First Post of 2015...

Hello 2015!

Let's have some hideously grainy shots of Tamworth, shall we?

Shot on Ilford XP2 with my EOS 5 and a 28-80mm lens on Sunday 25th Jan (dydd Santes Dwynwen, the Welsh equivalent of Valentines Day)

Tattooing

Laocoön and His Sons

This is pretty much all you see in the Vatican Museums, I plan to go back off-season (if there is such a time) so I can actually pause and contemplate the pieces I want to see.

This is in the Cortile Ottagono in the Vatican Museums, a beautiful courtyard that was a welcome breath of fresh air on the way through the labyrinthine galleries, where I was stood admiring the sculpture when I was unceremoniously trampled by this marauding herd.

(The sculpture that's out of shot is Laocoön and His Sons and this enlargement is from a scanned strip of negs originally intended just for making a contact sheet, brightened up in photoshop; shot in June 2014 on Ilford FP4 with a 35mm f/2.4 lens)

Colour negative experiment...

Today I tried something I've been meaning to since I first got into a darkroom and never got around to it - I made a black and white print from a colour negative.

My first few attempts were a bit on the grey side, but after a little experimentation I finally achieved the image below; exposed for twenty-five seconds at f/8 with the cyan slider at +50 (not really sure if that made a difference though) on a sheet of 9.5x12in Kentmere VC Select.

Rome: Colour Contact Sheets

Vatican City:

 Florence:

Our last night in Rome, messing about with an expired roll of 35mm...

Rome: B+W Contact Sheets

In June this year I took a trip to Rome; an even though I took both my DSLR and a film SLR, every photograph I took there was shot on film, the images below were taken with a Canon Eos 5 (simply for it's built-in exposure meter), with my beloved Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.4 lens and shot on Ilford FP4.

I've yet to make any enlargements of any of my photographs (although I hope to soon!), but for now here are the black and white contact sheets...

 

St Peter's Square, Castel St Angelo and along the banks of the River Tiber:

 

I'm a bit of an anorak and love railways, so I made sure we took the opportunity to ride the Frecciarossa to Florence:

 

On our final day in Italy we visited the Vatican Museums; friends recommended I pay extra to get a guide and skip the queues - I personally would advise against this, you save a lot of money if you arrive early and are prepared to wait, then you get freedom to roam around the museums without being in a herd, bumping into groups was always a nightmare and I was grateful to not be a part of one.

Colosseum:

Colour contacts to follow shortly!

Piazza della Rotonda

Taken shortly after we left the Pantheon in Rome, near the corner of Via del Seminaro, this is one of the photographs I'm looking forward to printing in the darkroom in the near future...

Treats!

DIY Darkroom

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.

Mario!

I plan to spend a little more time at the studio with Sean to document his work and help him build a print portfolio; this was Tuesday's offering and with it being late in the afternoon the light streaming in through the windows was gorgeous, the tattoo's not bad either, heh...

Shot with a Canon 550D and a 35mm manual lens.

  

Still in progress...

 

 

Henley & Packwood

Today I spent walking, eating blackberries and chasing bugs, very nostalgic indeed.

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!

My still-life set up as it looked 'in the flesh' ...

We were plagued by ladybirds throughout the day, literally hundreds of them!