Week 4 – A bit of decay

My plan for week 4 was to photograph a derelict car dealership in Lancaster close to my home town of Kendal. So I loaded up the Hasselblad with Kodak Portra 400 – I love Portra for subdued winter colour photography especially for the gray winters that we get up here in the north of England.

The weather was meant to be subdued and cloudy so I thought that would work well. I only had one time slot and when that arrived the sun was shining so the images changed and there was more opportunity for high contrast and geometric shapes.

There was also a load of Graffiti which just added to the sense of dereliction and decay of the whole complex.

I tried to focus on some rust for the texture which wasn’t a great success in a square format. But there were also a bunch of puddles which gave some great reflections opportunities, again with geometric shapes thrown in to the mix.

I developed the film at home using a Tetenal C41 kit that is 4 months old and just about coming to an end of it’s life span but has worked well for me. This kit was my first go at home developing of colour but it has been good fun and providing you make sure that you don’t spill the Blix solution it is very similar to B&W processing just a higher temperature.

I will definitely be going back to this site as I still think that on a flat cloudy day with even lighting there will be another set of shots that can be squeezed out of the site.

Next week – I am off the London for a few days so some shots from the big city and then some urban decay in a fading sea resort down the coast. I’ll take the Contax T2 loaded with Portra 800 so hopefully it will not be too sunny.