After finishing my St Abbs shoot, I still had a few frames left on my roll of Ilford Delta 100. So, on a cold February afternoon I took my new camera to Dryburgh Abbey in the Scottish Borders, the final resting place of Sir Walter Scott. The quiet, weathered ruins felt perfect for slow photography. And yes, I was going to name this page SlowGraphy, sadly it’s already used for a rather interesting project.
The late afternoon sun suited Delta 100 well, with its relatively low contrast retaining highlights and bringing some details out of the shadows wasn’t difficult. One feature on the Ondu Rise was especially useful here. The camera has not just one but three pinholes allowing for shifting the centre of the image up or down, similarly to what a tilt-shift lens does in traditional photography. This let me keep the towering stone arches in frame without tilting the camera, preserving the sense of scale and perspective. I think that some vignetting is a small trade off for keeping vertical lines straight.
One of my favorite shots from the day captures snowdrops beginning to bloom near the abbey’s former entrance. I set my tripod low to the ground, metering for both highlights and shadows before averaging the exposure. The result was just as I had hoped – soft, detailed, and full of that quiet winter atmosphere. Here you can see the severe vignetting towards the top of the frame as I opened the shifted pinhole to capture this unusual perspective.
