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We have moved down to Kyoto but I still couldn’t get my photos off my camera as it kept trying to install something on the hostel PC - my and my fancy camera eh!  On a walk around Kyoto we picked up a card reader and now I have my photos - wahey!

So here is a pick of a few of them…

Jenni & Gav - that last one’s for you!  There is a chain of pharmacies called Lawson Station!

For the rest of them you can check them out on my flickr page.

I got my first 3 rolls of film developed from my lomo cameras and was fairly impressed with the results. I think I had about a 50% success rate of photos tuning out how I intended. Some turned out but were very underexposed and some didn’t work out at all. Oh well, I guess that’s what practice is for!

Here are some of my favourites:

Although double exposed this one turned out pretty cool. The photo is well exposed and quite sharp. I had quite good success with the black and white film, now I want to get as good with the colour film so I can get some of that high contrast vivid colors action. This was taken with white flash indoors, 400 asa black and white film.

Not usual for me to like a photo of myself but I think this one is pretty cool. Colour film + red flash.

Pity there’s a light leak on the right edge of this photo (this leak seems to recur quite frequently through my first roll so maybe a loaded the film wrong. Used the fisheye lens for this one and I like what I see!

Colours in this one are nice. Not such sharp focus so hopefully I can work on that with my next few rolls.

My conclusions…

The Holga gave a lot better results than the Diana+ so I think I need a bit more work with that one. The Black and white film gave some nice results and seems to be a bit more forgiving than the colour film. I like the effects achieved with the colour flash on the holga and definitely want to do more with the fisheye lens - it’s pretty special.

If anyone’s interested I used Spectrum Imaging for development. I’d highly recommend them, the service was really good and extremely fast (posted on Saturday, on my doormat on Tuesday). They’re the cheapest I’ve found - with processing, printing (4×4 prints) and scanning to CD for £6 per film. I’ll definitely use them again but might hold back on the printing and selectively choose which ones I want printed from the CD and send them back separately for that as my photos seem to be a bit hit and miss at the moment!

Is it Christmas already??, originally uploaded by ebotunes.

A new year, a new type of photography for me.

Back in November I bought myself a set of the limited edition White Stripes lomography cameras.

The set includes a Jack Holga and Meg Diana+ plus loads of cool accessories.
You can read all about the full kit and accessories on the Official White Stripes website.

I finished my first roll of film in the holga at the weekend and have a few left each of the rolls currently in the holga and diana+. Hoping to get all 3 rolls finished and sent off for development very soon.

Looking forward to seeing the results from my step back into film photography…

The utata weekend project for May 11th was Utata Lights Up. What better an opportunity to get out some of my “novelty” lamps and try some shots.

Not having a home studio I setup my lamps in my small hallway where I could close all the doors and eliminate any street light from the streetlamps of London.

I think the results are not too bad for a home setup, especially as I don’t even have a tripod. How did you manage to hold the camera for so long then? I hear you ask. Easy… balance it on a dining chair!

Here are my attempts:

I didn’t get them submitted over the actual Saturday/Sunday of the weekend but hey, close enough!

I’ve done some re-work on my submission for Iron Photographer 21. I’ve split the photo into 2 layers - 1 with the background and 1 with the strawberries. I’ve faded the background and brought up the red colour in the strawberries. I definitely need a bit more practice at selecting parts of the image for creating layers (there are a few highlight type halos around the strawberries) but I think it looks much better than the original and certainly not bad for a first attempt. The removal of the orange tint and contrast of colourful strawberries with the de-saturated background really makes the subject pack more of a punch!

Here they are side-by-side. What do you think?