Time Flies
Four months into the year seems like as good a time as any for a blog update. As usual, work and uni have been demanding my attention, but I’ve managed to find some time in between for a few photography-related pursuits.
In February I booked the studio to shoot some medium format and this time ensure I synced the lights properly. I shot a roll of self portraits along with some portraits of Heather using a hoya filter and intentional camera movement,
I was really pleased at how they turned out in the end.
This studio visit also resulted in the wheels being put in motion for my most recent camera purchase…
A Kodak Masterview 8 × 10 - modified for wet plate.
It seemed like perfect timing as I had already booked into the Introduction to Large Format Photography course at Stills in Edinburgh.
The course covered the operation of a 4x5 camera and we had the opportunity to shot some images using photographic paper, which was then developed using a reverse positive process.
Now armed with a camera, and a rough idea of how to use it I started gathering all the necessary materials: trays, silver bath, collodion, developer. If I owned a house I would have been remortgaging it at this point as the costs kept mounting up.
I took some time off work this week and finally got the chance to get into the studio and darkroom at Street Level and give it a go.
My first plates were imperfect, messy, and unpredictable — and I loved every second of it. There's something spellbinding about watching an image emerge, ghost-like, on the plate. It feels like photography stripped back to its bones: chemistry, light, and time.
I’m still very much learning, but I’m excited to see where this takes me.
And one final bit of news - I’ve had a couple of images selected for upcoming exhibitions at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography
The Portrait exhibition opens on the 10th May and I’m looking forward to heading along to check out all the artwork on display.
Merry Crisis
As the year draws to a close, I’m absolutely delighted to have been selected for Phantasmal Gallery’s current online exhibition!
For this concept, I used Polaroid 600 green reclaimed film to document my memories of a trip to the backrooms. The unique tones of the film lend an otherworldly atmosphere to these liminal spaces, capturing the essence of fleeting moments and blurred realities.
*The Exhibition was live between 10th December 2024 - 10th January 2025 here
I’ve now uploaded my gallery here.
Using the same film stock, I recently experimented with emulsion lifts onto patient information leaflets, inspired by my experiences dealing with the ongoing UK medication shortages.
The fragile, fragmented images reflect the feeling of trying to hold yourself together whilst being unable to control your outward emotions.
It’s currently still the beginnings of an idea, but something I’m keen to explore further.
One thing that never fails to lift my spirits is getting the scans back from a roll of film. It’s a small but important reminder that the process of creating—even if the results are nothing to write home about—can still bring moments of joy and meaning.
Using my Olympus LT-1 with Kodak Eastman film, I took these images on my way to and from work, as well as during a walk I forced myself to take to the cemetery in the middle of Storm Bert (not the best idea I’ve ever had).
While I usually prefer using an SLR for the greater control it gives over exposure and framing, the point-and-shoot allowed me to capture shots quickly and spontaneously — something that was especially useful given the weather at the time.
And finally, looking forward to 2025 I’ve taken a leap and signed up for an 8-week part-time course in filmmaking.
It’s something I’ve wanted to explore for a while, and I’m excited to learn new skills and see how they might shape future creative projects.
Object Permanence
As I woke up today feeling lousy and I’m currently hanging out on the couch with a steady supply of lemsip, thought it was a good a time as any to tend to my neglected blog.
It’s been a while since my last update in June—life has been a bit hectic with university and work taking up most of my time. However, I’ve managed to carve out moments for some creative pursuits, so here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been up to:
Wet Plate Collodion Course: I attended a course on this fascinating historical process and had the chance to create some images . You can check them out here.
Cinestill 800T at Halloween: My second attempt with this film stock was much more successful, and capturing the atmosphere of Glasgow during Halloween made for some fun results!
Online Cyanomation Course: I joined an online workshop exploring cyanotype animation and shared the outcomes here. The process has been such a meditative experience—it’s slow and repetitive in the best way, I got very absorbed carrying out both the printing and scanning of my first attempt in the course of one day. I think I may have entered into my depressed Ben Wyatt era.
