Tagged: transparencies

Celluloid Memories

In tandem with scanning old film transparencies, I have been taking photographs on some donated film for the first time in years.

Works in progress

The rolls are black and white print film, the type I roared through about ten years ago when I was printing as many images as I could at various dark rooms across the city.

As I work through the fourth roll, I realise that I won’t have the time to develop my own photos. Also, the usual labs that I went to for prints has now shut. There will be a search for a new lab to post these rolls to.

As I said, I am also scanning through a large amount of old transparencies, which I took roughly between 2005-2010. I am amazed at the quality of some shots and the latitude of tones and colours therein. Most have been on 35mm, but a fair amount have been on medium format film. These latter shots have been stunning to look at.

During the photography webinar I took part in with Wendy Catling and Dr. Natasha Barrett, the convenor Dr. Matt Finch asked us what we wanted to do next in photography. I said that I very much wanted to return to medium format photography, and even try large format photography at some point. Taking photos on film, and looking at the results, has made me very aware of wanting to take time over crafting a photograph in future.

Everything’s important

After numerous experiments, I’ve finally got the hang of my Epson V750 PRO scanner, so I decided to rescan many of my medium format and 35mm transparencies.

Initially, I went back to the files of mounted scans that I’d built up between 2005 and 2010, before I started regularly printing my own photos, and a long time before I turned to digital capture.

What surprised me was that when I went back to these curated images, I also wanted to see the exposures that I’d rejected. Contained in transparent sleeves within stiff card envelopes, were many more transparencies, showing different angles or different subjects altogether in the exposed rolls.

I realised that I wanted to scan every one of them, so the rescans were supplemented with first time scans of “new” old and long rejected slides.

A slide from Berlin’s East Side Gallery in 2008 / 09
The same place, developed and busy, ten years later in a digital capture
Two views of the monument to book-burnings on Bebel Platz, Berlin. I initially selected the second
It was interesting to see results when experimenting with different exposures, such as with these landscapes of The Regent’s Park boating lake

As I work through the slides, I’m uploading different selections on my Instagram, Flickr and Behance accounts. I’m glad I’ve kept all these transparencies: even a decade after taking them, I’m still learning from them.