Photography and Darkroom
This section I will fill up over time with some interesting things about photography and darkroom stuff.
Stuff will go in here!
Me and Photography
I’ve always been the creative type and though I have ended up largely by accident very good with computers they will never be my first passion. In fact they aren’t a passion at all, there is something about them but they are first and foremost tools. Second confession, photography isn’t my first passion either. I took it up early on but put down for quite some time too. My first passion was in fact drawing and painting. The only problem was I knew I was only just OK, better at drawing and painting wise – I would never end up with the result I wanted particularly with landscapes. I was OK with portraits but landscapes were my main desire.
So I took up photography again after a hiatus where my attention was diverted by computers (which continues to be what earns my keep these days, no bad thing.) I have dabbled with digital cameras in the early days (2001/2) and briefly again 2005 but ultimately I have enjoyed the hands on experience of using film more. The end result is that with each year I get that bit closer to taking photographs that I am happy with. I’m at a stage where I feel I take some good photos and this year I think I took my first very good photo, or rather one that I am very pleased with. Suffice to say, whilst portraiture is still something I enjoy very much, landscapes are my driving force and not always of the standard scenes. In terms of painters I have always been a great admirer of the likes of Constable, Dahl, Turner, Degas, Monet to name a few and it was their works that always inspired me to at least try and be a painter.
The reality is I’m mediocre and maybe with enough time I might become decidedly average. I have however always had the eye for a landscape and some my earliest photos I took when I was eight (taken on a cheap 35mm compact camera bought from Argos) had something of them. In 2003 I picked up a camera again (another 35mm compact but with automatic frame advance) and began to experiment and began to get a feel for it. The following year I took a digital camera to Tunisia but unfortunately being an early digital camera with built in volatile memory, as soon as the batteries came loose, all the pictures were lost… I shot the second half of the break on numerous disposable 35mm cameras and turned out some fairly acceptable results:
Trogladyte Caves, Southern Tunisia (2004)
I went to the USA in Summer 2004 but for some bizarre reason never took a camera with me. A few photos were taken on a digital camera, a Sony Mavica that took 640×480 snaps and saved them on a floppy disk! Quite an old camera even by 2004 standards (I seem to recall seeing adverts for Mavicas in 1997) and later that year I acquired a Sony Cybershot 2.1MP. My photos were still pretty rubbish but it gave me a chance to explore the things I wanted to photograph – street photography, urban landscape, being on the move (I have a rather foot-loose wanderlust for travel!)
Chicago, Interstate 290 (2004)
Not a bad camera in all and I continued to use that until 2005 (when I was still very much learning, of course – I didn’t understand things like quite why a tripod would help with low light photos – the penny did drop eventually. I purchased a Canon EOS 5 SLR when affording a digital SLR was first and foremost out of my reach but I also was getting pretty tired of editing the pictures on the PC, I just wanted to shoot film. And so I did.
Mancunian Way A57(M) Motorway, Manchester (2007)
I still do today, the EOS 5 died a couple of years later but I got some good photos from that and I replaced it with an EOS 3. A sturdy magnificent camera but just too big for what I like, the same criticism could be levelled at the EOS 5 too. Between 2005 and 2008 I really worked on my photography to improve it and to better my skills in what I enjoyed taking photos of. With practice I felt I was beginning to get the landscapes I wanted to all those years ago be able to paint but instead was able to recapture them in a photograph using the same composition and elements I admired so much in the Romantic and Impressionist movements (well I like to think so anyway!) Of course, I’m not of William Blake’s school of thought with regard to his “satanic mills” as I also am deeply enraptured by the urban landscape. (I can only summise because I was brought up in a largely rural area and so urbanity is something I am curious about, almost alien!)
The Big Issue (Brighton), 2008
Since then I have sold the automatic Canon SLRs, and largely settled on a Leica M2 which is much lighter for walking with (I have a penchant for talking walks of a hundred miles or more!) and has the ruggedness such a camera needs. I also acquired an Olympus OM2n for the long exposures that I used to use the EOS 3 for, but with the benefit of it being so much smaller.
Chanctonbury Ring, 2008
Photographically now I am very settled into using film. I love working in the darkroom which righly or wrongly puts me back in touch with that painterly hands on experience that I so longed to be good at. Darkroom work is not like painting (although some argue it’s painting with light, I only agree to a certain extent) but it gives me the hands on physical process that I don’t personally get from using digital cameras. This is why I continue to use film, I enjoy it and I will continue to do so for however long it is around or however long I can afford it for. I make no claims for it being better, or that it’ll be here in 20 years – the truth is none of us know. What I do know is I enjoy my current photographic exploits with the tools I choose to use.
Is this what you think of Milton Keynes? Impression Milton Keynes project (2009)
I now have progressed to being fairly adept with black and white home processing and have now ventured into the field of colour printing at home which will help my semi-professional ambitions of making a little money from my photography.
Worthing Birdman (2009)
My other big project Impression Milton Keynes is providing me with one heck of a lot of joy and interest, it’s combining everything I love so dearly about photography – street portraiture, urban landscape, rural landscape and the need to be on the move and to travel. I cannot stay still, I am never happier than when hurtling off down on the A272 or the M25 to wherever the road takes me next and what my eyes will see, or when I walk mile upon mile into the unknown, it brings excitement to my life into this scientifically safe and known age. Humanity may collectively know much more about the world than we ever have making it a rather known place, but I don’t and I have so much to explore and find out for myself.
And I’ll have my camera with me when I clap my eyes upon that moment in time.
Cows, Waldershare Park (North Downs Way) (2009)
