Charles Binns

Born in 1965 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Charles is a landscape photographic artist now based in Hertfordshire. With a Spanish mother he spent much of his holidays in Spain and got into photography to record his travels.

He draws a lot of inspiration from the early English landscape artists of the 18th and 19th Century. In those days, artists documented the changing landscape and he likes to think that he is doing the same with his photogrpahy, for future generations. In addition however, he is interested in Macro-photography as he is drawn to the textures and the shapes that can be seen when looking at things close up.

Whilst not averse to digital cameras, he likes to use a Holga camera. This is a simple Camera that relies heavily on the choice of film and the framing of the subject to create the image. With only one shutter speed and one aperture, it surely must be a challenge to use.

Holga cameras are, apparently, prone to create quite a lot of vignetting, blur and 'light leaks' and this can clearly be seen in a couple of the macro images indicated hereafter.

 The grainy quality of this image works really well as it adds to a the blur effect. Looking at the edges you can clearly see the vignetting of the image too.  Hence one woudl assume thatthis was taken with a Holga.

The focal point sits right on the stamen of the flower and the soft lite draws you this too.

The image is 'dark' and velvetty, rich and warm.

Centre stage, two bright red berries, contrasting heavily against the green leaves.

I love this picture, which I haard a guess was also taken with a Holga camera as it has many of the qualities of the red flower at the top.

A soft texture is created by the blur and yet again there is vignetting of the image, drawing our eye away from the edges and into the middle of the image.

 The contrasting yellow leaves and the brown background in this image give a simple look.

I am not sure what lense was used to take thisimage, but it must have been taken with a very wide aperture. the tip of the rose is in focus, but the remainder is out of focus.

With the light background the dark red/black rose really stands out.