Fujichrome Velvia transparency film isn't the first choice of emulsion that springs to mind when contemplating a portrait photo shoot, but there was nothing pre-planned about this image and when an opportunity like this presents itself you use whatever you have to hand at the time. Life's so much more convenient in the new age of digital capture!
The opportunity in question occured when my wife Liz and I were visiting our son and daughter-in-law over in Ireland, and we'd taken a day to have a look round Dublin, with Sarah, our daughter-in-law, acting as tour guide.
When we arrived at the iconic General Post Office in O'Connell Street we were shown the bullet holes left from the 1916 uprising, still visible in the pillars at the front of the building.
In such a historically significant place I wanted to take a photo that was more than just a factual record of the view, so Sarah agreed to pose for me against the bullet scarred pillar, providing an image that conveys both the old and new in this most vibrant of cities.
Shooting on Velvia resulted in a horribly saturated transparency, with almost orange skin tones that were completely out of kilter with the historical significance of the image, but thankfully a scan of the original film and a subsequent conversion to monochrome in Adobe Lightroom gave me the mood I was after conveying when I took the original exposure.
Filename - girl 03.jpg
Camera - Canon A1
Lens - 50mm prime
Exposure - Not known
Location - Dublin, Ireland
This image - 511x800px JPEG
Original - Velvia transparency
Conversion - Epson Scan @ 2400dpi
Comments - Tripod used to prevent camera movement during exposure.
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