Burton in Black and White

During a brief visit home mostly to cuddly the cat, but also to celebrate my Cousin's engagement and Aunt's birthday, I took a short walk around the town centre I grew up in and took a couple of black and white photos. The first two are on the wash, which is an area where I used to play as a child, though sadly the play area has now been torn down.

The others are of the Cooper statue that celebrates our heritage as a town full of brewers.

All photos have been taken using my olympus camera with the grainy film filter, as I thought this captured the mood of the area.

My First Film...well in recent years.

Having finally finished my colour film taking photos of my chilli plant, I had the exciting task of taking them in to be developed.
A few things to note, most important of which is cost. Taking into account the fact that a colour film costs £4ish to buy it gets expensive, quickly, when you consider that processing on the high street is a minimum of £7 per 36 film (£9 for black and white). Granted I'm used to my digital camera which allows me to get prints for mere pence if I want them printed properly, but still that is a minimum of £11 per 36 photos, a bit much when you consider at least half won't be worth the paper they have been printed on. (I challenge anyone to produce a single film of continually amazing photos.)

With regards to the photos I have taken, I must remember a few obvious but forgotten details.
1) Avoid touching the film whenever possible and take at least 1 rubbish photo first so I don't end up with fingerprint marks on my first frame.
2) Clean the lens. (I understand this applies to all cameras)
3) Don't be so over optimistic when taking photos indoors. These all came out woefully under exposed.

On the plus side I appear to have gotten the hang of macro shots relatively quickly, and with only a few minor adjustments, (cropping, spot removal etc) have managed to produce a few passable shots from the film.

I also think the photos have a different tone to them compared to those taken on my digital, a slightly softer dreamier edge, due to the reduced clarity and detail captured within the image. Whilst I appreciate that those in the know can get this effect from a standard digital camera it is something I have yet to achieve.

Melodies in a low key: A first foray into self portraiture

Having mostly taken photos of either inanimate objects, or my cats (potentially also in the previous category) in the past I decided to take inspiration from a self portrait of Lord Lichfield that I saw at Shugborough and have a go at creating my own low key images.
The following problems were immediatly brought to my attention.
1: My flat was a mess and the abundance of white walls for my backdrop just weren't suitable. This was fortunately easily solved as I just cleared some space in front of my purple floor length curtains and shot the photos at night in black and white. Therefore creating what appears to be a black background.
2: How to put myself in focus when I'm setting up from behind the camera. this was also easy to solve as I just used my 40L dry bag as a suitable stand in to set the focus, this was then removed in my 12 second dash to get into possition.
3:Lighting. Initially I wanted to use a portable lantern, but quickly became aware that the light produced was not strong enough to create the shadows required. Using a flash produced a bright enough light but this was very unflattering and didn't produce the shadow effect sought after. Finally I found another lamp and rigged it up over the side of my bed so the light was shining mostly from one direction, but also slightly above and this produced the desired effect. All this faffing has made me realise I need to look up some decent lamps for my new"studio"

Eventually though i managed to get a couple of photos I'm honestly quite pleased with, they also required little to no post photo modification. (Mostly just to remove the odd slipper or book that had crept into view and to change the photo to a 1:1 ratio.

Painting Pegs and other misadventures

Having decided to get into this photography malarkey I've decided to finally sort out my spare room. Said spare room is now going to be a darkroom/studio/bedroom.
This has required some serious reorganization and I surprised myself as during my initial clean I lost about 3 bin bags worth of stuff.

Other plans have included painting some boxes to use as macro shot backgrounds, whilst keeping items I don't use regularly nice and tidy!
To display the final photos I intend to put up a series of ribbons and peg the photos to them, hence the painting pegs.

The final conundrum is storage, as at the moment I have a range of items including a hoover that need to be hidden.
Oh and I need a curtain rail to hang some larger backgrounds on, oh and the blackout curtain.
Hopefully once the paycheck has arrived in the bank my parents are going to help me put it together as lets be honest my DIY abilities are poor.
For now though I'm off to find a way to remove the large quantity of paint that seems to have attached itself to my skin. I'm pretty convinced I've gotten more on myself than on the boxes.

Shooting at Shugborough

Filled with "new" camera excitement and a large backpack with 2 cameras and a whole heap of accessories I spent my Sunday touring Shugborough Hall. Shugborough is the familial seat of Lord Lichfield and is open to the public, with a working farm, servant's quarters stuck in the 1800's and the manor house, including what was once the private rooms of Lord Lichfield. Now normally the private rooms would have been of little interest, however since he was a renowned portrait photographer, my interest was increased dramatically, especially as they had some of his work on display.
Photography wise this was my first real attempt at using the fully manual settings on my Olympus, and give or take a couple of trial photos taken in my Mum's garden my first real opportunity with the film camera.
Whilst I am still waiting on the results of the film camera, I can at least make some conclusions regarding my digital.
Main Conclusion, stop overexposing the photos!

As you con see above, I appear to have been in general a little over cautious regarding the darkness of the image, and thus many features have been overblown.
I did however get a few better shots, though I think from now on I'm going to keep a notebook with the settings on my camera used for certain shots so I can correct myself in future.

My "New" equipment

Exciting day today,
Having headed back to the homestead for the weekend, my Uncle rather kindly offered to help introduce me to the world of film photography.
The initial plan was to use my Dad's Pentax ME-F camera circa 1980's, however seawater appears to have gotten the best of it, and you can't load any film into it. Fortunately Uncle Denis has saved the day by lending me his Pentax camera circa 1960's! (There is an identical camera in York Castle Museum!) On the plus side it is entirely mechanical, so it will save me the fuss of finding batteries, oh and it comes with a whole bag goodies. These range from filters, to extension rings, cable release, flash and light meter. It's a bit like Christmas day came early.
Now I just need to go somewhere a little bit more picturesque than my parents back garden which is somewhat resembling an attack of the triffids!

Hello World!

A little over a year ago I brought myself a fancyish Olypus pen compact camera, with the view to improve my holiday snaps, and in the past year I have produced some really good photos, but as most of them were more luck than judgement I have decided to go back to basics and start thinking about what effects my camera can produce, how best to frame shots etc.
I intend to start my journey by going old school and back to playing with my dad's old film camera, as I'm hoping the limited number of shots I can take will make me think more about what it is I'm shooting. Also as a chemist the idea of processing my own photos really appeals! Eventually I hope to apply these techniques back to my digital cameras (both the olympus and my trusty fujifilm point and shoot camera) to produce some even better photos.
My current photographic tastes are more towards landscapes and nature in general, and I have a current fondness for monochrome, but over the next few months/years whatever I intend to explore and experiment as much as my curiosity and ability will let me.
Below are just a few examples of things that have caught my eye.