Russia in Black and White

In the midst of virulent heat waves and toxic smoke clouds I travelled to Moscow to create a short project on life in the city and country in modern Russia. The work starts in Moscow in the dense south of the city and documents a journey north through the suburbs into a rural Russia not more than 300km away over a couple of weeks, the subjects and settings are personal but the insight universal.

These images were captured entirely on an iPhone 3GS with no post production or editing, instead of the original camera app I used the "Classic Toy" app with an overexposed black and white film preset. As an SLR user it was challenging to use a mobile for this project, especially with an app that disables the autofocus properties of the iPhone camera but it was an exciting constriction and pushed me to think about composition and context more than I usually would with my Canon cameras.

Nik based HDR

Under the mistaken belief that me publishing my latest HDR would violate my NDA (it doesn't apparently) - I pulled a load of stuff from the last few photo sets, I have now uploaded them into this post so you can see my efforts with Nik's new HDR tool, which I rate tremendously, the fluid and slick interface allows for great results in minutes, a great plugin for a variety of packages I have had the most success with the Photoshop version. First two are from Amsterdam, second two from Stockholm.

Stockholm

I managed to grab a few shots in Stockholm over the weekend, I love Stockholm, Liza told me she fell in love with it when she was young despite only being in the city for a few hours, its wonderfully laid back with a rich compact old town at its centre and museum filled islands in the east.