ANALOGUE WONDERLAND CHALLENGE
Yes, really!
What originally started as a challenge by Paul from Analogue Wonderland to Sandeep (read the full origins story here) it has now become something that is taking on a life of its own. An out of the blue message from Tom Rayfield on Twitter, invited me to be the fourth member of the challenge, although I had no idea what it would entail…
When I received the camera from Tom, it came with a roll of Lomography Lomo Purple (along with some little treats) and a simple instruction. “I know you don’t shoot much colour, so I would like you to shoot some portraits or street with this roll of Lomo Purple”.
The camera is a plastic point and shoot, single-use camera. Although, once the pre-loaded film has been shot, it easy enough to reload it with a film of your choice. Simple in theory, but even after following the instructions on the Lomography website, I still wasn’t entirely sure I’d loaded it correctly… However, despite not knowing if I was actually taking any pictures, I headed into Watford Town on my lunch break to shoot some street. Well, I took some pictures whilst in the street. Not sure if that counts.
As you can see, it’s little bit different to the Pentax 67 I usually shoot with…
There’s something quite liberating about using a simple camera like this because you can’t get bogged down in the technicalities, but it’s also make’s me realise that I enjoy the technicalities. I don’t mind admitting that I struggled working in this way, but I also enjoy doing different things so I did the best I could.
After sending the roll off to AG Photolab for development, I was surprised that I actually had nearly a full roll of exposures. I’ve included a selection of 9 images below which I think just about meat Tom’s brief, as well as demonstrating the type of results Lomo Purple can yield. It’s very different from my favourite Ilford Delta 400, but embracing variety and change is good. Right?
Big thanks to Tom for asking me to take part, and to Paul from Analogue Wonderland for starting it all in the first place.
I have now passed the camera on to Stig of the Dump, along with a roll of Metropolis Film (purchased from Analogue Wonderland of course) and I look forward to seeing how he gets on with it :)
A series of images from a Chateau in France using a Hasselblad X-Pan with Ilford Photo HP5 film