Namibia

I went to Namibia almost ten years ago and this shot was taken using my Nikon F3 loaded with Provia 100F in the days before I had heard of Holgas, lomography and cross processing.

Anyway, I have this week end to myself so am planning to spend it taking more photos and developing the twenty or so films I have still to process before jetting off to Colombia on Monday. That should mean I have more to post over the coming weeks.

It is a hard job but somebody's gotta do it! You can find the gallery of Namibian photos here.

Wheat Field

Haven't had much time to process any of the films I have shot recently - in fact haven't had much time to shoot any film. That'll all change in a couple of weeks so I can get back to posting new work. In the meantime, I've always liked the above image taken in in a Hertfordshire wheat field with my Holga.

The full gallery is here

The Third & The Seventh

This is a lovely short film by Alex Roman. Looking at architectural arts from a photographic perspective.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The Travelling Toy Camera Project

I recently joined the The Travelling Toy Camera Project. Organised by one of the members of the Toycamera.com forum the project involves sending a toy camera around the world via all the participants who will keep the camera for a week, shoot a roll of 24 exposures before sending it on to the next member of the chain.

The camera in question is a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, a wide angle 35 mm point and shoot which gives panoramic shots. being the Wandering Holga I could hardly not join in and so I look forward to receiving the camera in due course.

I have a stack load of Kodak TriX films in my freezer just waiting to be shot and I will post the results in due course.

It looks like the project is going to be a lot of fun.

Admiral's Walk Lake, Broxbourne, Herts. Taken on a frosty morning with my Holga loaded with expired Ektachrome EPP100, xpro'd.

Looking Back at my First Holga Film

These two shots were taken with the first roll of film I shot with my first Holga. The film used was Ilford HP5 and when I saw these two images I knew I was hooked.

Develop Your Landscape Photography by Developing Your Own Film.

I recently read a good post about how to develop your own black & white film at home, and that set me thinking. I develop all my own film because if you really want to understand the photographic process you have to be involved in the whole process.

Tripping the shutter is half the battle and some of the most important decisions affecting the final look of an image take place in the processing stage and so, I think, are too important to be left to Boots or Snappy Snaps, or whatever your local lab is called.

I started to develop my own film after having taken a photography course at night school many years ago. The teacher recommended I buy a Mamiya C330 medium format TLR, if I was serious about landscape photography, so I did.

A month later I set off to Corsica to walk the Haute Route du Corse which is one of the toughest long distance hikes in Europe - two weeks of magnificent scenery but killer climbs and descents. So I packed my ruck sack with tent, food, stove etc., etc., heavy camera, even heavier tripod, quite abit of film, filters, spare lens and spent the next two weeks sweating blood lugging the camera around, but taking what I hoped would be great photos and my first adventure in medium format landscape photography.

On my return to London I hobbled off to Jessops to get my film developed and two weeks later I picked the films up. You can imagine how pleased I was when I tried to print from the negatives only to find that all of them were covered with scratches - some negs looked as if a cat with very sharp claws and ice skates had been dancing on them.

That was over ten years ago and it wasn't until I invested in Photoshop a couple of years ago that I was able to get anything useable from those films

At that point I realised that I would never again let anybody else touch my film again.

The excellent blog post I alluded to above got me thinking and I decided to write down why I feel so strongly that, if you want to be serious about your landscape photography, you should develop your own film. You can read the full article here.

Finally, here's a picture of Corsica
I walked up to the highest point in the photograph, down to the lake and up the other side, where I took this photo, and then down into the next valley - which took a long, back breaking day with a camera that weighed as much as a small car. Lovely view though!

The 8.18 to London Liverpool St

This was an 8 second exposure of the train I normally catch to work in the morning. The film is Ilford Delta 3200 pushed to ASA 25000.

One day I hope to call this photograph "The Train I Used to Catch in the Morning"