My ex-girlfriend had just left me, and I was alone, looking for friends and a hobby to take my time up.
I was browsing Ebay, and came across a Pentax K10D with a kit lens for an abysmally cheap price.
I lowballed the fuck out of the guy, £40, and it was mine. My very own professional camera.
The photos you're about to see are the sum of 4-5ish months of me living in Glasgow City while doing my degree.
Out of all the times I've ever held a camera in my hands, these were the happiest photos I've taken.
The first picture I properly took with this camera. My friend had just helped me set it up, and was showing me how to use a DSLR. I hadn't even cleaned the lens or the camera well, I just was desperate to try out my new cool toy. Pointed, shot, and there it was. I would later learn I was god-awful at editing and needed to work on an actual workflow.
Walking back in the evening to my accomodation, beautiful sunset. I remember just enjoying a goddamn walk for once in my life. No craziness, no friends, just me and the camera. At the time my photography style was primarily, point, shoot, tone curve slightly, and enjoy results. I have no idea why it worked at the time, but by GOD did it work.
Rottenrow is a personally underused area of mine. I don't go there nearly enough, and it's a shame. Used to be a old maternity hospital, my ex-girlfriend's dad told me he had an office that overlooked it being destroyed, and turned into the park that it is now. This was the same evening that I accidentally downed one of his "Sipping Whiskies", and spent half an hour curled up in a ball trying not to throw up while my ex consoled me.
Now THIS was somewhere I went a lot. Not many people use it, but there's a small space behind the stairs at the Union, and it was perfect. Close enough to the bar for drinks, quiet enough that we always had a space to sit, we used to use it all the time. The perfect place to discuss sports, politics, and most importantly, how much we hated our lectures.
My friend came to me in need. Insecure about his relationship, he just wanted to hang out.
NEVER
I took his ass around Glasgow to cheer him up with a photography trip. See, the sky had turned this gorgeous purple, lit up by the clouds taking colour. I wasn't going to waste an opportunity like this. Funny thing is, out of all that evening, this is the only picture not taken by me. My friend asked for the camera, and he took a couple shots of the moon, with these beautiful streaks of colour. Turns out he had a decent eye for it.
I went through a bad mental break about a couple months after I broke up with my ex. No idea why, but I was confused, I wasn't eating properly, and I was miserable. Ended up staying at home a couple days, where I could properly rest and eat a salad for once. I took this picture one of those days, I don't remember. I remember the sky was beautiful, and that I was going to be okay.
Before going to the top floor of the Union, I thought they must have been these imposing corridors, with security and reverence. Turns out they're just offices. Nice ones as well. I was doing work with an action group, printing off some posters on a day off. I had my camera with me, and asked if I could take advantage of the view for some nice photos. They said yes, and I delivered. This one in particular is facing towards the West End of Glasgow.
This is a portrait of one of my friends after a long walk and talk around town about her life. For this picture, I intentionally went for a different approach to how I usually do photographs. I underdid exposure, and manually corrected everything in post, which brought up this beautiful noise. For context, this is my style of photography if needed to sum into one picture. The emphasis is on the background, with the sun streaking rays on the ground, peering past the building and the clouds. It almost captures that vintage film effect that everyone is looking for, though modernised for a DSLR.
This was me, again, trying to hone in on that style I discovered. High noise, overblown, emphasis on warm tones. The lens flare was not intentional, but adds so much. It might not be the best composed picture, but I was building up my skill, and figuring out what I liked making. I think this was closer towards exams as well, so I was doing anything to keep my mind off things.
Exam season. I realised this year that I have a certain way of revising. I genuinely go insane. I don't mean like the Joker or anything, I'm not a fucking incel. I mean I go through what I like to call "exam psychosis" I basically shut down, get really depressed, eat and feel like shit, and be generally sad. It works though? I have no idea how but I do well enough that the psychosis method works for me. This generally reflected on the photos I did at the time. Either incredibly moody, or trying to be uplifting. You can tell which one I was going for this time.
Holy fucking shit, we've gone vertical. This photo was the beginning of me finally understanding how to take "good" pictures. Good composition, the eye travels naturally towards the rocks, and moves up, noting the almost still reflections of the trees in the process. Not to mention, I love the colours. My cheat code is to max out the Vibrance setting, and adjust Saturation accordingly on whatever looks right. I'm not exactly sure, but the Vibrance makes everything feel less washed out, and really brings out those Film-Era colours in the sensor.
Another one of my "mental health" walks, I travelled to the Glasgow Necropolis for the first time. My inner emo was screaming to be freed, so I grabbed the camera and a water bottle and headed out for the day. This is one of two photos I'll show for this collection, and the only time I will ever take a candid of people without their consent. It was something about the way they were hunched over, you can't tell what they're doing in the slightest, you can only take details from the environment and guess. My style, again, is slowly being refined. These people are the subject, but they're cast in shade, not important, compared to the entirety of the scene.
