Leaf blur

I did a lot of B+W photography when I was young. I converted my bedroom to a dark room. I could not tell if my eyes were open or closed. At first, sleeping was difficult, but once I got used to the environment, I could sleep for England.

I had an old second hand Russian Zenit enlarger which fitted in a green case, which also acted as the base. I did all the usual tricks with my Praktica MTL3, trailing car lights, rotating star shots, even getting up before dawn, to shoot gravestones in the gloomy mist. I played with all the darkroom tricks, my favorite effect being the Sabatier. I went through reams of grade 5 paper and spent hundreds of hours, flicking lights on and off, to get that crisp outline.

So, today, I decided to get arty and explore some of the effects available using Photoshop. Remembering back to the olden days, we are definitely spoiled. One might even say, what is the point, you cannot improve on nature and you would be correct, but I enjoyed myself. The hardest part was choosing which of the distortions of natures canvas to blip.

Dave