Saturday, 23 April 2016

Found Photographs from Stoke

So, on Tuesday 2nd April 2016 I took the train to Stoke on Trent to visit a friend.

We had a good day and did a lot of rummaging around in charity shops and in one I found a basket of cameras (either the Sally Army or Age UK on the High Street in Newcastle). I looked through each one, found none of any use to me, except one contained a spent roll of expired 35mm E6 Supasnaps film. I took it home and had it processed, but sadly only one frame had survived:


I'd had the film processed and scanned at Palm Labs in Digbeth and they had kindly cleaned up the neg for me to try and bring out some information:


I sent the image to my friend who, like myself, was fascinated by this mystery woman and her lovely house, but with nothing else to go by I thought little more about it after the initial novelty had worn off.

Three weeks later however, I bought book in Oxfam in Solihull of "Pub Walks in Warwickshire" (because who doesn't like as many excuses as as possible to go the pub) and lo and behold there was our mystery location:





The Red Lion in Little Compton, still open and trading by all accounts and does a mean Sunday lunch. We've yet to pay a visit but be sure of photographs when we eventually do!







Tuesday, 2 February 2016

Caffenol

After a successful trial run of using coffee to develop a roll of film, I processed another roll I had lying around using the stock recipe from caffenol.org. Like much of the film I shoot, the majority of the roll is used at one location, while the rest is used up at a later date, usually somewhere completely different. This particular set of photographs begin in Amsterdam in February 2015 and wind up on the journey home from Cei Newydd in the summer of the same year.

The negatives came out a bit thin but after adjusting the curves in photoshop I'm relatively happy with the results...

Amsterdam:





 On the A44 about a mile from Eisteddfa Gurig:

 






Saturday, 7 February 2015

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)






Thursday, 6 November 2014

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)


Tuesday, 28 October 2014

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.



Tuesday, 21 October 2014

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!

Saturday, 18 October 2014

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...



Saturday, 4 October 2014

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.

Thursday, 2 October 2014

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.