When old isn't!

Of all the photographs I have take, the one that possibly would rank as a favourite, for myself, is the "Olde" Pembroke Castle picture.

The story behind this shot is unusual, for a number of reasons. Of all the photographic equipment I own, this was taken on the least capable camera, a half broken Olympus 35mm compact. This model has a faulty battery compartment, this means I have to use adhesive tape to stop the batteries falling out!

Pembroke Castle, Wales: 1892 or 2002? 

Of course, this particular camera would not be the Landscape camera of choice for any photographer. However, at this time, it was the only camera I had on me. This model has no manual controls, so unfortunately the exposure was notably underexposed. When negative film is starved of light, it get's a lot of grain, and can black up in the shadow areas. Thus the image you see, is mostly as a result of an "accident", rather than a plan!

My attempts to rescue the image enhanced the strong grain even more, adding some local contrast to a few areas, and this is the result. Printed the image has a somewhat ancient feel of it, a million miles away from the clean captures of digital cameras, this one is rather soft..smudgy and it looks as if it were taken at least 100 years ago. In reality, I took this photo in the later half of 2002. The clues are in the lights that are shown on the footpath.

Some photographers would be tempted to remove them, but I operate a fairly strict policy for my Landscape work, if it's there, it stays there! I never move, or add, or remove any objects in any photographs. The reason? Whilst Photography is not always an accurate portrayal of reality, it can skew this somewhat, colours and tones & contrast can be some way off of what they eye sees, I like to keep it at least partly "real". If I remove the posts, then I simply modify something that has become part of the modern Pembroke Castle.

In closing, this photograph keeps two very important points clear in my head. The first is that good can be good, regardless of equipment quality. A Photographer captures images, not a camera, no matter how capable the tool, it is the user who defines the result. The second one is that sometimes accidents happen, in this case it helped create a unique look to the image, this is mostly the result of poor exposure, something we try to avoid most of the time. A bit of luck helped on this one!

I have in recent years been back to Pembroke Castle, a number of times. But failed to capture any images that had even half the impact of this one. A moment had passed, never to return again, the light was never the same, and no matter how hard I tried, it never matched this. Sometimes trying hard, does not always help, my first ever capture of this Castle, (and I have only 1 exposure of this on that film), was fairly quick. You can see when a scene has some appeal, and the shot is taken without even knowing, it just clicks at times. This was one such moment, and it remains a picture that is unique, and that I am very proud of.