Kevin McElvaney Paints Bangkok in Ultra Violet with the LomoChrome Purple

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Hamburg-based photographer Kevin McElvaney likes to turn his lens on environmental and humanitarian stories. Having covered the electronic-waste scandal in Ghana, the sulphur mining in Indonesia, the refugee crisis in the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea and albinism in Tanzania, in his downtime, he would take an urban sightseeing. During his Thailand coverage in December 2017, he decided to go analogue in his downtime with a surreal, purple twist.

To capture Bangkok's curiosities and wonders, he went for the LomoChrome Purple. One of the prioritized places he visited was the Royal Crematorium and the Buddhist temples. The clash of colors in Bangkok was very important for Kevin, and the purple hues emphasized the majestic and venerable decorations of the holy city. Kevin told Lomography Magazine:

"I knew that Thailand will be colourful so I was always searching for contrasts in colours. In the beginning, I was looking for ‘green situations’, because they will become purple. Later on it was more interesting to search for yellow or gold, because this will turn into a super bright pink. It’s interesting and refreshing to abstract such situations and imagine them in a different look before you shoot. To be honest I was surprised by the first results and can’t retrace the original colour in every image: was the banana green or yellow? Was the fish red, yellow or silver? The box blue or red? In the end it doesn’t matter and I really like the beautiful madness that pops up."

Next, he went to the floating markets of Bangkok. Often deemed as Southeast Asia's Venice, he managed to visit Taling Chan and Damnoen Saduak. He also visited the infamous Maeklong Railway Market, in which a train often rolls over the fruits & vegetable boxes at a walking pace. After his urban trip, he went north and visited the countryside of Chiang Mai and Pai.

The Floaoting Markets

"In the future, I hope to find projects with a more conceptual approach to this film. I think it can redefine our view on everyday situations like thermal or night-vision films can do, but I don’t have a particular project in mind yet. In the meantime, I will use it for some portraits because I really like the skin tones in many images I have seen." added Kevin.

Sounds like we can hope for more LomoChrome Purple works of his in the future! In the meantime, Kevin is planning on visiting the USA, the Caribbean islands, Iraq, and Iran for a dual-contrast photography project.

Maeklong Railway Market

For more of Kevin's works, visit his website, Instagram and Facebook.

2018-03-10 #people #thailand #lomochrome-purple #kevin-mcelvaney

LomoChrome Purple Film 100-400 35mm

This unique color negative film will astound you by transforming natural tones of your photo into new eye-popping hues. A revival of the psychedelic infrared look from the Kodak Aerochrome film we all love, this film guarantees astounding photographic results.

2 Comments

  1. hannah_brown
    hannah_brown ·

    this is fab!

  2. jean7
    jean7 ·

    cool - what ISO did you set the camera to?

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