As I’m writing this, I’m experimenting with printing at home using my new UV lamp and developing prints in my kitchen.
Another witchy themed animation is hopefully in the works.
Lastly, I took a leap and submitted work for my first exhibition! It’s an online one, and while I’m not sure I’ll be selected, the process of working to the theme of liminal spaces was a challenge I thoroughly enjoyed.
On a side note, I’ve also been attempting to refresh the look of my website. It’s still a work in progress, and while I’m no graphic designer, I’m hoping the updates make it feel a little more polished and user-friendly.
That’s all for now—ill try not to leave it too long before my next update.
That’s how the light gets in
I’ve not updated in a while so this blog post is going to be a ramble.
Starting with a trip to Edinburgh to attend a low toxicity pinhole photography workshop that was organised by Agitate Gallery and ran by Hannah Fletcher from Sustainable Darkroom.
This was a fun day at the Edinburgh Photographic Society learning about the use of alternative developers. I got to geek out about the chemical structure of plant polyphenolic acids and make my own pinhole camera out of a film canister container.
For the developer we were using Willow leaves collected near to the building which we boiled for 30 mins, strained then added washing soda and vitamin C powder to obtain the correct ph. (Felt similar to the process I’ve been using at home for developing film with instant coffee, vit c and washing soda.)
Although the main point of the day was to learn more about alternative processes, I was a little bit disappointed that I didn’t have much luck with any of my attempts to get an image on the day.
Expectation (from Back to Basics - The Sustainable Darkroom)
Reality - my lovely grey squares
I played about the scans of the two grey squares that had something at all on them and ended up with some abstract images that I quite liked.
I had also dug out my old Brownie 127 camera in the morning before I left, and found that it had a film sitting in it that must have been from at least 12 years ago. I ended up shooting the last of the roll and deciding it probably wasn’t worth sending away to be developed as the film could be totally degraded by now, used my trusty caffenol recipe to home develop it.
Turned out most of the film was completely blank, with a couple of shots of Largs seafront at the start and then the Edinburgh shots at the end. Tried a new way of ‘scanning’ these with the lightbox and the Canon 5D…but not sure if it actually introduced more digital noise into the mix than just using the app on my phone.
Following the workshop, I was keen to try some more pinhole photography and fell into an internet rabbit hole reading about it, watching youtube videos of people explaining the mechanics in great detail and looking at formulas for calculating exposure based on aperture etc…and in the end just took a hammer to a tin and taped a piece of red bull can that I’d pressed a pin through on top.
I made an attempt to paint the inside black to be less reflective, but I was wanting it to be a bit ad hoc, so didn’t do a particularly good job of it. Behold it in all it’s beauty…I think the tin might have originally been used to keep some sort of pepto bismol medicine….
My friend Dave and I had organised another photography day this weekend, so I took it along to see if I could get any images this time around.
One slight downside of shooting with a random tin is that you kind of need access to a darkroom relatively close by to develop the images. I had made a not very successful attempt at home by putting a piece of exposed paper into a paterson tank in a changing bag and using leftover caffenol from the kodak brownie film to develop….but I realise you really need to be able to see the image developing in real time.
Also, the exposure time for pinhole is very long…so my at home attempt to take an image in my bathroom at night even with an 8 minute exposure…was probably never gonna work anyway.
I also brought along a few other cameras and some film…not realising the amount of time the pinhole experiments would actually take.
Dave had a good idea of using some slightly less expensive photo paper as an exposure test before I started using my Harman direct positive paper. Which meant later on also got to try using these to make contact prints with the enlarger to flip them from negative to positive.
So the first completely terrifying image out of my camera was a 60 second exposure and as I talked all the way through it has warped my face into the stuff of nightmares…..
Original paper image out of the camera on the right, and the positive print on the left…scanned with all the lovely fluff from Matty’s home flatbed scanner.
Let’s just see that again in close up - it’s giving Mason Verger from Hannibal
This was the second one I took where I tried not to talk, still pretty creepy…ironically creepy enough for instagram to label it as AI generated when I uploaded it there.
Was absolutely buzzing to actually have successfully created an image on an first attempt.
