I love rediscovering old photos, ones that I shot decades ago and haven't even seen in almost as long.
Thanks to my new scanner, I've begun digitizing some old slides. It's great to see what kind of photographer I was when I was using my old 35mm SLR, back when you took your time to get your shot because you couldn't immediately see what you got—you couldn't just delete the shot and take it again. Back in those days, I would take three similar shots, hoping that one of them would be good.
When I was feeling confident, I'd only take one shot.
I wasn't confident that often. But I had hopes.
Here's a photo that I captured in three shots. Taken in the spring of 1989, the first shot was without a filter and had a landscape orientation. It showed a tree in early bloom, standing on the edge of the Ottawa River near the Connaught Range (Shirley's Bay). The tree took the far-left side of the frame; the rest of the frame showed the river.
After that shot, I added an orange filter to focus more on the silhouette of the tree and the distant shore. The sunset was secondary.
I then changed to a red filter and decided that the tree was the subject. I changed the orientation to portrait, closed up on the tree (but kept it on the left-hand side of the frame), and waited for the sinking sun to hit the top of the treeline across the river.
And then I took one shot. I was feeling confident.
Which one do you prefer?
The first one has such a richness of colour and depth that I prefer that one. The filters make everything more graphic and otherworldly though... kind of like a sunset on Mars lol. Really enjoyed this post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Martin!
ReplyDeleteOne day, for fun, I ran the "red" slide through a C-41 (colour negative) processor and got a print that changed the black to white and the red to an intense, bright, sky-blue.
I almost prefered this look to all the others.