Adrian Newcombe

Adrian Newcombe

I'm a photographer based in Cork, Ireland focusing on details, abstracts and seascapes/landscapes. I work in black and white in order to accentuate shapes and textures. This website has a selection of my work in several portfolios - see below for a description of each.

Dropped

This is the first of a series of projects on discarded items washed up on the shore. Marine litter mostly consists of plastic which will take a very long time to degrade and is rather broken down by action of the sea into smaller and smaller pieces.

Dropped is a portfolio of images of condensation drops on the inside of such plastic. The cycle of heat and cold creates constant changes in their patterns with each pattern short lived. Unlike the plastic on which they are created.

A selection of the images from Dropped have been published in Lenswork Seeing in Sixes 2019.

A selection from dropped also received a merit award in the Black and White Magazine Portfolio Contest 2020.

Plastiscenes

Continuing the theme of marine litter that is becoming a blight on our coastlines, Plastiscenes is part of the same series as Dropped.

I've been exploring how to show the impact of this litter on what should be our pristine shores. With Plastiscenes, I take a seascape and print it onto marine litter that is collected at the same location (usually on the same day). 

The resulting image is then photographed on a lightbox so that the plastic with its scratches and damage from the sea merges with the seascape forming a Plastiscene. 

While we continue to discard single use plastics into our scenes, we'll have more and more Plastiscenes.

A spotlight on the Plastiscenes portfolio will feature in the June 2023 issue of  Black and White Magazine .

Ersatz

As I look at marine litter, particularly that which has been weathered, I'm often struck by similarities in shapes with naturally occurring organic shapes. In this portfolio, I explore this by contrasting the natural with the artificial in a series of diptychs. Merriam Webster define the term Ersatz as "... any substitute or imitation, especially when it’s inferior to the original." These are certainly inferior substitutes. 

Shoreline

A collection of detail images from the tideline, again focussing on texture and form. Some are temporary like sand and seaweed waiting for the next tide. Others are changing on a much longer timescale as the sea works on the rocks over time.

Seascapes

The sea and the shore are in constant change and in continual battle. Once calm and then stormy, the many moods of the sea leave their track on the land.

Sandshapes

The variety of shapes and textures to be found in sand appears endless to me. Formed by water, wind and sun, the shapes are temporary sometimes lasting no more than minutes or hours and often reminiscent of plants in their structure.

Icescapes

I'm fascinated with shapes and textures  and the almost infinite variation of organic shapes formed in nature. When on a bitterly cold hike at Taughannock Falls in western New York I became entranced by the myriad shapes of the ice in the pools at the side of the river. 

Pinholes

Pinhole photography is photography at its most basis and primitive. There no lens, no battery, no sensor and no meter. Just a pinhole to let the light through and traditional film to capture the image. There is no view finder to compose, so you have to compose from imagination and experience. The exposures are many seconds or minutes long.

It's "flying blind"! The results are slightly sharp and slightly out of focus but everything's is slightly sharp and out of focus. A kind of soft focus or dreamy aspect which lends itself well to certain scenes.