Large format scans

So I finally scanned in my large format negatives from my second and third shoot. They are slightly underexposed so I have edited these in Photoshop...

Darkroom...

Well yesterday and today I have been printing my final images for the project. I have decided to print 20x16 on Fibre Based Paper.

Printing on fibre based paper is a much longer process than resin coated paper. The paper has to be developed for two minutes, stop bath for one minute, fixed for 10 minutes and washed for 30 minutes minimum. To dry the prints, you have to use a drum dryer which takes half an hour to warm up before you can use it.

The process is long and the paper is pricey but fibre based paper gives beautiful deep blacks and whites compared to resin coated paper. It also gives more of an 'artistic' feel to the image as if it is a piece of fine art. This is why I chose the fibre based paper for my final prints as I want my images to look delicate and like art pieces.

I also feel using the fibre based paper has improved my printing skills as I have spent many days trying to perfect my printing on the paper! I have alot more patience and knowledge within the darkroom now because of this!

Here are some of the prints I have produced in the darkroom over the past two days...

Strong Island

So after blogging about the images of my late Grandmother and Grandfathers garden for my final project at University, it was spotted by Strong Islands, Paul Gonela.

I posted my blog to my twitter account, where Paul Gonela spotted it and he tweeted me asking if he could feature my work on Strong Island's website. Of course I said yes!

So, sometime next week my work will be featured on Strong Island's website! So excited!

Heres a link to their website -  http://www.strong-island.co.uk/

The Great Gatsby and April Vogue

So next month I will see my favourite book of all time, 'The Great Gatsby' by F.Scott Fitzgerald, on the big screen.
'The Great Gatsby' has been my favourite book since I studied it at college in English Literature. The book looks at America in the 1920's and how extravagantly the rich lived. Fitzgerald uses colour to describe Gatsby's loud and vibrant parties, especially using the colour yellow. Aswell as this, Fitzgerald also explores the loneliness of the rich, through the character Gatsby.
He also contrasts the poor to the rich using the colours grey to describe the life of the character Wilson, who works in a Garage.
My favourite character in the book has to be Gatsby. Gatsby is a mysterious character who throws his parties hoping that one day Daisy will turn up to one of them and remember who he is. Gatsby has alot of secrets and many that come to his beautiful parties do not even know him or have never seen what he looks like.
The book, has stayed with me since I first read it. I have read over it many of times after and the book gets more and more intriguing every time I read it.
Anyway, when I first heard that Baz Luhrmann (Director of Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet) had made 'The Great Gatsby' into a film, I was over the moon! The characters are played by the right actors, Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby will be amazing!

This leads me on to talk about Midnight in Paris. The other day I brought the April edition of Vogue and came across the article about 'Beautiful & Damned'. The article talks about Zelda Fitgerald, the wife of F.Scott Fitzgerald. It says she was "beautifully dressed, witty, extravagant and unafraid" and goes on to talk about the life of Zelda.
One part of the article caught my attention mainly because it had the word Paris in it and that always catches my attention. The paragraph explained how the film 'Midnight in Paris' had Zelda Fitzgerald and F.Scott Fitzgerald in it played by Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston.
I turned to my brother and asked if he had the film which fortunately he did. So we watched it.
The film spoke about 'Golden Ages' and 'the past'. I found this related very well to my current project about my Grandmother and Grandfathers garden. The film was basically saying, in order to understand your future, you must look to the past but not get lost in it.

The film was beautiful not just because it was set in Paris but it was an interesting film, which kept going back in time to help the main character to write his novel. And I think I totally related to it as I always look back in order to help me creatively. I think Photographers should look at films more as well as looking at other photographers work as after I watched this film, I had alot of ideas in my mind! I recommend that you all watch this film and The Great Gatsby when it comes out!

Mark Hilton Photography

So another thing I have done recently is help Mark Hilton out with his photography project. For Mark's final project, he built a 20x16 camera that uses direct positive paper to photograph onto.

Mark asked me to model for his last shoot and I jumped at the idea as I was so interested in watching the process and being part of it too.

The process is long but it is fascinating. He had to set up the camera, the lights and then put me into the correct pose in which I then had to hold for the 40 second exposure (staying as still as I could). Mark then went and developed the image in the darkroom and it is great seeing the end result after all of his hard work!

Here is the image he took of me...

It is a breath of fresh air to see a project that uses such a traditional way of Photographing. So much care, thought and time has been put into making the photograph perfect. It is also nice to spend more than a few seconds setting up a photograph!

Mark has also photographed four other models for his project which can be seen on his website and blog. Go and check out his work! Here are the links to them below...

http://www.markhiltonphotography.com/

http://blog.markhiltonphotography.com/

Uni trip to London!

So, my second trip at Uni was to London to see two recommended printers to print our work at. I was quite excited for this trip as yes it was the second of only two trips properly organised at University (in College I had about four or five trips and I was only there for two years and not paying £9,000 for going there). But anyway, we set off at 7 O'clock (I was excited to see who had got up in time) and we arrived in London at 10 O'clock ish due to incidents along the way and busy traffic in London.

