Category: photography
8x10s
On finishing the 5×7 test prints from my first folder of 35mm black and white negative film, I have started making larger 8×10 prints of the most striking tests. I have been making these on 8×10 inch sized paper.
The images are mainly from my locality, with which I hope to make a more ambitious photo zine than before, maybe A6 or A5 sized, but I won’t make any decisions until I’ve properly gathered all the images I want around a particular theme or sequence.
There are differences in method: after testing, I’m pretty certain of which filter grade I want to print with, which cuts time; but with a larger print I can do more dodging and burning to get what I want.
Now that I’ve learned to be less profligate when making test prints, I am making more large prints than before, especially in my second folder. Beyond the next photo zine, I’m not entirely sure of where these prints will end up, but it has been fun making them and watching the results develop.
“Fail again. Fail better.”
I’ve just had a bad day in the dark room.
Trials and tribulations with three 35mm canisters of black and white film. Two turned out not to have wound on in my camera. One wound on badly to the developing reel. As a result, all three rolls of film are lost: images, ideas, moments; gone. I took a deep breath, cleaned up and went home.
My 35mm camera is new (to me) and I’m still getting used to it. I’ve lost rolls in it before, in much the same way as when I was getting used to my large format camera: I’ve lost a lot of 4×5 film sheets too. But with practise I’ve made less mistakes.
I remember taking a holiday in Japan some years ago. I found to my joy and amazement, that film was extremely cheap. My camera, a Chinon SLR that I had used regularly for some years, had never had so much film put through it in a short amount of time. I photographed everything: buildings, people, nature, transport, even drains at one point. Photo after photo. I learned so much and had so much fun. I’d learned to handle that camera as well as a pen.
Film nowadays is expensive. Mistakes made in exposure and development are felt so much more as a result, but I won’t stop taking chances, just as much as I won’t stop making mistakes and learning from them. To get to use a camera as an extension of my arm is the goal: pure expression.
Folder one
Last week, I completed the best 7×5 inch prints from my first ring bound folder of negatives since I returned to the darkroom late last year. That is: film processing; contact sheets; test prints; and best prints, using a sequence of techniques and choices to make prints that I aim to share in some fashion.
Starting back at the darkroom has been enormously enjoyable: I’ve learned so much and it’s been a pleasure to get to know my fellow darkroom practitioners. Making time for developing prints has been a luxury, but enormously fulfilling.
The contents of folder one are of different types of images (family, locality, architecture), of film emulsions and brands, of techniques in printing. I’ve changed enlargers at least once (from condensers to diffusers and back again). I’ve learned and relearned processes regarding print grading and will probably learn more in future. The films themselves aren’t in order: I decided that I would order them on the time they entered the darkroom for printing contact sheets for the first time; but roughly they stretch from just before lockdown to the years that followed, a weird hotchpotch of time that I’m unsure we’ve worked out the full impact of, even as we rush into the future.
I will continue using these new printing techniques into folder two. Folder three will have recently exposed negatives, And the cycle of making and learning will grow ever wider.
On witnessing and representation
Last week, I read an article by photographer Markéta Luskačová about photographing London’s east end markets over the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I was struck by a quotation at the end of her article by her fellow photographer Roger Mayne:
“The intention in mind must be to make a record and then an accident of having made the right record at the right time may produce ART”
I thought about this quotation when I considered my photography in the past. Without exception, it’s a representation of my life and surroundings, friends, family, work colleagues; a disorganised recording, in which I have found very little to describe as “art”. Sometimes, I’ve referred back to the odd image to show the passage of time, but I’ve found, much like my TikTok running videos, that I’ve often shot away from where change occurs.
Recently I have been more deliberate in my photography. I’ve been trying to shoot slower exposures to get deeper focus, even with a little motion blurring. Indeed, I’ve been (self) consciously trying to make “artistic” images; something beautiful out of my surroundings. But Mayne’s quotation made me reconsider this: what about recording the world around me as straightforwardly as possible?
I often think of Don McCullin advising nascent conflict photographers to shoot their surroundings rather than aim for far-off conflict zones.
