A Sunday Photographic Stroll In The City Centre Circa 1989

I was fortunate to have been able to do Photography in my time at Willows High, thanks to the effort of one teacher who helped set up a dark room for use by the pupils. It had the works, a number of enlargers, red-lights, chemical trays and a great mentor, Mr. Coleman, whom taught us how to use it all alongside his normal job as a French teacher. I fell for photography and processing in a big way. As part of my Art A-Level I spent a lot of time working in the dark room learning to process and get some nice looking Black and White prints out of there.

At the same time I was learning to use an SLR camera, I’d quite often go off and take photos around town, forever trying to master depth of field, exposure and composition. I liked to shoot with the wide-angle lens most of the time, and really like a red filter on to highlight the clouds. As a result, a lot of the stuff I shot was under exposed unless it was shot in bright sunlight. I really like the contrast of bright sun on shadow in buildings, it’s always been something that’s moved me in art and something I tried to capture in my photos.

A few times I strolled into the city centre early on a Sunday when the streets were quiet, and shot the buildings. A lot of what I shot never made it past the contact strip, only a choice one or two would get the full development treatment. I recently went through what remaining negatives I have from that period and scanned in the lot. There’s a few nice photos in there (that I’m pleased with at least) and I’ve collected them here to share for you. Sadly a lot of my negatives disappeared, I had many more that I chucked years ago, not thinking I could ever get a decent image from them. If only I’d know how good technology got, I might have hung on to them!

This would be around 1989, and as you can see a there’s some blemishes, not everything’s in focus and there’s scratches and dust on the photos. There’s a few buildings that have gone now, long flattened and built over. I’ve also done a little bit of photoshopping to either lift the exposure and crop things a bit nicer. They’re not necessarily great photos, but to me an interesting record of the mood and look of Cardiff back in the late 1980s.