Probably spent about another hour trying to take a portrait further up the garden, before deciding that the first one I took as a test for exposure time was actually the best.
This was exactly the sort of blurry vibe I was trying to achieve, but it proved quite difficult to hit the correct amount of movement and stillness and luck of when the sun the came out. Nothing about taking images this way is quick.
The next shot came about because my skin has broken out this week and I knew I would probably be taking self portraits…I ended up shoving this frog mask I got from the second hand shop in my bag in the morning in case I felt too ugly to shoot my actual face - lol - as you do.
Pearl meets I See You?
So, one not as successful pinhole day for images…followed by a much more successful pinhole day, and the successful day also included pizza.
A walk in the park
At the weekend I signed up to take part in the inaugural ‘Girls, Gays and Theys’ Glasgow photowalk at Queen’s park and the organiser Shonagh Kelly couldn’t have picked a nicer day for it to be held.
This was somewhat out of my comfort zone, meeting new people and taking photos in public, which was exactly why I thought it would be a good idea to go along.
We we each given a free roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 film thanks to Analogue Wonderland and set off through the park chatting and snapping as we went. I didn’t pay too much attention to what I was actually shooting, meaning I kept forgetting to set the exposure correctly between each shot, but the shots turned out better than I had expected.
Massive props to Gulabi who not only offered a discount for those taking part, but I think they turned around the developing of my images in under 2 hours.
As well as getting an opportunity to chat with other (proper) photographers, it was super interesting to see how different everyones approaches were and what people were drawn to shooting. Will definitely be keeping an eye out to sign up to the next one.
Memory Lane
I’ve been reminiscing this week after I took a trip to visit my friend Dave last Friday. We had plans to have a photography day and as a bonus I was reunited with a couple of boxes of old photography related stuff of mine he had been looking after for me for probably at least 10 years.
Amongst the treasures, I was excited to find my manual remote shutter release as I had been quite close to purchasing another one recently. So to start the day off I loaded up some HP5+ into my Rolleicord and Dave got to witness ‘my process’ of randomly jumping about/lying on the ground whilst holding the shutter release, in his back garden.
I developed the negatives afterwards and then we (predominantly Dave) went about turning his bathroom into a darkroom. I was all excited after finding negatives from years ago I couldn’t decide what to print first. The bathroom darkroom was a success though and hopefully it won’t be too long before we give it another go!
I think this should also go down in the record books as one of the few ‘Old Farts Photographic Society’ (est. 2004) get togethers where I actually remembered to take some photographs, so all in all a very fun day.
I still haven’t gotten around to sorting everything from the boxes out properly, but I scanned in a few old negatives, along with the shots from Dave’s garden, at Street Level this week.
Here is a mix of old and new all shot on good old Ilford HP5+
Danny shaving 2005
Self portrait Arlington St 2006
Arlington Street 2006
A damn fine cup of coffee
I feel the need to make a blog post for posterity as I’m absolutely buzzing that I managed to develop a film at home today using coffee.
A couple of weeks ago I’d picked up a second hand copy of ‘Experimental Photography - A Handbook of Techniques’ (https://thamesandhudson.com/experimental-photography-9780500544372) and have been feeling inspired to try and give some of the easier processes a shot.
Today’s experiment was creating my own caffenol to develop my negatives in my kitchen. As a coffee addict I was excited at the prospect of having yet another excuse to have more kicking about.
I’d read that cheap instant coffee is best, and I tried to find one that was 100% robusta beans as apparently they are more acidic so work better for this process.
I got some 100% ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) powder online and picked up soda crystals at the local corner shop for £2. The recipe I was following mentioned using potassium bromide or alternatively iodized table salt, but as it was apparently optional I left that out.
I developed for 15 mins with agitation for ten seconds every minute.
For the stop I washed with fresh water for a minute, then fixed for 5 minutes using ilford rapid fixer (1+4) then another wash, and a random dip in some water with a drop of washing up liquid.
By this point I was ridiculously amazed that there was anything on the negatives - I don’t think I’ll ever not be excited by seeing images on the film when I open the developing tank.
