A Winter's Diptych

Lomo LCA loaded with expired PanF

Landscape Photographs of Danesmead Nature Reserve

Danesmead Nature Reserve is a small reserve of woodland near Broxbourne. These photographs were taken during a work through the reserve in early summer.

I tried to show the way that the sunlight streamed through the trees and lit up the vegetation. However, the photos may just be too dark to really get a feeling for the light that day.

Follow the link to see these landscape photographs in a larger size.

Burnham on Sea

A wide sandy beach, a cloudy day, a sea wall and a nuclear power station across the bay...it can can only be an English sea side resort. In this case the town of Burnham on Sea in Somerset to be precise. These landscape photographs were taken on a short walk along the beach with some friends on a breezy Saturday morning in June. The images were shot with a Holga 120GCFN loaded with Shanghai GP3.

For a cheap film, Shanghai gives some great results and is rapidly becoming on of my favourite films.

The photos above are my favourites of that morning but click on the link to see the full gallery of landscape photos.

When Dinosaurs Attack!

I visited Knebworth House a couple of times this summer taking a variety of cameras with me. Knebworth is a stately home in Hertfordshire and has become famous for hosting rock concerts. It has attracted some of the great monsters of rock such as Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden, Oasis, Robbie Williams (!?) etc, etc,

Less well known is the fact that some of the best British Scientists in the world have been busily bringing monsters of a different kind, ie dinosaurs, back to life in Knebworth's grounds; creating a real life Jurassic Park in Hertfordshire.

While two year old toddlers screamed in terror I managed to keep calm and shoot these puppies in glorious 3D with my faithful Nishika N8000. Vincent Price would have been proud of me and I hope you are too. For the technically minded the film used was Kodak Pro Color which I bought on Ebay off some bloke in Thailand.

I also manged to shoot off a few rolls with my holga and Vivitar UWS without ending up in a T Rex's tummy - those shots are buried somewhere in my huge backlog of images to process. In the meantime feast your eyes on these 3D corkers. Grrrrrrrooooooaaaaarr!







Be safe.

Pinhole Photography: Biscuit Tin Camera

I have flirted with pinhole photography for a while now and one of the great joys of this photographic genre is it's simplicity and the fact that you can make the cameras yourself. I have already made a paper pinhole Lomo but decided that I had to give large format a try.

I therefore decided to make a pinhole camera from two biscuit tins I had lying around in the kitchen. You can find out exactly how I converted two such innocuous items into weapons of mass artistic expression be clicking on pinhole photography.

These are the first two images produced:

All in all I'd say the results are pretty impressive for a first time effort. I used simple household items to create these cameras which are about as hi tech and precision built as a piece of flint.

Sadly I haven't had time to take more photos withe the cameras, though I intend to - I have also had a couple of attempts at solargraphy, but that will be the subject of a different post.

Please feel free to link, like, follow this post, send me money, buy me a beer.

The Travelling Toy Camera Project and a Review of the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim

The travelling toy camera project is a collaborative effort between various members of the www.toycamera.com forum. The idea is that a camera, in this case a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, is passed around the various members of the group who each keep the camera for a week, shoot a few rolls before sending off to the next person in the chain.

The Vivitar UWS had already travelled through Canada, the US and Spain before arriving in that cradle of British Lomography, Broxbourne, a couple of weeks ago. At the time of writing the Vivitar has just arrived in Sweden and from then on who knows where the camera will end up.

The real star of the show is the Vivita Ultra Wide & Slim. A 35mm point and shoot with a wide 22mm lens, this camera takes the most amazing pictures. The camera is as basic as it gets. A slim plastic body, fixed aperture and shutter speed make this a very portable, easy to use camera.

On the down side the film winding mechanism looks abit fragile (only use 24 exposure films) and the counter is difficult to read, otherwise I can't fault it. The Vivitar UWS has been compared to the Lomo LCA and I have to say I prefer it to the Russian classic. It's more reliable than the Lomo and is smaller and lighter so it fits nicely in a pocket ready to be whipped out in a moment's notice.

The real evidence is in the pictures and the great thing about the Travelling Toy Camera Project is that the camera has been used by a variety of different people from different backgrounds and each one with their one style and perspective. To the camera's lasting credit it has produced great results in each case.

With my love of landscape photography I decided to see how the Vivitar UWS would cope with a few walks around Broxbourne and surrounding area - you can see the results below. I also took the camera out to Hoddesdon to see how it liked a classic example of 1960s British urban planning (ie arrange millions of cheap bricks and concrete into soulless cubes and call it a miracle of modern social engineering).

You can see the landscape photographs I took by clicking on the link and feel free to comment, link etc at your leisure. Also don't forget to check out the Travelling Toy Camera blog - it has some great images.


A National Speed Limit sign near Bayford.

The River Lea at Broxbourne.

Hoddesdon town centre.

The catholic church at Hoddesdon.

Landscape Photography of Tottenham Marshes

As part of my interest in landscape photography I have an ongoing project to photograph the Lee Valley Regional Park and these two photos are part of that series. Both were taken with my Kiev 60.

The first was taken with Ilford Delta 100. Not my favourite film at all but was given to me for free so I can't complain too much.


Not one of my best images but it's OK.

The second was shot with Ektachrome EPP 100, cross processed. This was the only shot of the roll to come out OK.


Again, this one won't knock St Ansel of his pedestal as greatest photo ever....but I quite like the bright colours.