Helen Stephenson's Rochester Pictures (Christmas Fair, 2001)

The trip to Rochester was organised only in the sense that it took place on Sunday 2nd December, and that those who arrived at 10am could meet up for coffee before going and doing their own thing. We made our own way to Rochester, which meant that arrival times could be flexible, and as I was interested in getting some night time shots, and was also interested in having a Sunday morning lie-in, I timed my arrival in Rochester for mid afternoon, shortly before the light levels started to drop.

After driving in a circuit around Rochester and coming to the conclusion that parking really wasn't available anywhere, I drove back across the River Medway to Strood and was lucky enough to squeeze into the Civil Centre Car Park there.

My first picture of the afternoon was taken before I left the car park: there was a good view across the river towards the castle and the cathedral, and the ferris wheel in the fairground set up in the castle grounds was clearly visible in front of the cathedral. Here I used my Tamron 85-210 at the 210mm end, added a 2x converter, and screwed on a fairly drastic neutral density filter, plus a polariser for good measure, and captured the ferris wheel in motion with the cathedral in the background.

I arrived in Rochester with film in three cameras. I didn't use the black & white camera at all, but I did use the Fuji 1600ASA print film loaded in my Pentax KM for some people pictures near the High Street. The film isn't finished yet, so some of those pictures may appear here at a later date.

The majority of my pictures were taken with my Pentax MZ-M, which was initially loaded with Jessops own brand 200ASA print film.

I very quickly decided that the crowds in the High Street weren't my thing, and as Stephen was in complete agreement with me, we moved towards the castle grounds, where a funfair was operating.

One of the rides immediately caught my eye, as I felt that it had photographic "UFO" possibilities. Here it is stationary and you can see the chains that the chairs are suspended from just hanging down. The picture on the left is a straight representation of what I saw, while the one on the right involved inverting all the colours and then doing a colour shift until they were close to their original hues, but were brighter in different places. This image was then blended with the original to form a more interesting picture.

After capturing the still image, I went for a time exposure of the ride while it was turning. The chairs on their chains swung up and to the sides of the ride, giving a "beam" effect, and the lights joined up. This gave quite a good "flying saucer" effect on film, but it looked even better when I inverted the colours and then shifted them back close to their original hues, as has been done in the picture on the right.

Having satisfied myself that I had enough pictures of this ride, I turned my attention to the ferris wheel. I started with the straight snapshot while the wheel was stationary to allow people to get on:

Next on the agenda was the time exposure:

As I used a tripod for both of these shots, and only moved the aperture ring on my lens between taking them, they matched up exactly, so I blended them together for an image of the ferris wheel which included an impression of motion:

While photographing the ferris wheel, my Jessops 200ASA print film was completed and the Pentax MZ-M rewound it automatically and I was able to open up the back of the camera and remove the film without taking the camera off the tripod. I reloaded with 200ASA Kodak Elite Chrome and took several more shots of the ferris wheel from exactly the same spot, but decided when they all came back that the pictures off the print film were superior. This was mainly because the light was fading fast and the background on most of the slides was black, and I preferred the deep blue sky I caught on the print film.

As the light faded, the floodlights came on and illuminated the nearby cathedral spire:

With almost complete darkness, I turned my camera on some of the other fairground rides, and the crowds of people milling around them. I think the picture with the rides stationary actually looks better than the one where I managed to get a time exposure with all three rides turning simultaneously. Most of the people have "disappeared" from this one, just leaving the few who happened to be standing still, probably watching their children riding the rides. The horses on the middle merry go round have disappeared almost completely, leaving just a very faint ghostly trail. The cathedral spire is just about visible in the top right of these pictures, but owing to the brightness of the fairground rides, the cathedral spire didn't show up as well as I'd hoped for.

Some close-ups of the ferris wheel then seemed like a good idea. I did try some hand held shots using my 1600ASA camera, and if any of them are any good, they will appear here later when I finish the film. Here's the best close-up slide of a couple on the ferris wheel:

After this, we felt that we'd taken all the fairground shots we wished to, and decided to head down to the River Medway, as I was hoping for some floodlit bridge shots. When we got there, we found it was too dark for the shots I wanted, so we headed for the bridge. I still had my camera on the tripod just in case I saw anything else I found interesting, and the stone lions at the ends of the bridge took my eye. I really should have put the black & white camera onto the tripod for this, but felt a bit lazy and stuck with the colour slides. Due to the lighting, the portrait of this stone lion makes him look more like a gilded lion!

After the lion, I pointed the camera along the bridge, which had Christmas decorations on the girders. I don't think the ambient light really improved this shot and I might get a blue correction filter one day and go back and try this again.

That took me to the 35th shot on the roll of film. I decided to waste shot 36 and operated the mid-roll rewind and unloaded the film when I got home. The next morning, I took it to Vic Odden at London Bridge, who turns around E6 process slides in 36 hours. I picked up the completed slides on Wednesday morning, which gave me a day to look at them and select anything I wanted to use for the camera club outings print competition, for which "handing in" was the following evening. Ironically, although I selected the lion, I subsequently withdrew it because I had enough material without it, and the lion will probably be entered in the outings slides competition later in the season.