“Young people often write me letters and ring me up, saying they want to do this or that, and the thing that most annoys me is when they say they want to be a war photographer. I say, OK, if you want to be a war photographer, go to the inner cities in England. You don’t have to get on a plane to the Middle East or wherever. There are social wars in our cities: homeless people, poor people, people begging outside of banks. You will find the most incredible poverty and that is a war as big as any other.”
I wonder if such observation would have seen Brexit coming, and how it would currently show the current flag-hanging in various neighbourhoods. I wonder if, like Ms. Luskačová, I should just wander up and down my neighbourhood with my camera and record anything that interests me.
The songwriter, performer and activist Nina Simone said that as an artist:
“I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty.”
In this world, this city, these streets, there’s a lot to reflect on. Back to work.
Taking stock 3
Some time ago, I saw a photo of mine on the Guardian website. It was a photo I’d taken in the BFI cinema some years previously that I had uploaded to a stock photo site. There it was: my photo, my name and (when I checked the photo stock website) my payment.
While a pleasant surprise, it was a rare occurence. I’ve sold occasionally on stock sites, but not enough and I had recently started deleting images in order to concentrate my imaging elsewhere, until I came across a social media post about such photography.
I hadn’t considered the type of photography I wanted to share and I hadn’t considered the type of photographer I was, but this post made me think about all this. It also made me think about what type of images I was uploading: snapshots rather than planned shoots; individual images rather than themed sequences. So I’m giving stock photography another go.
This is from my most recent set of photos: delivery bikers in the rain. They are part of our cities, as much as taxis, public transport and pedestrians; certainly during and since lockdown they’ve become even more prevalent. Sometimes maligned, but often used: I wanted to show them in my photography.
More images can be found here. And more will follow.
Photo-zine number one
Since returning to the darkroom, I’ve been trying different methods to sharing my photography with others. I have used social media, home display, independent sales and art fairs, but I was wondering about a small, tangible way of sharing images. It was a social media post that introduced me to art zines and I was hooked.
The art zine examples in this post displayed prose, poetry and illustration. I’d seen zines from years before concerning football teams and music. More recently, I’d seen photography zines in small publications, which inspired me to do my own.
The simplest method I had seen showed the folding and cutting of a single A4 sheet of paper to make an eight page document.
Once made, I numbered the pages and set about collecting images.
I had wanted to feature the black and white 35mm images I had been printing and had been considering themes, when I realised that the majority of my photos had been of family or my local area, so I went with the theme and title, “Round My Way”: images of my locality.
I took the first eight images I liked, scanned them and sequenced them on an A4 document in Photopea. On first printing, I realised that I’d have to do some move-arounds, then reprinted. I did some titling and there it was.
Out of order…
In order…
…and complete!
At the moment I’m working through cutting them to size, folding and cutting. I’m definitely going to make more. There’ll be different techniques in themes, editing, formatting and printing, and even media, but this is a process that I am excited to continue.
Start to finish.
Welcome (back) to the dark room
After years away, I rejoined a dark room late last summer. It’s been a very happy return, and full of learning moments. In my few visits so far, I’ve been keeping a notebook on my work: here is a list of what I’ve learned so far.
Get a move on. I enter the dark room, take a deep breath, think about what I’m going to do today, peruse the library of photography books and – no. There’s a lot to do, like mixing processing or developing chemistry, setting up the equipment I’m aiming to use, getting the right negatives to make prints out of. And time always seems limited, so it’s best to get on with it.
Take your time. This may seem like a contradiction, but when developing and printing, it’s best to work methodically and not to cut corners. The things that may take time, like checking the exact aperture on the enlarger, making contact sheets for every negative and having a good look at your results save time in the long run. Taking breaks keeps your energy up; use the time to take progress notes on your work.
Think about paper. I have large matt sheets for making contact sheets. I may not use them again. My fingertips, especially when using the latex gloves for the dark room’s wet area, could barely tell which side was the one for printing on. Most frustrating. Pearl finish is the way to go – for me, anyway.
Music is necessary. (Or maybe not.) Well, this depends. My first regular dark room practise saw my working with headphones connected to my iPod. One dark room I used had BBC6Music on throughout the day, which was very welcome. Here, we have a high end stereo system and a plethora of CDs. Pink Floyd’s Animals works brilliantly. Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life bursts with energy. Other albums had me wondering which track I was on, breaking my concentration on developing. Silence is sometimes welcome. So, swings and roundabouts.