Of course the images in question are cat related. Bit of a residue there despite being washed thoroughly too…lol.
Being impatient and not having access to a neg scanner at home I used an app on my phone to do some low res images just to get a better idea of what was on the roll.
Glad we have a photo of my nephews giant straw as the last shot of the roll - haha!
The nice thing is there are a few of my nieces christening that turned out better than I expected. There wasn’t a lot of light in the church and I was positive they were going to be underexposed based on the in camera meter - but the 15 minute development time has maybe actually helped to push the film a bit.
Hopefully will get into the darkroom soon so I can make some prints as a memory of the day.
Good soup
I’m currently house-sitting for my sister and instead of packing things I may need for the week like…food, or weather appropriate clothing…I ended up lugging three cameras with me in an attempt to try and use up some of the film I have been hoarding in my fridge.
My main priority was to try out the souped Pink Lady 35mm I purchased from https://kalimcmillan.bigcartel.com/ as I had a feeling it was going to give me the effect I was looking for (and didn’t quite get) from the dubblefilm Bubblegum film I shot the other week.
I have to say it did not disappoint.
This is my first time trying out a souped film and as it has been soaked in goodness knows what, it can’t be processed by a lot of labs as it will potentially mess up the chemistry.
I found that Photo Hippo (https://www.photohippo.co.uk/) in Burnley offer souped processing for an extra £2, also they processed and scanned this roll super fast for me.
I shot the roll on my old Chinon CM-4S that I actually don’t think I’ve used since about 2020. I thought it might be the best plan as it’s fully mechanical and I wasn’t sure how my Canon 300 would enjoy loading the slightly rusty film canister. I used the cameras very sophisticated built in light metering system (lol) where there are three lights that show red or green for under/over or ‘correct’ exposure.
So anyway, the results!
First up we have a couple of images I took outside in bright-ish sunlight….and I’m enjoying the lomo look of the tones (oh look, another photo of that blooming phone box .
I was shooting this as recommended at 200 ISO, so outside was perfect, this is how it handled lower lighting indoors.
As one of the few items of clothing I had actually brought with me on this trip was a Scream t-shirt (1995 OG - the less said about Spyglass productions and their recent decisions the better) I grabbed a kitchen knife, set up a tripod and shot some self portraits with late afternoon window light against my sisters pink bedroom wall.
I really liked the way the pinks came out…and happy I got a few wee green splotches on the emulsion too.
I think I’d like to try souping my own film soon, but as these pinks were just what I was hoping for, I’ve already purchased another roll of Pink Lady before the batch sells out!
Filters
I picked up a couple of cheap Hoya filters on Ebay, along with an adaptor to attach them to my Rolleicord, just to have a play about and see what the effects are like.
The adaptor hasn’t arrived yet but I was messing around with my digital camera today and realised I could shoot through them to get an idea of what the effects are. I think one is maybe a star 6 which could be fun…
However I was intrigued with this bi-colour one, think it’s meant to be used for black and white film when you are shooting landscapes, to alter the contrast between the colour and the sky?
I however snapped this photo of my cat as I was sitting on the sofa and kind of liked how it was looking…
Would have preferred if I’d managed to focus on her eyes instead of her nose - but I thought the effect was pretty cool.
Decided to then slow the shutter down and took a couple handheld with me moving about with a ridiculous wig on, bit weird and I look drunk -lol - but kind of like it.
When the adaptor shows up I might be tempted to stick a colour film in the Rolleicord and see what happens.
Bubblegum?
As I’ve been enjoying shooting with my medium format camera, I bought I couple of different 120mm films from Analogue Wonderland when payday arrived.
I was drawn in by the promise of ‘added tone producing sweet colours’ using this Dubblefilm Bubblegum film, so decided to ignore the ludicrous price tag and give it a go.
The name Bubblegum and the sample images made me think the vibe would be pastel pinks.
I have since learned that this is Kodak Gold 200 that has been tinted in some way - also I think the tinting process may also then mean I couldn’t get away with my usual under/over exposing malarky as overexposing reduces the effect.
