Exciting things I've done recently

Photography related, of course.

A few weeks ago I was given a good Phenix camera to borrow from college for a while, and a roll of Ilford 125 B&W film to use with it. (Here's a photo of the same type of camera I borrowed from someone on gumtree, it links to where I got it from.)

Last week we developed the negatives at college and they came out looking pretty good. A really nice friend of my sister's gave me everything I need to develop B&W film, for free, minus a changing bag which I can buy myself pretty easily so I'm really pleased that I've been shown how to use everything now. I can almost start turning this room into my own darkroom. After my photography and French exams in early may, the only one I'll have left is General Studies so it's pretty safe to say I can sort it then and spend most of my study leave developing film in my own house, how exciting. :D

After about a week of pestering my photography teacher she also figured out how to use the scanner to properly scan negatives so I made a start on that today. Perhaps I should look into getting my own scanner, since I might be doing quite a bit more of this at home. I've scanned about 12 of them, but need to do them again to make them bigger next time, and some are wonky/just totally wrong. But I'll post a couple of the ones I've got so far on here now...

I've also had a bit of a breakthrough with my actual photography coursework and have decided to get a few disposable cameras as part of it. Things like glue or clear nail varnish on the lenses give the photos a nice blur  (like this one by primatepatio on flickr) and there are other things I'd like to try out.

 We also went to Format Festival in Derby, but I was planning to write another post for that, if I get chance/can be bothered.

More Inspiration

Every now and then I also come across a website with quite a few different photographers/artists that I really like, like Luhring Augustine where I saw Guido van der Werve and Joel Sternfeld's photos and they're always so useful.

Today I found M + B which has loads and loads of photographers, all of whom I really like, and who have given me heaps of inspiration for this photography unit which is greatly needed at the moment. I'm starting to feel more excited about it again, yay, since my enthusiasm was crushed by my stupid teacher making us do completely irrelevant stuff.

I would do more detailed posts about them separately but there are too many I like and I wouldn't be able to choose which ones, so I'll just post some of the different photos.

'Despair film still #3' by Alex Prager

'Vanessa // San Francisco, California' by Mike Brodie

'Sunset Tree Fern' by Lisa Eisner

And there are so many other awesome ones. All 2 of my followers should have a look.

Olympus Trip 35 at Christmas

When I got my Holga 135BC in December 2009, I'd only really used a random, very basic 35mm camera before so when I tried to use it to photograph the German Christmas Market in town that year, it wasn't that successful (seeing as on a Holga 135BC you hold the shutter open for as long as you press the shutter release button down for). As a result I got quite blurry photos with too long a shutter speed. I was also only aware of being able to get ISO 200 film so that wasn't great in the dark either. And I hadn't had much practice loading film. Here are some of them, from Christmas 2009...

 (more of those here)

I was quite disappointed with them at the time but actually really like them a lot now, these two especially. Anyway, this Christmas just gone, I used my beloved Olympus Trip 35 and trusty ISO 400 film (from Poundland - get in) which I reckon 'delivered much better results' (I said it like that because that's what all photographer people seem to say). The focus is a little off in some of them, but that's something that many a Trip 35 user seem to struggle with, especially in the dark.

(more of those here)

Thinking about it now, it's cool to compare my knowledge then, and my knowledge now. It's cool what you can learn in under a year about something if you're really interested in it (especially if, like me, you're busy with a job or school/college/uni work and you have to fit it in around that).

Redscale Film

Recently I won 'Lomo home of the Week UK' or something on Lomography.com which earnt me 50 piggy points (£50 free pound basically, to spend in the Lomo shop, awesome) and with them I bought a white Fisheye 1 which I've wanted for ages, and some funky film; 3 rolls of Lomography film ISO 400 and 3 rolls of Lomography redscale ISO 100.

I was looking on Lomography.com earlier because some lovely people liked and commented on my photos and I came across some really nice photos taken with an Olympus Trip 35 (my favourite film camera at the moment) and Lomography Redscale film, awesome. I'm clearly going to have to go to some sort of forest/woods when I test my film out.

All linked to their Lomo pages, taken by panchoballard.

Guido van der Werve

I found out about this photographer/film maker on this website which also has information about, and the work of, loads of other artists that I really like.

He takes photos, makes short films and also music compositions I think. But basically I went on his website (http://www.roofvogel.org/) to look at more of his work than was on the other site and I really liked it, so I wanted to put him on my blog like I have done with others.