Cathedral of St Michael and St George
When I was taking the photos for the 1820-2020 Heritage Photobook I decided that some of the landmarks should be done in sepia – to give a retro/antique style. The Cathedral’s a great example. I took this picture at night when the moon was full during midsummer. There was some thin cloud high up in the sky that was picked up by the moonlight but the stars were still bright enough to shine through.
The security guards seated beside the tree cycad kept me company whilst I waited for a gap in the cars passing to get the shot I wanted.
For the sepia effect I bleached most of the colour out of the original image and then ran it through a sepia filter to emulate a Fujifilm Neopan ACROS 100. You can view and order this print, and sixteen other sepia shots of Grahamstown’s landmarks, at my online store: roddythefox.co.za. Alternatively contact me at roddyfox@mac.com.

RODDY FOX

Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa. 

His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.

His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.