hampstergoddamnaged - kyle

hi hi. so these are some brand new six week old pictures. theyre new in the sense that i just scanned them, but i took them a while ago. now that i have regular access to a dark room, ive been shooting a lot of film again. its nice. anyways they were taken during a trip to amsterdam. it is an incredibly beautiful city and the people over there some of the nicest ive met.

the first photo is of my pal in the red light district, where our hostel was. taking pictures in the red light district is a big no no over there and youre pretty much being watched on cctv everywhere you go. actually, our first night in the city, we were in a coffee shop when we heard some commotion outside. there was angry bouncer and the smashed camera on the ground, so we deduced that the ass kicking about to ensue was over a guy taking pictures of something he wasnt supposed to. as such, my picture was a bit rushed and even though i dont think i wouldve gotten any shit for it, i still stuck my camera back in my bag pretty quickly after the shot.

anyways i like that picture and i spent all yesterday in the darkroom trying to get the print right. after dodging and burning and split grading it a million different ways, i still wasnt happy with it. i mean, i knew all the information was on the negative, but i just couldnt bring it all out in one print and still get the contrast i was after. i have a lot of respect for anybody that knows their way around a darkroom really well, because its tougher than it seems. scanned into photoshop, i essentially got what i wanted after substantially less time, but the print from the negative still looks better and it was more fun to do. so there.

the second and third photos were taken about 180 degrees from each other if that makes any sense. it was our last day in the city and we had some time to kill before our train. four days in amsterdam tends to get the better of you, and without a hostel, we took to napping napping in the streets. i cant figure out if the biker was looking at me or my buddy asleep next to me. either way, there you have it. what a lovely place.

ps. i found that if you set this link as your start page and just let it loop it will make your days much better: http://www.emi.se/artists/barcelona/dguoydb/index.htm