[ d u n g c a r t d o t c o m ]A place for the stuff that leaks out of my head

Some Of Us Are Looking At The Stars from duncmc via flickr.

Following on from my previous post in which I extol the virtues of film and the qualities it brings to the image, I thought I would post this digital shot taken with the Canon EOS 300D.

Sometimes when I get a photo out of the camera and into Photoshop I am utterly amazed. It’s as if someone else took the picture when I wasn’t looking. This is one of those. The crisp, smooth detail and the colour just took me by surprise. To me this demonstrates the best qualities of digital photography, which are the antithesis of the organic qualities of film.

Incidentally this is a photo of the arc building in Hull, described as “a radical demountable and zero-carbon exhibition building”. The building has its own array of small wind turbines and photovoltaic panels which help the building to generate more energy than it draws from the National Grid. Heating is provided by a wood-pellet burning boiler.

More information is available on the arc web site here.

Life’s A Gas from duncmc via flickr.

A piece of river debris seen whilst walking along the Humber bank. I took this photo with my old Contax 139 SLR on 35mm Fujichrome Provia. The film expired in December 2003 and was cross processed at a local lab.

I’ve only just started using film again after something like eight years and I love it – in fact this is from my first decent roll (the previous roll I shot was badly fogged due to light leaks, but more about that in another post). The organic feel that film gives the image is just superb. But at the same time it really opened my eyes to the purity of colour and clarity that can be achieved with digital.

The Hunter from duncmc via flickr.

The majority of content on here will be photos (that’s my intention anyway). To get me off to a good start my first real post is my favourite image from those I took last year.

This long exposure of the Humber Bridge on a misty December night revealed constellations in the southern sky with amazing clarity. The stars were not visible to the naked eye at the time the picture was taken.

You can cleary see ORION The Hunter in the centre of the sky. If you visit this photo on flickr the other surrounding constellations are also identified.

This photo was featured in WeeklyShot’s “Night” theme, and also in Vazaar’s “Best of 2006” theme. It is one of the images in my Humberscapes collection.

So finally my blog is live! It’s only taken me a year or so and few false starts to get this far. Installing WordPress was the easy bit, and took just a few minutes. Getting it to look right and tinkering with the configuration is what takes the time.

So that’s it. All I need to do now is fill it with words and pictures. Watch this space…