As I mentioned in my last 30/30 post, I travelled during university holidays, shooting and learning photography as I went. The results from this era were not amazing but I was developing a reasonable eye for an image in terms of composition.
What I tended to lack though was the ability to spot good light. I also had a habit of shooting too much in the middle of the day and ending up with heavy shadows and bland definition. I relied on a polariser too much in saturating colours and to make matters worse frequently overdid the polarisation. But sometimes images worked and I could see why. If I look back on the images of places I visited I kick myself at not shooting at different times of day for better results.
Town square, Turkey, 1993.
Over the years I have come to see the main ingredients in a good photo as combinations of colour, light, texture and form. This image from Turkey shows a pleasing composition of the characterful man at ease in front of the camera; there is warm evening light, complemented by the colours of the shirt and hat. The image has interesting textures of cloth and skin. The curve of the back frames the left side and leads the eye around the image nicely with the hat framing the top of the image.
What should be a given in the list but what is missing here is correct focus. I have not focused on the eyes which lets the image down. I always regretted this and learnt a valuable lesson; particularly useful in the many years of portrait and wedding photography I undertook in due course!
The low light resulted in a large aperture which naturally helps with portraiture in throwing the background out of focus. I think I was pushing the limits of hand holding with this as well given the slowness of velvia slide film. A world away from today and being able to change ISO at a whim and shoot up to ISOmany000s.
Simply shooting, reviewing and learning was good practise though of course and I recall that, with a birthday in June, presents invariable revolved around kit and financial contributions towards film for summer travels. Shooting and developing a roll of velvia or provia - still around today amazingly - cost over £10 (more than 30p per image). I also really liked having prints made which, from slide films, meant cibachromes ) or poor machine prints from copied negatives. Cibachromes were spectacularly expensive weighing in at two pints of beer per 10x8 print. Great sacrifices were made but I still have a collection of mediocre but eductional prints retaining all the qualities of the day they were made. In hindsight though it was cheaper than paying for official photography education. I think a vast proportion of my spending in those days would have been photographic. Plus ca change ;)