About the photographs

All the photographs presented on this site were taken by and are the copyright of Charles Girdham.

All images are presented full frame and have not been cropped. Occasionally images were rotated slightly to correct distracting misaligned horizontals and verticals. Image manipulations have been confined to exposure corrections, white balance corrections (in the case of some of the nighttime shots, and a few others) and in the case of film scans, some efforts to eliminate dust and scratches. Images have not otherwise been manipulated. All the distortions seen for example as regards colour in some of the nighttime shots were achieved using the properties of the camera itself rather than post-manipulation (in this case long exposures and reliance on the inherent properties of the camera CCD to produce colour shifts).

Why?

Although photography has been presenting interpretations of the truth subjectively rather than objectively since its invention (and claims to the contrary are sophistry at best) this particular photograher takes the stance of only making images of the world as it was when the shutter was pressed... With the advent of digital image manipulation programs (of which Adobe Photoshop is the leader and standard), "anything" is possible and an image needs to bear as little or as much relation to objects in the real world as the photographer desires. This very sophistication in the ability to manipulate photographic images, far exceeding anything possible in a traditional darkroom, in many senses prompts in this photographer at least, a desire to achieve some versimillitude without resorting to tidying up those little details that mar the aesthetics : the light not being quite right, the person on the left not looking in quite the right direction, some litter in the lower right etc. etc. Where to stop? Probably best not to start.

OK polemic over.
Could be regarded more as an aesthetic statement.
Anyway...