Another one of my favourite photographs. This is the second of two photos from the Necropolis, towards the back, past all the tourists. If you want to go see it yourself, you want to go over the big hill, and in the gap towards the second, continue straight and you should walk past it. This walk was mainly about composition. How do I learn composition while knowing fuck-all about composition? The answer is a lot of trial and error, taking as many photos as possible, and when I see one I do like, I figure out why it looks good. For this one, it works because there's a solid line your eyeballs can track when viewing it, from the left side, right at the back of the graves, to the front. Then you can peruse each and every grave, looking for detail on the fronts, or looking at how the shadows cast on the grass. It's a good damn picture.
Mother's day. My mum wanted a nice family trip to Turnberry Beach, a family favourite since no one goes there and it's completely empty. Also since Trump ruined the area, it's been increasingly easier to find a parking space since we cannot be fucked getting a bus. This was a nice relaxing day, nothing happened, nothing broke or went wrong, just a day spent reading on the beach. This photo was of the grass on one of the sand dunes, and this is about the time I finally understood editing photos.
There isn't really much to talk about with this one, it's just a nice picture of the trees on the way back. No time for composition, just point, shoot, and edit. Still, I like this one especially, it's my phone's background.
This is just a beautiful fucking photo. The grain, the colour, the way your eye naturally gravitates towards that swirling red mass in the centre. It looks like a painting. And to be honest, this was a random day where the sky looked nice. I was eating dinner and watching definitely legal obtained TV shows, and just went to take a picture of the sky. I've realised now that the best photos I take I don't really search for, they just come for me. It's why I bring my camera everywhere like a dumbass.
Oh god, it happened again. Be prepared for CSS hell. This is going to hurt. So this was me testing out a new lens I bought for about £25, this 135mm Prime. Why the fuck I bought it I have no idea, but it's become one of my favourite lenses. The ability to take these incredibly intimate photos is great, but only when you know where and when to be. This photo is beautiful, the colours are cool and muted, and looks incredibly pretty, it doesn't look over-edited either. At the beginning I was eager to edit everything, change every curve and turn every knob. Now I understood, the less I did to my pictures, everything feels more deliberate. In it's right place.
Dolores Ibárruri was a inspirational speaker during the Spanish Civil War. Her legacy lies today in the form of La Pasionaria along the Clyde. I did some research into her for this collection. "Better to die on your feet, than live forever on your knees.". Turns out those are her words. I think this photo does her justice enough. Quite a couple Glasgwegians went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and they should be commemorated as such. This was taken at pitch darkness at maximum aperture, with only a street lamp to provide lighting. Rest in peace, I suppose.
As we get towards the end of the collection, these photos feel more melancholy. Like at Portban, towards the end of my first year of engineering, I started to do some soul searching. Some actual soul-searching. Not just the bare bones, "I should be a better person and go to the gym more." kind. I don't know. I could say I almost felt lost, and was trying to recollect why I was in the here and now in the first place. This was a group trip to Glasgow Green for my parody podcast which I will not name here because it's just too darn funny. We ended up getting side-tracked and entered an very interesting alleyway just to find out it led to a car park.
I don't know why she did that. She just did that for some reason. This was taken in Glasgow Green park, on the one day where I actually felt pretty good about myself. I had just been in this loop of studying and revising and sleeping and eating and NOTHING FUCKING ELSE I SWEAR TO GOD THAT LIBRARY LAYOUT IS ENGRAVED INTO MY FUCKING MIND anyway this was the one day I had out to just relax before my final exam. An actual, time out with friends. :p
The day after my final exam. I was tired. This shot was taken while on a walk with me and my friend, where we walked to Kelvingrove Park near Glasgow University. Honestly, I don't remember what I did the night before, probably drinking like a First-Year, but still. It felt like the calm after a very, very large storm. This was taken when I stumbled down a hill halfway, and tried to focus a lens against lens I couldn't see. An incredibly funny moment, with my soles covered in dirt.
I got that feeling again.
I have an idea what causes it. It's a stop-gap between periods in my life.
Okay just hear me out, I don't mean to be pretentious or anything, I do wholeheartedly believe this.
Every time something major happens in my life, this feeling just comes around me. This overwhelming, divine fucking numbness.
I still can't explain it.
All I can do is show you. Just staring out into that distance, watching the midges fly about, and the sun caress their wings.
The summer air. The quiet hum of conversation of the people around you. The appreciation that everything around you is alive.
It's something else.