Anyway, we got there in the end and we got ourselves into three groups of around 14 people. I was in the third group so I had some time to look around at some exhibitions and then head to Artful Dodgers printing at half 2. Our group split up quite abit and went on our own ways with what kind of exhibitions we wanted to go to. So in the end, I was with Justyna, Oana, Mark, Lauran and Claudia, we all decided to go to The Photographers Gallery first.

After alot of iPhone googling (which I didn't do as I have a crappy little phone) we finally found The Photographers Gallery and paid a reasonable £2 to get into the good exhibitons. The first one we saw was Tom Wood: Men and Women. The exhibiton consisted of a mixture of images from strangers he had met to portraits of family and friends, keeping quite simple his way of photographing the subject but the people from all occupations and walks of life.

I did like that Tom Wood looked at all walks of life and portrayed their characters and space they work/live in within the images and I also liked the layout of the photographs on the walls and in the tables. However, I was not wowed by his work.

The next exhibition we saw at The Photographers gallery was the SHOOT! Existential Photography Part 1. This exhibition consisted of a timeline of photographs by Ria Van Dijks called 'In almost every picture'. The photographs were all taken at the fairground, playing one of those games where you have to shoot something off the shelf to win a prize. Every time she shot, a photograph was taken of herself doing this so technically 'shooting herself'. She started to do this when she was just 16 years old and has continued right up until the age of 90.

When I first saw these images, I didn't really understand and was about to walk away. But I went back and started from the beginning and realised how beautiful the timeline of photographs were. They showed a change in photography, starting in a sepia tone and ending in colour. The clothes and style changed within the images along with Ria's ageing and change in decade. I found it fascinating and I would recommend anyone to go and see the photographs!

The next floor up continued with the same content of 'shooting yourself'. In this exhibition was a room which was pitch black and had four big screens up and was playing clips from films of people shooting, it was very bazar but interesting! The exhibition also consisted of a pellet gun which you had four goes for £3, shooting at a target. If you shot in the centre, the camera instantly went off and you could get the photograph of yourself shooting yourself. I thought the way they added this hands on photography and activity was very clever and was very fun! They should do more things like this in exhibitions!

The next exhibition we went to, we split up into smaller groups. So me, Justyna, Mark and Oana trecked to Somerset house to go and see Henri Cartier Bresson's exhibition. However, we were rushed for time as we arrived at Somerset house at 2 O'clock and had to be at Artful Dodgers printing at half 2!  

I walked around this exhibition in about 5 minutes, as I was bored by the images and found the contrast of black and white images and colour images along with images that weren't even Henri Cartier Bresson's very confusing! The images were very dull and I wasn't impressed at all!

Anyway, we rushed off on the tube to Artful Dodgers and got to look around at the very large enlargers, the printers and some of the images they had produced, including some film strips of the late Amy Winehouse! Whilst I was there, I also saw very big prints of David Chancellor's work and a book produced of his. The images were printed to a high standard and the people at Artful Dodgers explained that alot of burning out, lighting up areas in the images had taken place. However, I found David's work very beautiful printed although the subject matter was very disturbing. His work was of hunting and how people enjoy hunting and making money out of it. This image in particular, struck me as beautiful but awful.

The next printing place we went to was The Print Space. We arrived there at 4 O'clock and I felt they made us abit more welcome here. They talked us through all the different papers they printed on and how the different paper worked well with what subject matter and how you were presenting it.

This talk about different types of paper really helped and I will probably use The Print Space to print my final images as I felt the quality of all the papers were really good. He also showed us a retouched image of Gwen Stefani which I thought was interesting to look at as I was shocked at how much photoshop had been used on her!

Overall, I had a really good day in London and will definately use either one of the printing places to print my final images. I want to also look into more of some of the photographers work that I had seen during the day as they fascinated me!

Limehouse Lizzy

My first shoot I did about a month ago now (its taken a while for me to blog about it!). I photographed Limehouse Lizzy, a Thin Lizzy tribute band. It was all abit last minute as I just found out they were playing at the Wedgewood rooms the next day so I had to think of ways I could photograph them really quickly and think of some questions quickly too.

I arrived at the Wedgewood rooms at half 5 on 28th September. The band arrived and I was abit shy at first but the band soon made me feel welcome and I soon starting asking questions about how and why they got into the band and what they enjoy about being in the band. Wayne (The lead singer) told me that he'd always been told he looked like Phil Lynott (lead singer of Thin Lizzy) and once at a gig he'd played Thin Lizzy songs and someone told him that his performance was a great tribute to Thin Lizzy. Tim Read (guitar player) who also teaches the guitar, told me that he loved to inspire a new generation to become musicians.

They were very professional, especially Wayne, he told me the band was more like a business, saying that people don't just come to hear the Thin Lizzy songs but respect their own personalities as a band. I soon learnt this when the Wedgewood rooms filled up and the band started playing. They played with every single piece of energy within them.

Here are some of the photographs that I took that night for my project:

Here is a link to there website http://www.limehouselizzy.co.uk/