Packaging though…very cute.
I went to visit my family for Easter Sunday so shot a roll over the course of the day, again, was using my estimated version of the sunny 16 rule and tried a couple of double exposures too, with varying results…
When the scans came back the first thing I noticed was everything was less pink and more… green looking…potentially this is due to my less than accurate approach to attempting to expose it correctly.
So, not going to lie, I tinkered about with the tones in photoshop to bring out the pinks I was hoping for, and cropped a couple as I thought they looked less busy cropped in tighter.
I think the real answer to getting this film to do what it is supposed to though, is probably nailing the exposure in camera.
I think I should invest in a light meter at some point if I am going to keep using a camera that doesn’t have one built in.
I’m probably happiest with the first photo of the roll of me and my nephew with our cameras.
Ended up snapping a couple of shots on digital, and whilst waiting on my film being developed…also went a bit on the pink side with the edits.
Instagram must have noticed I was chasing a pink vibe though, as about a day later I stumbled across @queenofthegrain - experimental small batch film created by photographer Kali McMillan (www.kalimcmillan.com).
I instantly had buy a roll of the ‘pink lady’ 35mm.
I’ve never tried a souped film before so I’m excited for some unexpected results and this one promises ‘vibrant pink’. There’s a couple of labs in the UK that have a souped film developing option, so if I like it, I could always try making my own photography soup - yum.
studio
Today I followed through on my plan to book into the studio to try taking some double exposure self portraits with the Rolleicord.
Why, you may ask, did I go to the effort of booking the studio then not actually make use of the studio flash? Well, that would be because I had no idea how to sync them when using this old camera.
So instead of trying to work that out, I dragged a few random lights about, set up a couple of tripods, said a small prayer to the focusing and exposure gods and set the self timer.
I think I used the studio for about two hours, shot some digital and a roll of 120mm HP5+.
I had booked in to develop the negatives straight after, which was slightly nerve wracking as I honestly don’t remember the last time I developed a 120mm roll.
Was half expecting to turn the lights back on and the film would be lying on the floor as I’d rolled the paper onto the reel instead….but thankfully I got it the right way around.
By this point it was only around lunchtime, so once my negs had dried decided to do some quick scans on the Epson to see if there was anything at all of use on them….and I was actually quite pleasantly surprised…
Yep - we definitely have some squinty looking photos of phone boxes that I shot last week.
Dark, but potentially some interesting double exposures on here.
The last three look quite promising…..
Really like the way the one with me sitting on the chair turned out.
So yes, had fun in the studio and managed to successfully(-ish) develop some medium format negatives.
Going to hopefully get some of these scanned in next week using the fancy scanner - you can see all the dust and random hair on these as I just papped the whole polyproprolene negative sheet on the scanner to get a general idea.
I shot some digital too to have a play about with slow shutter speeds.
I had this idea of taking images whilst stuck in this dress, as despite following the recommended sizing on the website…..I got it stuck over my shoulders the other day and after the mild panic that I would never escape abated, thought the general awkwardness of it might make for an interesting thing to photograph..
help
Oh yeah, and some bonus polaroids….as I shoved it in my bag as an afterthought on my way out the door this morning…..
The end of the beginning…
Already laughing at myself for setting this website up like a blog seeing as all previous attempts at me ‘blogging’ have started off enthusiastically then been quickly forgotten about, but here we are.
So we reached the end of the five week course last week, which culminated in us getting set loose in the dark room to make our own prints with the teacher on hand to help if we got really stuck.
I was worried I’d been a bit gung-ho booking in for extra sessions the previous week as I don’t have a huge amount of negatives to print from - but luckily the negatives I have of my cat are abundant so of course I still had some I could use.
During the class I was too in the flow to remember to take photos of each image as we checked them in the wash room, but I did snap a quick shot of the three I liked best at the end.
Didn’t think I’d get to the point where I attempted any dodging/burning, but the centre image of Lydia I ended up burning the top left hand corner for an extra ten seconds of exposure so there was some contrast between the image and white border.
