Home straight

Its quite insightful how reserved I have become with the SLR over its digital counterpart, typically with the latter i could easily take 150-200 shots in an hour and get it down to around 50 sufficiently different images to work on in Lightroom and create an album for a client. Knowing that the process for each image on the SLR will require a much longer amount of time in the dark room and physical costs of print paper and films, developers etc. It makes the medium much less disposable,which I like. It reminds me very much of the way house music has gone in the last 10+ years from days of buying vinyl and being very selective of what you bought and played to now where its almost all digital downloads with none of the tactile qualities and a disposable view focusing more on quantity over quality.
Also similar in music there is the argument you cant be a real dj unless you can use vinyl turntables and mix properly.  it still rages on now with technology making it easier and easier to do what the old generation had to learn over time with a much slower learning curve, adding into that before the days of the internet and youtube tutorials  you would have to either know some one  or be in a pretty well off to afford a private tutor/teacher to learn. It was considered quite elitist and those who had achieved a good technical level were held in high regard.

Having now spent the best part of 6 weeks using a manual SLR for the first time in my life and watching those around me produce images on the same level playing field, I can say now it is something which should be respected. Yes

it can and does go wrong alot of the time and the hours that are put into each image you could argue you should be able to create something at the end. The technical side doesn't cover the whole story though. Behind each completed image is a spark of imagination or connection with your environment. The more you do it the more the more ready you are technically to make that connection show at the other end . Some of the best known street photographers openly admit they never consciously went for a particular element of a shot that makes it special,it was more of a split second feeling that something was about to look and feel a certain way. To me, that's the difference between an image being good technically or aesthetically and one which you can connect to and have apathy for.


"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."


Henri Cartier-Bresson

Getting there

Four rolls of film in the bag as far as contact sheets and getting some usable images printed out and although they have not turned out exactly as I had hoped, they have helped get the technical side of things to a manageable level. I feel quite confident now I can produce a good Image if i have done the business when the shot was taken.

Contact sheet 1 and the only Image I managed to get after all but destroying the film in processing..

Tolley

Contact sheet 2 and the double exposed images 

BOB

Keepi it  unreal

Contact sheet 3 and the image from it

Ladder art

Contact sheet 4 and the images from it

Really

RR10

Space invader

Second attempt at developing film

Ok,so lesson learnt from the first attempt at developing I went in Monday with 2 films and set about getting them done. No mistakes this time and as far as the development went they were as good as I had hoped.

However,There was something a little strange looking on them as I hung them to dry,the images looked very busy..then it dawned on me i could see 2 images on each frame. I remembered I had tried to take the film out of the camera thinking it was finished, when i was ill last week and have somehow managed to shoot both films twice..

Brilliant , I have shot 3 films worth of images and potentially have nothing  usable towards this street photography assignment. I'll happily make these mistakes now if it means i don't make them again(soon)

 From Paul Graham's archive he used in a paper to Yale MFA Photography Graduation, February 2009.

"Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can admit to in a lifetime, and stay sane"
- Thomas Pynchon, V

First film development

So,having missed the lesson where everyone got to put their first rolls of black and white film through the development process I luckily managed to get one done last Friday. well kind of.

I was looking to get a straight forward development done textbook style to use as a bench mark,no point trying to get ahead of yourself with crazy high or low contrasting negatives and being clever if you cant get the basics right on demand.

This video from YouTube is the best i could find to show how it should be done from start to finish and what you need. By best,i mean it has no talking on it and who ever filmed it hasn't kept in any mistakes they made whilst filming. For this i am extremely grateful and can nearly excuse the music choice. The 9 people who disliked the video must have broken mute buttons.

B & W 35mm Film Development Tutorial


And here is the info we used lovingly prepared by Antony and left to hang in the developing room.

As you can see if you watched the video,some of the measurements are slightly different and that is to be expected. Each brand will have its own instructions and should be changed accordingly.

So that's how it should be done and IF i had followed the instructions i would have had a decent set of negatives to show for it after about an hour and a half. What I did and wont be doing again is after developing the film for 20 minutes picked up the wrong bottle and put fixer in next instead of stop.

Idiot.

I realised and emptied it out, used the stop and carried out the rest of the process in the hope it wouldn't be ruined. Hanging it up to dry i could see some of the images. Some had more than others in what is best described as a cloud of fog running up and down the entire strip.

In at the deep end

So here we are at the end of our first week of Level 4 Photography..First assignment is based upon street photography. Seems as good a place as any to start,then more so when you consider that a lot of photographers still actively do it,or started on it and moved on to other areas of photography.

So,Deep End...
Yesterday I took the plunge to do my first shoot in a night club type environment. The DirtyBird record label party, A 12 hour marathon of house music in the center of Middlesbrough and in a giant marquee tent! Mindful i would need good light to use my SLR without a flash i got to the site at 6pm with the light from the sun firing into the side of the open exits almost horizontal. I went through half a roll of b&w film and around 100 shots from behind the stage area. I've played in clubs myself for nearly 20 years so know the style and tricks the best photographers employ,which get great shots but not really what i was looking for from a street photography perspective. I didn't want people to react and gather around like they do for club photographers so opted instead to leave off the flash on the DSLR as well. All shots were done using the HDR setting for some interesting effects in the club lights. Another full roll of black and white was used during the rest of the day light. Wont have too long to wait to see if they develop as we start processing tomorrow...

Full gallery of DSLR images from DirtyBird can be found on the link here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nebulaphotography/sets/72157635991897493/

And here are some of the images from the DSLR,the ones i feel fit into the genre of Street Photography...

Split Decision

All seeing eye

Dancefloor

Get your coat

Straw miss

Two mouths

Who me?