tintype

A black and white version of this image was added to my Instagram feed today but I also like this colour version.

The picture is of a table at a fabulous Bric-a-brac place on Skye that is an amazing experience. One visitor I heard used the word overwhelming! Amongst the junk, however, is treasure. People can often be seen looking around clutching the ‘treasure’ that they’ve found. I myself have bought one or two things there over the years.

This image was taken near the wall next to the road. Items are just placed out for sale in a very chaotic fashion – some indoors and others outside where the vases, plates, figurines, sowing machines, tools, tables, etc have to deal with the extremes of Skye’s weather.

Yep… the glass is actually full of rainwater!

Scrap trailer in a farm yard

The last four weeks or so have seen a small photography project come together. Using the tintype setting on the Hipstamatic app, the project started as a couple of test images and grew larger, with aspect becoming clear after a revelatory walk through a location barely a mile from where i live. It was a wood, with a public footpath, that I’d never seen before.

We rarely explore around where we live. We become so complacent about our surroundings choosing to explore areas further afield. Many undiscovered ‘lands’ remain within a stone’s throw of our front door and yet we often choose to remain comfortable with the familiar. We can visit another day is often the excuse and that ‘another day’ rarely, if ever, arrives.

The Hipstamatic tintype setting was something I’d wanted to have a go with for ages. When it first came out it used to crash the app every time, however, no problems now. The tintype has its own quirks with highlights and exposures in very bright light proving to be especially challenging. Several shots didn’t come out well due to the light intensity and a small number of shots needed tidying up in Photoshop – bright highlighted areas produced multi-coloured pixelated areas. The narrow focus area of the photos also takes some getting used to, but gradually you start compensating for it when composing images. I did rather enjoy the fact that you never did quite know how the image would turn out.

Around thirty images from the ‘A Stone’s Throw ‘project can be found in the gallery at :-

http://www.richardflintphoto.com/portfolio/a-stones-throw/

A few extra shots are included in the ‘A Stone’s Throw’ Flickr album HERE