I also used a neg holder where the sides had been roughly cut for some reason, and then left in a bit of the sprockets to see what sort of effect I would get for the top image. As ever, I like anything that looks imperfect or a mistake so this was right up my street.
Now that the course is done I am booked in for an induction to work out how to use the fancy scanner to scan my own negatives, and also hoping to work up the courage to book in for a play about in the photography studio.
I have a grand plan to try some double exposure self portraits on 120 B/W so I can develop the negs myself (and then destroy and dispose of them if they are bloody awful - haha!)
In other news I finally made it along to Tramway today to see the exhibition ‘Fonds’ with photos by Morwenna Kearsley:
(https://www.tramway.org/event/b1e2f38f-38c8-4135-b8ef-b103009c4ee4)
I’d been meaning to go for ages then realised that this is the last weekend it’s on so planned my walk home from my exercise class to include a stop in.
I really liked that you could scan the QR codes to listen to the podcasts with the people talking about the meaning behind each item in the photographs.
My other plan for my walk home involved trying to get some more photos taken with the Rolleicord so I could develop the medium format negatives myself. I had the bright idea of using my digital camera to attempt to get the exposure correct, before then using the film camera seeing as previous attempts with this camera, and the lubitel, had been a complete guess.
In theory I still think think was quite a good idea, however I experience this fun thing where my brain starts freaking out the minute I sense I may be being perceived doing a task - which I am sure is an excellent quality for a photographer to have right?
Anyway, attempting to to hold an umbrella and two cameras whilst taking photos of mundane things like bus stops with people walking past meant I think I probably took about three photos before I called it a day and went to get a coffee instead.
That aside, even if the film photos turn out to be pants, I actually quite like the ones I quickly snapped with the digital camera. Tinkered with photoshop of course as I enjoy a bit of the cross-processed look (as apparently I still think I am on Deviantart circa 2006).
I seem to have quite a few images I’ve taken of phone boxes kicking around - thought I’d see if I can use the rest of the roll in rolleicord just on phone box photos. That way won’t be too much of a tragedy if the negs don’t turn out when I develop them.
TL(D)R
How many mundane photos of a rainy walk to the shop can one person take you may ask?
Well, turns out quite a few as the same day I took my digital camera out for a spin, I also shot a roll of Lomography colour 800 film using another late night eBay purchase. This time a Rolleicord TLR that was suspiciously cheap so I wasn’t sure if it would be in working order.
As I had used colour film I posted it off to Gulabi yesterday and with a superfast turnaround I got the scans back today.
Obviously wasn’t the best of lighting conditions being it was dull and rainy but images are on the negs and I do appear to have managed to focus the camera so I will take both of those as positives.
Exposure wise pretty sure I messed up again as this is another manual camera with no light meter. I also quickly discovered it has a weird thing where you set the EV value then the aperture and shutter speed adjusts accordingly. So if you set that wrong, I guess it’s then consistently wrong for every shot - I probably should have researched this a bit more before I went out and started taking photos but where is the fun in that?
In saying that def going to make sure to RTFM before the next time I use it.
I also panicked at one point trying to focus a shot and instead advanced the film on slightly - the focus adjustment and film advance feel like they are on the opposite sides of the camera to where my brain expects them to be - however I quite like the imperfection it caused.
I used the last shot of the roll to take an incredibly glum self portrait in the window of ASDA (aka hell on earth on a Sunday afternoon) which I feel is a fitting tribute to how utterly horrendous I was feeling for the majority of last week.
absorbing everything, the spectrum’s A to Z
OK, so I was meant to be focusing on analogue photography but I got too excited as usual and decided I wanted to foray into digital again too.
Having not owned a digital camera in about 15 years other than the one on my phone I was a bit lost when starting to look into entry level digital SLRs - mirrorless? - no idea.
Of course anything that I liked the general look of was ludicrously expensive….so for the sake of my bank balance I bought a used (can I call it vintage?) Canon 5D mark ii body.
I really wanted one of these cameras back in 2008 but the £2300 price range was incredibly out of my budget, but I realised you can now pick up one of these bricks in good used condition for under £200 and as a bonus it’s compatible with my current EF mount lenses I have for my 35mm SLR.
