So, I thought I would have a recap of two of my favourite images from Prague, so I have selected two that I was really pleased with, there are more, but these are just some of my faves. If you want, go HERE, and you can see the whole set from Prague on Flickr, so, let’s get into them!

The first photograph, although a little cliché, is one I’m really pleased with, and it is a market scene, at “Havelske Trziste” I believe.

So, why do I like this photo? There are a few points about this image that I am just really pleased with. The first point is: the colour.

This photograph, and in fact, both the photos in this post coincidentally, were taken with the Canon AE-1, a film SLR, and it was loaded with Kodak Ultramax 400. I didn’t look specifically into the film, but it was available in a bundle at WHSmith in the airport, so, you know.

Anyway, back to the colour, the main point to me is that it looks completely real, something I feel I rarely achieve using my digital SLR, and it’s great, it looks like it looked when I was there, the glistening, brightly coloured fruits, with the harsh fluorescent lights above them, it was just like it was in real life, and that, I love.

The next thing is the DoF, it must have been darker than I remember to achieve what I can only guess was f/1.8, judging by how shallow this image is, but I think it worked well, what I love is the grapes, hanging, crisp and in focus, over the OOF people walking in the background.

All in all I am really pleased with this photo and have actually got a large professional print of it done, maybe a picture that will get walled!

The next photograph is something I entitled on Flickr, ‘stormy sea’. I will explain all in a moment, first, the photograph:

This was a ‘hidden gem’ in ways, when I looked through the photographs, in the respect that I had forgotten taking it, normally I find I remember almost everything I have taken a photo of on a roll of film, so it was a nice surprise to find something I like, but didn’t remember on the roll.

The reason behind the title is slightly confusing, even to myself. Basically, I view the lines and shapes in the photograph as something from a stormy sea, you have that fence at the bottom, an incredible shape that looks like it could be a rolling wave, and then the other fence line, the roof line etc, and to me it all appears like waves; then, you have the crack down the wall, coming from the window, which is like a lightening bolt from the sky.

Wait, it’s gonna get more confusing:

What it really reminded me of, was an animation I feel like I have seen of a stormy sea, but made out of unnatural objects, like cogs and clockwork kind of objects. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film, ‘the illusionist’ but there is a scene when certain documents are found, and there is massive elaborate cog-work inside things, and imagining those spinning is how I imagine this. Also, to make it more confusing, you know the animations for a film production company before a film? Like the one with the long straight road, and then there’s the one with the lighthouse, it reminds me of one of those too.

All in all, I have probably confused you, but I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone at all would be able to understand my thinking. I’m going to scour YouTube and Vimeo for an animation video that explains what I’m trying to say. Possibly.

Anywho, so, I like the photograph for that kind of dual meaning, but I also like the simplicity and the abstract nature of it, it’s just one I really like.

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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little blarb on the photographs, any thoughts are welcome via email, or just in the comments on the blog, also feel free to click on the photographs and visit them on Flickr!

You may often see photographs, or rather pairs of photographs which just click together. The decision making is often a tough one for photographers, and I will go over the ways in which to go into making what is often referred to as a ‘diptych’, ie. two photos in one image, or two in one frame if that’s how you work!