This Is My Playground
This Is My Playground - 7.9mm at f/2.4, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/8 sec.
I came across some truly incredible long exposure black and white photographs some weeks back. Shot by Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko. You can view his portfolio at alexeytitarenko.com. I wish I could reproduce one or two images here for you to see, but that would not be cool, so please do go and have a good look at his portfolio and the other online gallery. It's called the Nailya Alexander Gallery. I like his City of Shadows series the most.
These photographs, taken with my Leica D-Lux 4 of course, aren't particularly long in terms of exposure and look nothing like the others, but I wanted to share them, because well, they're the best I shot at the time, and I like them, for different reasons. I wasn't trying to produce photographs like Alexey's because I didn't have a tripod. I like this one above the most. It's cool how the woman just seems to have faded away from both sides, and it's quite extreme too. Reduced to just a whisper. I was on my way to St James Park and had just descended the escalators at Oxford Circus tube station when I spotted this advert on the side wall of the tunnel I was walking down. Again, it was crazy busy with people. I think I took about 10 shots as people walked across my point of view. Even though the shutter speed was constant for most of the shots I took, this photograph seemed to just turn out better. I was very lucky I didn't get anyone else in the frame, and it was only by a fraction of a second. It's quite a rush realising you only have a split second to get a (potentially) cool shot.
Running for Nothing - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/10 sec.
With the photograph above I was trying to keep the structure of the tiling on the floor as close as possible to what you'd naturally perceive. Not the colours of course. We like to strip those right out. If you want to see what it looks like in colour you'll have to go to Baker Street. I wanted to keep some structure in the glare from the overhead lights reflected in the floor tiles in the top left area of the frame, but still keeping the rest of the floor looking flat and smooth, as you would see it when standing directly on it. I find my eyes circling with this photograph, which is what I like about it.
Both of these photographs have been split toned in Silver Efex Pro with the top photograph being processed with Ilford FP4 Plus 125 film and the shot above processed with Kodak Tri-X 400 TX Pro. You can find the Silver Efex Pro presets below.
