songbirdsummerstone: Photography

Showing posts with label Photography. Show all posts

Saturday, 11 October 2014

Saturday, 4 October 2014

I'd like to share my progress of setting up a working darkroom at home.

I was fortunate to inherit a dev tank and changing bag from my Dad, and a few other bits and pieces (like a squirrel-hair brush, not to be confused with a squirrel hairbrush, which was an apparent must-have in the 60's), and was also kindly donated a Gnome enlarger and dev trays from a friend.

The same generous friend also donated a bunch of E6 and black and white chemicals, so so far so good!
Found a cupboard in a skip which fits it all perfectly, and I'm slowly clearing out my closet (which needs minimal blacking out as it has no windows or anything).

Got a cheap enlarger timer off ebay (£3.33!) but it cannot be connected to my enlarger because it's too old, however I have been offered a newer enlarger for a very good price - it's just a bit of a hike to pick it up, so we'll see. I can just count elephants for the time being.

It's cost me next to nothing so far and I'm very pleased with my progress; I'd like to be making my own prints before Christmas - an achievable goal I'm sure.

Monday, 29 September 2014

Wet Plate Collodion

I had a brilliant time learning the alchemic magic of wet-plate photography yesterday; I recommend everyone try their hand at it, there's a real sense of achievement and ownership of the image when you produce a image on what minutes ago was a plain sheet of glass.
Thanks very much indeed to Laura Peters for the opportunity!

(I scanned in the plates at Boots and I'm not happy at all with the resolution, but for the purposes of sharing I s'pose it'll have to do!)

The first gas mask plate we left without painting the back, keeping it as a glass negative, so I scanned it both with a white sheet of paper and the black back of another plate to show how it looks as both positive and negative; I am absolutely astonished and so excited by the fact that the glass plate is simultaneously positive and and negative, depending on how you view it.

Two self portraits,possibly the only photographs of myself that I've ever been happy and willing to share!

Sunflower and skull still life, we we excited to see how these would turn out, but the first plate got solarised somehow, no idea when in the process it could have happened though; the second plate came out a bit dark and still no definition in the petals of the sunflower, but never mind, I still adore them!