fingertrouble | Oh that's where that comes from (Reply)

Miles jumping off a swing, (detail)

I was 9 or 10, I knew not yet who this Lartigue bloke was but I was trying to capture my friend jumping off a swing.

/in shock.

It's hard to describe the sense of discovery since I assumed most of the the 126 pictures were low-res and pretty cack and it turns out from the shots I'm finding on the first ever films I was a complete natural. Framing, composition, movement, the decisive moment (no idea who that Bresson bloke was either at that stage)....it's all there. All my previous assumptions about taking a long time to get good are total bollocks - although I did spend far too much time trying to shoot tiny pictures of fighter planes which on a little fixed focus Instamatic with Sunny 16 and Cloudy settings (woo!) wasn't really going to fly. I can now see the genesis of the whole movement style I have already in place. WTF?

I've not seen this or most of the 126 negs properly since taking them, not sure I even have a good print of this...part of the problem was the fact that the prints were terrible, so I assumed *I* was terrible. The scans reveal otherwise - all I am doing is restoring the fading, some cropping and sharpening, contrast etc. Nothing more, and most need almost no tweaking. It's like a view into a past world...

And amazingly they were taken on a camera as advanced as this. wooh!

(full size)

Girls on the Boulougne Ferry

Girl on a Steam Engine - Guildford Steam Fair (?) 82/83

And the colours on the Kodak Instamatic film are just jaw-droppingly beautiful. You can keep Instagram, this is the real shit.
You can see the full gallery here, I will add to it as I scan more.