Additionally if anyone is daft enough to attempt to steal it they won’t get very far as it will weigh them down too much.
So anyway, rambling, I took it out today during a rainy walk to the shop and below are the results.
Yes they are underexposed. Yes the colour balance is off.
Thinking of making both these things my ‘signature style’.
And also, yes, writing this blog post did distract me from watching the 5 videos on Joint Probability I am supposed to be watching before my Statistics class tomorrow….
A lack of colour
Been a bit busy, been a bit unwell, have also been in the darkroom three times since I last updated my blog.
Last week I spent the morning developing some Delta 3200 which I had shot a variety of random stuff, including some night time shots as I was being a bit too optimistic about the 3200 ISO being some sort of magical film that would fix my innate ability to underexpose everything at all times. (Spoiler - it isn’t)
So this was about an hour and a half of doing test strips and general mucking about trying to remember how an enlarger works and lo and behold - I had my first proper prints.
Of course then I got a bit too excited and decided to book in for some more sessions by myself over the week and have produced a selection of images that some may say is a complete waste of photographic paper….however I had a lot of fun in the process.
Multiple exposure of Lydia - Delta 3200
Swans on my way to work using lensbaby composer - ilford hp5
Self portrait with Lydia - tripped the remote shutter with my foot. Delta 3200 - love this even though it’s underexposed (look at her wee face tolerating me picking her up for the photo).
Battlefield chip shop at night. Delta 3200. Lol - I know it’s a big black square but I was happy I managed to snap the moment where someone walked past the door.
Darkroom day 2 - someone showed me how to use the washer in the other room and were slightly concerned when I told them I hadn’t used it the previous time I was in. ahem
Three of Cups coffee during Window Wanderland - Delta 3200
Walking home using Lensbaby composer. Iford Hp5
The walk to work - trying different contrast settings. Ilford Hp5.
And remember I had a whole roll of negatives I developed that were only half exposed due to a broken shutter curtain?
Decided to have a play about with them and I quite liked the result.
Had this idea before I set off to Streetlevel.
First print - absolute pain to try and align the negatives. Someone asked me what it was as it was developing and I was like, erm, an experiment I guess?
Not sure if I prefer the more centred one - but yeah - glad I gave it a go!
Lubitel 166b
Photography class was postponed this week so didn’t get into the darkroom, but did have a new camera to play with thanks to eBay.
I’d been wanting to have a shot at shooting some medium format film and this cheap and cheerful Lubitel 166b TLR looked like a good shout for someone like me (who has absolutely no clue what they are doing).
Lubitel literally means ‘Amateur’ and was designed as a cheap alternative to the 1938 German Voigtlander cameras. The operation is completely mechanical, you focus using the top down viewer and it has no built in light meter. Safe to say I wasn’t overly confident that I would end up with any images the first time I used it.
I loaded up some Kentmere 400 and took it out on my way to the cinema to snap away and see if the thing even worked.
Exposure wise, I attempted to adhere to the sunny 16 rule but really I was just randomly adjusting and hoping for the best. Whilst I had issues trying to work out how to focus, I actually really like that you look down to compose an image, as it made me feel slightly less conscious taking photos in public.
After the cinema I dropped the roll off at Gulabi (https://www.gulabi.co.uk/) to be developed and scanned.
I was impressed with the super quick turnaround as the download link arrived the next day.
From the contact sheet I could see I’d potentially advanced the film a few times without actually taking an image as I ended up with 9 out of 12 photos - I had a feeling I had done this as I was walking along Sauchiehall street, as it’s quite tricky to see the film advance number through the wee screen.
Images are more lomography than photography - but pleasantly surprised that the camera works and I had a lot of fun shooting with it.
I have a couple of rolls of Ilford HP5 120mm at the ready - think the next challenge will be taking the camera out for another spin and attempting to develop the 120mm film myself.
Lights out
On Saturday I booked myself a slot to develop a couple of rolls of ilford hp5 - the roll I shot on the camera with the dodgy shutter, and the other roll some random snaps I’d taken using a new Canon eos 300 body I’d found on eBay for £12.99.
