Lens-Artists Challenge #409: Best Ever Images

Lens-Artists Challenge #409: Best Ever Images

I've been a bit lax with the Blog, and with the Lens-Artists Challenge just lately. We're on holiday at the moment, and aside from reviewing and reading new posts each day — it's like the morning paper — actually posting something is not that easy. Well not the way I seem to do it. I've also been taking a 'break' from the Challenge since I have so many (SO many) cameras that I've yet to try out. My draft folder still has something like 30 projects in it and I need to get a move on.

So anyways, this week it's Steve Hyde's turn to host the Challenge. Steve is an accomplished Blogger, and a guest host, and theme is a banger: 'Best Ever Images' (https://stevehyde.blog/2026/08/15/lens-artists-challenge-409-best-ever-images/). It's a 'banger' because I don’t think I've ever taken a good image in my life, so I've certainly got my work cut out for me. Steve writes, 'All I ask [all? LOL] is for you to submit up to five images with a sentence or two about them and the stories behind them. I enjoy reading the narrative behind any image'. So, here goes ...

We start off with a quite recent photograph, a pile of ropes on the beach next to a wooden fence under a blue sky filled with wispy clouds. It's nothing special, but what makes me really pleased with this one is that it was taken with a Zeiss Ikon Contessa with shutter speeds that I knew were way out of tolerance. I guessed that the speed was about 1/100s (though the shutter speed was 'set' at 1/200s), set the aperture to f22, and nailed it. This is also from a piece of Harman Phoenix I film, and it came out great.

This next one I've posted before on the Challenge,  but I never tire of it. It's from our beach in Meco a few years ago. Most of the time the Atlantic water is quite cold and is OK if you're of a sturdy constitution, which I am not. But sometimes the water becomes warmer and is great for a paddle. Unfortunately, it also brings in the jellyfish, and this particular year also a Portuguese Man'o'War. I know to keep well clear of them, but I also had an urge to make images of these poor cast ashore souls. And this one I shot just as a small wave picked it up. Love it. Sadly, this particular Man'o'War ended up in the plastic bag of the local 'Baywatch'.

Also from our holidays, though this time on the trip home, is a view from the Oriente railway station in Lisbon. This one is of one of a pair of striking residential buildings that overlook the river in Lisbon. Of course, they're mostly occupied by rich foreigners now, as Portuguese are being priced out of their own capital. This one was taken with Lomochrome Turquoise on a Minox GL 35 csmera and was my first attempt with this colour shifting emulsion. Since then, I've been smitten. 

Now we're getting to the 'fun' stuff. This one is an example of databending. What I did here was take a perfectly good image and edited it in Audacity. Yes, I imported an image file into a sound editor and applied some audio filters to it. I wouldn't ever suggest you listen to the sounds that it produces (I joke with my better half that it sounds like Coldplay — it doesn't really) but it creates some wonderful visual effects.

I like panoramas, so I was stoked a while ago to pick up a Horizon 202 panoramic camera at a bargain price. It was untested, and has some flaws, but aside from a little wobble, it works perfectly. I also like redscaling film. I've done my own, but in this case I was feeling lazy, so loaded the Horizon with the then-newly released Harman Red. If you're not familiar, redscaling film is when you reverse load the film in the camera so you're taking the photograph through the support layer and not directly on to the emulsion. This image is of one of my favourite abandoned structures near Costa Nova in Portugal.

Lastly, there's the header image of this post. This is one of my best ever images of a steel footbridge in Aveiro. It's a favourite scene of mine, and when I can I always try to take a few photographs of this bridge. In this instance it was taken with a crappy little Samsung Digimax U-CA3 digital camera from the early 2000s. Whenever I get a new digital camera, especially one with a CCD sensor, I alway test the infrared sensitivity of the camera, and in this case the Samsung delivers in spades. This is an example of what I call a 'digital aerochrome', like the old infrared colour film produced by Kodak, made with the camera set to monochrome mode and using colour and infrared filters. 

So this is a brief tour of my 'best ever' images, though if the Challenge was set next week, I'm sure the selection would be different (there's no images from the Canon Powershot A80 with its failing sensor, for example). Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the following week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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