I found a great old building on Pilcher Gate in an area called Hockley, very dilapidated, obviously empty with great textures to its exterior and plants growing from its drainpipes!
The old green door had a lock on it but the whole plate was prised off…I almost went in but then decided not to, at least not at 10pm!
I woke really early on the morning of the 3rd May (about 4.30am), so I decided to go over to Pilcher Gate and take some exposures. I got there at about 5.15am and there was absolutely nobody about. Did some work outside and tried the door a while later…stuck fast! I was almost relieved, because if it did open, there is no way I could have stood on the step and wondered, no way at all!
The shot above was taken by changing the zoom position whilst the shutter was open and is actually the padlock on the door.
I sneaked through a big iron gate up a fire escape to get this one at a building called Shorthill flats.
Well you may say that equipment is important and it sort of is but the building above with a monster sky was shot at 6am in the square, it is our council building. It was taken with a home made pin hole camera! I used my canon body and drilled a 6mm hole in the body cap, then pushed a sewing needle through a small piece of coke can steel, sandpapered the hole smooth then stuck it over the larger hole using electrical tape to block the light from the sides. Then I put it on a tripod and messed with the exposure time till I had a few shots with different qualities of light. From these i made up a HDR image of 3 shots and tweaked it in Photoshop to put some menace in the sky.
I love it...and i think i will build a project from this by doing more famous land marks around me using the same method.
You see everyone has shots of these places but not in this way.
Anyway, while i was there i was approached by a homeless person who was interested in what i was up to...he wanted money so i said to him"i tell you what...i'll do you a deal...i'll swap some of my cash for your portrait" he loved that!...as i was buzzing around him shooting i was asking him why he was here and how he came to be drunk at 6am!
he told me "Divorce!" he used to live on a boat and had a great time. i think he lived there with a woman after he was divorced. he was a little cagey, understandable i suppose. He asked me why i was doing photography, i told him i wanted to make a change in my life and that we are only here once and we should try to make the best of every day we have. He agreed with me and said he liked me, i have to be honest i liked him to, he had an innocence about him, i thought this was a suprising trait for a man with his status!
it just goes to show what happens when you put yourself in new situations.
brilliant morning!
2 comments:
Fantastic shots. I especially like the green door pictures. More so the landscape photograph further down the page (green door)
Watching you experiment with the pin hole photography will be interesting. I was reading about this myself not too long back and find it quite fascinating.
thanks, i really like the pin hole stuff, but i think my pin hole is a bit big. so i am going to try another one using a smaller hole.
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