I was determined I was not going to stuff up my first time doing this unsupervised, so in advance I’d downloaded The Massive Dev Chart app - would thoroughly recommend if, like me, your brain has a tendency to lose track of time.
(https://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php)
The moment of truth came after the wash and I was pleasantly surprised to see there appeared to be something on my negatives.
The results confirmed as I thought, absolutely gubbed shutter curtain on my original camera which resulted in one roll with some lovely negatives with only the bottom half exposed.
The second set of negatives look a bit more promising, if potentially a bit underexposed.
Feel like I haven’t quite got the hang of metering in the camera yet and I always err on the side of underexposing, when probably when working with film I should be overexposing if anything.
Hopefully I get a chance to make a contact sheet of these and see if there is anything worth enlarging from this roll - I certainly can never have enough pictures of my cat.
My whole life is a darkroom.
Between University and work I felt my brain was overloaded this week. I was really looking forward to a welcome distraction from squinting at computer screens. Being in the darkroom gave me an opportunity to slow down and focus on something more tactile and analogue.
Week three’s content included a run down of the darkroom equipment and chemistry, how to carry out test sheets to work out what the best exposure settings are for printing, and finally printing our first contact sheet.
Many moons ago I had a brief stint of studying photography at college, so I found that using the enlarger and the development process etc felt familiar.
However, I also very quickly remembered that I used to be quite terrible back then for working out the best settings for exposing my prints, predominantly due to my tendency to get anxious and impatient then start changing multiple settings at the same time.
Luckily our instructor for this course has the patience of a saint and me being older (if not altogether wiser) I was able to slow down and take my time a little more.
Having failed miserably to develop my own negs the previous week (whoops!), I was working with some old Kentmere 400 negatives shot with my Chinon CM4-S on a rather dull winters day walk a few years ago.
Test strip 1: f5.6 5 - 30 seconds
Test strip 2: f8 5-30 seconds
My first test sheet was a tad overexposed but stopping down the aperture yielded better results and I settled on f8 at 22 seconds for my contact sheet.
Next week will cover how to make enlargements from our negatives in order to create our first 8x10 prints.
I’ll likely pick a shot from these negs to print from, but I’m going to attempt to develop another roll over the weekend so we’ll see what happens!
The beginning
In January, I finally overcame my procrastination and enrolled in the beginner's black and white photography course at Street Level Photoworks. Recently I’ve found myself wanting to get back into photography, so I decided to start from scratch, delving into the basics and refreshing my film development skills.
The 5-week course covers a spectrum of topics, from the history of photography to shooting with an SLR camera, developing black and white negatives, and mastering the darkroom for creating prints.
Initially filled with inspiration after the first session, my enthusiasm took a hit due to a series of unfortunate events. Using my Canon EOS 300 35mm camera, I discovered there seemed to be something wrong with the shutter after loading the HP5 Ilford film we were asked to shoot before week two. I figured I’d just develop the roll anyway as it was my first time using a secondhand lensbaby composer. I thought if nothing else I could get some sort of idea of A. how the lens works and B. what was wrong with the camera shutter.
Week two brought another twist when I somehow, in a complete scatterbrained moment, brought an unexposed roll of lomochrome color film instead of the intended HP5 film I’d shot with my broken camera! I thankfully noticed about two seconds before the light was switched off so we could load our films.
The teacher gave me a random B/W roll of theirs to develop so at least I could join in.
Despite these mishaps, I loved everything about the week two session. I loved loading the negs, the darkroom, chemistry, and the whole development process, even if I had no negatives of my own images to show for it!
Immediately after class I joined Street Level as a member and I’m now armed with a fully functional camera and plans to redeem myself in the upcoming weeks by developing the neglected negatives and shooting more rolls.
This week's agenda includes printing a contact sheet and I plan on using preprocessed black and white negatives I shot last year – if I manage to remember to bring them with me that is.
Here's to hoping my journey back into photography takes a smoother turn!
Not Ilford HP5 film - not even B/W film for that matter.