This Blog has moved...

You can now follow my irregular meanderings at this new location: www.andyhallphoto.com/blog/ Well, after Google dumped FTP publishing a few months back, I decided to migrate to another platform. So it's goodbye Blogger, hello Wordpress.

The Woods

We sometimes hid in these woods and played on the lethal homemade rope swings rather than completing the cross country runs inflicted on us by the sadistic games teachers. (Another shot from the 'new' XA)

The Fellowship

The rather bleak scene at what I suppose was technically my 'local' when I lived back in the west country.

Forever Film

Just had first few rolls back from the 'new' XA rangefinder. Results with the flash are a bit wonky but all in all, it's still a pretty awesome little camera. I'll be uploading a whole bunch of snowy nonsense onto my Flickr stream later this week.

The XA

After months of dithering, I have finally picked up an original Olympus XA - the much respected rangefinder version of the XA series. There are lots of resources about these excellent cameras online but for a start here is the photoethnography one. I've been shooting with the fixed focus version – the XA2 – for a while now, and the quality of the optics on these tiny point and shoot cameras is amazing. 

Admittedly I carried a Lomo LC-A around for years, but they've now become such a cult item that they retail at close to £300! So in my opinion any aspiring 'street photographer' would be better off picking up an XA2 (which has almost identical fixed focus zones / AE mode as the Lomo) on ebay for a tenth of that price. I know people dig the Lomo's vignette-ing and light fall-off but seriously... £300 for a now largely plastic camera built in China? The XAs give you all the camera-in-pocket convenience and spontaneity but with a hugely superior lens.

Famous Five

My good friend Marcus recently gave me his original Canon 5D to experiment with (an extremely generous gesture obviously!). We had a decent EF 85mm prime lens at the studio so I've been enjoying putting it through its paces. This shot and the ones from Nick's show were all taken with it.

Patagonia Through a Pinhole

I took a few shots at the launch party of Nick Livesey's photography exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society recently. The show is comprised of a selection of black and white pinhole photographs (that's the MDF camera above) depicting the remote terrain of the Chilean landscape. More details at Nick's website.