Life vs Death (photography)

Who knows what happens when we die, maybe this is what greets us, or maybe it all ends right there. Either way, I believe when I die the transition will be peaceful, and I will flourish again at the end of the road.

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Let me tell you something about the photos, they was taken with the cannon E05 using 400-iso black & white film. The day I took the shots it was pretty foggy and I liked the effect it gave. When I finally came to develop the pictures in the darkroom I decided to use the some ideas I had running about in my head. The main objective was to create an eerie, almost surreal type photo, yet for it to remain peaceful. To do this I dodged with my hand and at the same time to played about with the focus as the paper was being exposed. The combination of both led to these effects. The highlights have been dubbed down because its almost as if the picture has been developed twice, one on top of the other. And the dodging created the white effect around the tracks. To get this right though took a lot of attempts and test strips. With the sepia toned picture, i didn’t use as you might imagine a sepia toner. Instead, when it came to exposing the photo to the ‘fix’ chemical i only used a fraction of the time that you are supposed to, and because of this the picture reacted to light when it was taken out. And so gave this aged effect.

~ The Final Straight ~ (http://tinypic.com/1rolew)

~ The Barbed Exit ~ (http://tinypic.com/1rojlv)

~ Free or Not ~ (http://tinypic.com/1rol51)

I should also point out that no editing was done digitally to these pictures, when i scanned it in all i added was a border and text.

i really like "free or not" flowers have a storey behind them too nice for lookin deeper in2 it, if thats wot ur tryin to show thru these pics, nice one dude

I like your first and second photos pretty nice.

I really like them. It’s a great effect. The third one falters though. Needs a lot more contrast, right now the values are really close and so it looks kind of bland. If you would have brightened the background a bit and perhaps made the foreground a bit darker it would be cool, I think.

Thanks for the comments everyone, i’ve been working on my final project now and i have some interesting photos to post, i’ll make sure to keep you updated.

Nice photographie, but the pics look a bit too sad in my opinion. It probably is because they are black and white, but I’m not sure.

I remember playing around with a similar technic in second year photo, only I used a more controled process for exposeing the unfixed paper. Beside my enlarger I set up another enlarger so I could expose paper to light, this let me control the tonal range alot better, seeing as it was hooked up to a timer. Just wondering if that would help you in your process any?

I really like them. They’re very dreamy, infinate and frosty. They make me feel cold, but tranquil as well. I really like The Barbed Exit. It’s somthing like a yearning and obstacle and failure. Very softspoken. I love how you think out of the box and try different effects while sraying true to he overall fell of the photo.