Picture This

I'm not a photographer and I don't pretend to be. I leave that to my brother Si who is a photographer and a very good one too. You can go look at some of his stuff here or here.

 

However, I usually have a camera about my person and, every so often, I get a shot that pleases me immensely. I thought I'd share a few today. Not unsurprisingly perhaps, most are from my native Cornwall.

 

The damned place is just so photogenic.

 

Oh, and here's an early mention of a photography event that I'm speaking at on 13th September in London. Birdie looks like it's going to be a great fun day. Do come along!

All shots (c) Stevyn Colgan and taken on a Canon EOS 550D.

The Lost America of Troy Paiva

Photographer Troy Paiva spends much of his working life standing in the pitch darkness of middle America, his camera locked onto some desolate run-down building or abandoned car wreck. Using only the moon and starlight and a long exposure of up to four minutes, he captures the crumbling remains of buildings, cars and caravans. And, while the aperture is open, he uses flashes with coloured filters to add areas of interest to the exposure. He calls it 'painting with light'. The results are eerie and quite beautiful.

Paiva's low budget high impact technique has attracted a legion of fans (and imitators) but his work remains unique. You can see a lot more images at his Lost America site or on his Flickr stream:

Cathedrals of Music

Macro photographs taken inside musical instruments by Bjoern Ewers. Aren't they staggering?

The eerie car photography of Peter Lippmann

There's something poetic and beautiful about these images of cars slowly becoming part of the planet from which their metals, glass and plastics originally came. It's from a series by Peter Lippmann called Paradise Parking. You can see them all, plus more of his photographs at his website here. The Women of History series is simply stunning.

The Creepy Portrait Art Challenge - The Results

So here they are ... the weird and the wonderful, the insane and the unhinged; the fantastic photos that were submitted to me for the Creepy Portrait Art Challenge. As you know, I wanted at least 12 separate eccentric family portraits for a book project I'm currently working on. Sadly, there were very few submissions but those I did get in were SUPERB, as you'll see. I intend to use them all. We kick off with this slice of scary pie from Andy Kerr:

Then we have this from Cheryl Lancaster:

An uncomfortable portrait by Phillip Groombridge:

And Rob (@gigerpunk) sent me this image of manly splendour:

Finally, a veritable cornucopia of mad images from the damaged minds of Mo McFarland and Caroline V (@amberprophet):

They really are brilliant, every single one. And deeply disturbing for all the right reasons. Thank you people. Magnificent effort all round.

One final dollop of Creepy Inspiration

A few more weird and occasionally inexplicable old photos from my collection to spur you on to great things:

Get snapping!

Final Call for the Creepy Portrait Art Challenge

Just two days to go in my final (for some time anyway) art challenge. For this one, I've asked people to create a surreal or downright creepy postcard of the kind that seemed to proliferate around Halloween and Christmas in the days when black and white photography was the norm. Among the genuine examples I've found online are gems like these:

I've had some amazing submissions so far and will post them all on December 1st. All you need to do is send me the photo - I can do the ageing and distressing etc. No prizes on offer this time except that I'm 2/3rds of the way through writing a comic novel that requires photos of mad and eccentric relatives throughout. This seemed the perfect way to get those portraits and for people to see their name in a book as one of the contributors.

So there you go. You have until Midnight on the 30th. Get snapping!