DIY: Developing Your Own Film

Since a lot of my photography work is shot in black and white film, which I develop myself, I thought I’d do a little How To, if anyone’s interested. I’m not an expert, and I just do it the way I’ve been taught at college, so if anyone does it differently then that’s fine. A lot of things can change based on temperature and the type of film you are using, and I don’t really know much about the chemicals because the technicians at college sort all that out. I’ll learn one day, I hope to have a little makeshift dark room when I’m older, but for now I just do it like this:

Like I said above, this is the way I have been taught, and it’s probably not enough information to go ahead and develop your own, but I made it more as a kind of guideline for people who are interested in how film gets developed, because I didn’t really have a clue before I started.
I’ll try and do a separate one for printing photos from film, but it might be a bit difficult as I can’t use my camera in the dark room, and I can’t take photopaper out until it’s been fixed.
We’ll see :)

Portraits

These are my first two prints from my portrait project. 

I have a lot more to come but only got round to printing two because it’s been ages since I’ve used the dark room and it took me a while to get used to it. It’s nice to be back in it though, I really do love watching the pictures appear right there. 

Modelling is Bengi, one of my besties, and a wonderfully photogenic lady. 

I practically owe my Graphics AS and A level to her willingness to be photographed :)

(in the first picture there’s a little spec under her eye which turned out to be a spec of dust on the negative)

Bye :)

Holga-ga-ga

No Valentines treats today I’m afraid,

It’s not that I hate it, I’m neither here or there when it comes to these sorts of things, but I tend not to make a big thing of it either.

I will be spending the day tidying my room, floating around in my new maxi skirt and watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with some friends.

Also here are some of my Holga shots. 

I didn’t get round to scanning them so I took photos of them instead.

Some are from New York, some from Brighton, some from Bonfire night, and then general outings.

I do quite like how they turned out, but I probably will stick to 35mm for general use, and have these everynow and again as the development cost me £9 and the film isn’t all that cheap either, and all you get is about 12-16 shots.

Today...

Contact Sheet of First Shoot

Printing with bubblewrap,

And now I’m off on the town for Birthday Celebrations :)

Blur

One of my favourite things to do when I’m out at night is to blur my eyes so the lights go all ‘Uta Barth-like’ and out of focus.

It’s even prettier in New York

Today...

I wrote up some analysis in Photography,

 Melted some fabric with the heat gun,

 And did some reverse applique in Textiles,

And I saw a pretty cute pigeon huddled outside a shop.

And now I’m off to Falmouth, for my interview,

!

Bye :)

Fun Things

So I’ve posted two ePortfolios, and I’ll be doing a few more posts for it soon. I have to do it so I can send the link to a University once they are all up :) Also they make for interesting posts, I like to look back at the work I’ve done.

In other news I bought myself a new camera.

It’s a compact digital camera and it was an absolute bargain!

I wanted to get one for a while, because I have my DSLR and I have all my film cameras, but I don’t really have anything decent for general on the go picture taking, nights out, etc.

Then I went to work yesterday and there it was.

We had a lot of last year models that weren’t selling, so they all got reduced to £35.

Craziness.

It’s an awesome camera, and it’s also very pretty looking.

I’ll do a proper review on it once I’ve had it for like a week or something, but for now I’ve got analysis to write up!

Bye :)

Self Portrait

I'm not a fan of taking photos of myself, moreso of having them taken.

But as a sort of new year thing, I'm going to try and get in a few more photos. 

I thought I'd start off with this sort of self portrait thing.

Easing myself into it.

I had an hour in the studio this morning, and I got my medium format polaroid from my friends car, and decided to try it out.

Here's what I got:

I think the scanner didn't really do it justice, but I also think I may have left it a tad too long before peeling it, but any who, I quite like the actual photo.

I took the same one on a digital camera too and here's that outcome:

I made a point of opening my eye so i didn't get the silly 'screwed-up-looking-through-a-viewfinder' face that you usually get.

I took them in this big old dirty mirror we just happen to have lying around, so thats what all the murky dots and what not are. You can see our wonderful 'infinity' studio set behind me. 

Analysis

Found my last artist to analyse for photography!

Trying to analyse lomography pictures is difficult, especially since the idea of lomography is to shoot not think, you can’t really analyse any of the connotations the artist had about the image.

However, this is a painter, and she does wonderful paintings inspired by work she did with photographers based on double exposures. 

The results are so dreamy and ethereal, it makes me want to go out and shoot a ton of double exposures.

Shame the sky is grey and all the flowers are dead.

Pakayla Biehn

found via Honestly WTF

New York in Photos-Film!

So I got all my film developed.

Warning, this post will have a ton of photos...

I’m very in love with how some of them turned out, some look better in person rather than scanned in, but they still look pretty awesome, I’ll do a few posts explaining how I got some of the effects soon.

Bye :)