I’m loving this. Being back in the dark room is a delight. It’s been fun to remember techniques I built up and great to be making new prints. It’s also exciting to be thinking about what print making is going to come on 35mm, medium format and large format film, along with which paper and what developing techniques I am going to use in future. Each day spent in the dark room is an extraordinary learning experience. It’s great to be back.
The walks, part two
The following day I trekked to Bostall Woods, where I shot some video in the forest. I tried to avoid shooting people there, mainly dog-walkers and ramblers, but caught a few of them, partially on camera and definitely on the soundtrack. Also on the soundtrack were tripod noises from the various camera moves I was attempting: definitely some practise and different equipment testing needed there.
I also returned to the river, this time near the Thames Barrier and surrounding warehouses. Some buildings were derelict: I wondered what would be in their place the next time I visited. These were areas that only cyclists and walkers could pass through.
As I carried the heavy photography equipment around the Thames path and surrounding neighbourhoods, I remembered the advice in a guide for wannabe Magnum Photographers: buy comfortable shoes. I’d like to visit more on foot and by bike in future.
Later I shot more video with one of my softbox lights. Following a YouTube tutorial, I tried techniques for video lighting that I hadn’t understood before: I enjoyed the results and will work on them with my own camera. There is still so much to learn.
On returning the equipment, it was a shock to use my mirrorless camera again: it felt light and manageable with familiar controls; almost like a toy. I will shoot with another rental next month; definitely a different camera, just to see how it works with videography and photography, and I’ll be one step closer to finding my regular videography camera.
The walks, part one
A few weekends ago, I did some test shooting with a new camera. Following a digital videographer’s advice, I rented a Canon 5D DSLR, with a microphone, tripod and a 50mm lens.
Having shot for over ten years with mirrorless film and digital cameras, the DSLR was a beast: big and heavy, the camera intimidated me from the moment I took it out of the box. Sat on a bench near the Leadenhall building, I tried taking my first picture: one of the skyscrapers nearby. A few mistakes later, I got it.
My aim was to go to the Royal Exchange, because it tended to be pretty deserted on a weekend. This Saturday, however, it was hosting a thousands strong march for the environment. A number of photographers and videographers were documenting the event, but I decided to duck out until I had an at least rudimentary knowledge of this camera.
Once at home, I transferred the camera to a case of my own and headed out to shoot some video at the Woolwich riverside. From there, I shot tests at a railway crossing in Charlton and on the South Bank.
What struck me on this excursion was what I saw as I walked between and around these sights, looking for something to photograph. I’ve been on photo walks before, both with friends and by myself, but I was really fascinated by the things I didn’t see when I had driven or taken public transport past them many times before.
Building, shops and accommodation I had barely glanced at before were there in all their detail. Different neighbourhoods with their residents and visitors. Different topography and sounds. As I walked, I thought about the photographer Don McCullin’s advise to photographers who wanted be war photographers:
“I say, OK, if you want to be a war photographer, go to the inner cities in England. You don’t have to get on a plane to the Middle East or wherever. There are social wars in our cities: homeless people, poor people, people begging outside of banks. You will find the most incredible poverty and that is a war as big as any other.”
While I didn’t feel as if I were documenting any kind of war, I did feel like I was walking through parts of the city that were ignored: the alleyways and neighbourhoods considered not pretty enough for an Instagram story; the people I may avoid, or who may avoid me; the unobserved. I wondered what I’d learn if I visited these areas more rather than just passing them by.
I finished the my first day shooting video on Waterloo Bridge and the South Bank, before bringing the gear back home.
Portraits: Steve
On the weekend I had rented a Canon 5D for test photography and video, my friend Steve asked me to take a headshot of him for a forthcoming conference he was attending.
Delighted to do so, we excused ourselves from a social meeting at the BFI bar to take these photos up in the Mezzanine Gallery.
I was unused to the size and controls of the D5, so I decided to eschew my usual manual use for automatic control of image making: this set me free from focus and exposure issues, and allowed me to concentrate on composition.
My main aim was to get both the focus on the eyes and the light in them to feature. While I love a shallow depth of field focus, with more control I would like to have featured more of Steve’s surroundings: the background here looks quite anonymous.
A few minutes later we were done.
Burning Details 
You must be logged in to post a comment.