places, and it’s hard going wandering around, but the landscapes are stunning. And I love breaking the pristine snow and being the first person to venture to a particular place.

Most of the following shots make use of the grad ND filter. It’s like putting sunglasses on the camera, and I love the shots where it creates massive contrast between the dark steely-blue sky, and the white of the hills.

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This year’s winter Lakes trip has been fruitful! The conditions were beautiful, and despite taking the compact camera for up in the hills, I decided it was a waste not to lug the SLR up there. I’m glad I did. The results, I think,  speak for themselves.

The weather was clear and cold while we were up there, but there was still a lot of snow on the tops. In some of the shots you can just see the top strand of a wire fence peeping above the snow, giving an indication as to the three feet or so of depth we were walking on top of.

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Not wanting to be put off by the lack of light at this time of year, I’ve been using evening dog-walks as an opportunity for light painting, suitably equipped with camera, tripod, torch and two flashguns with coloured filters.

The cemetery seems a little contrived for this sort of thing, but it was there, and added a different subject matter to woodland trees.

All these shots are taken by leaving the camera on a tripod, taking a long exposure, whilst running about lighting up things with the flashguns and waving a torch in the air. The dog seems to think it’s tremendous fun, and has nearly brought the whole thing crashing down on more than one occasion as he runs back to the camera after me…

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I’ve finally succumbed and bought myself a DSLR. Canon 450D, with the 18-55mm kit lens. The infuriating thing is that at this time of year it’s too dark in the evenings to play with it, and I’m at work all day, so can’t experiment then. Some of the following are shot on my morning dog walks, others are the result of weekend-wanderings. I’ll be mostly confined to weekend experimentation until Spring and the longer days.

Again, HDRs seem to be the order of the day. Being able to shoot in RAW mode allows me to create HDRs, to  a certain extent, from a single exposure. The shots here are a mixture of those taken from one RAW shot, and three bracketed exposures as before.

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Just spent a few days in the Lake District, enjoying the mountains and the company. The weather was bitterly cold, but the conditions were fantastic. An opportunity for more HDRs…

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Over the last few months I’ve put some more HDRs together – making the most of the wintery conditions and how they shape the landscape. The colours and clarity of winter mornings and evenings have offered some lovely views to capture – together with a particularly still day up at Digley reservoir, where the reflections were unbelievable.

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I’ve been experimenting with a few HDR techniques recently – shooting local landscapes and basically trying to get the technique down. The shots are created from three exposures of the same scene, merged together digitally to retain detail throughout the shadows, highlights and midtones. This sort of detail could never be captured in one exposure using a camera, but is much more true to what your eye sees when taking in a scene.

Many of these shots do have a slight blurriness, due to my reluctance to lug around a tripod to ensure my separate exposures match up nicely. The processing software allows you to get away with quite a lot of movement – where it falls down is where the subject has moved between the exposures, such as when shooting water, or tree branches in the breeze.

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