litter

I don’t know why I have another picture of a door. Actually, I do know – I liked the textures and the contrast between the metal door and the wooden door and frame. Is this enough to make a ‘meaningful’ picture? I like black and white, contrasty pictures, so I like this one and it is a sort of record of a place and a time. Would it have more impact if there was someone going in or coming out? If what they were doing was interesting or had some significance to the place or this time? I don’t really know the answers to those questions. I suppose I just keep exploring with the camera and maybe some answers will come from somewhere when I am taking a picture of something.

Trying to capture some light and shadow the best I can.

It seems this notebook has ended up being a scrapbook of my film photography. I haven’t found this very easy, especially developing and scanning the pictures after they have been taken. It has been difficult to make sure there are no scratches on the negatives and that the scanner makes a clean image without weird artifacts. Digital photographs are much easier – and in addition to this, these film photographs end up digitised anyway. So why bother using a film camera?

The reason, for me, is the experience while taking pictures. My Nikon FM has the absolute minimum of controls to influence how the photograph is made. The SQA even less control as the maximum shutter speed is 1/500th and there is no light meter. This means that I concentrate on what I am seeing through the viewfinder, choosing the shutter speed and f stop – and that’s it. It feels more pure to me. This is the reason that I would love to own a Leica M-D. No screen, no settings, no distractions, but the convenience of digital.

Developing and scanning the film has become a meditative process. I don’t mind it, in fact I like it. Next stop is probably printing pictures from a negative, if I can set up my own darkroom.

I am quite happy with the look of this photo. Does it need a subject? Is the grass a subject? Does this photo say anything useful? I don’t know. I suppose I could answer these questions to my own satisfaction – I’m not sure.

I never remember the details of my film photographs. I don’t write them down at the time. 50mm f1.8 1/500…I think.

This is another picture from my first roll of film from the ZeroImage pinhole camera. The image was exposed reasonably! I think I will have to think a lot more about framing such a wide image…more research needed.

I have been looking at some pictures that I took last year and have never got round to editing once they had been scanned. Some of them were worth working on and so I spent an afternoon looking through them.

I have been thinking that it is very easy to take pictures that have been taken many thousands, maybe millions, of times before. I should struggle to make my pictures as unique as is possible. I know that maybe it is a vain hope, but I will keep trying, whether this is taking photographs on film, trying to embrace their imperfection, or attempting to take photos from unusual angles and of unusual subjects. I think it is pretty futile trying to be original in photography. Or at least, so far, for me, it is.

Abstract closeup at the park.

Maybe the photo I’m most happy with out of all that I’ve taken. Why? I’m not sure. I will have to think about it to know for sure. Maybe it’s because I have got a more unusual perspective – maybe that I can see detail and interesting pattern in the picture. I will leave it for a while and revisit the picture to see if my thoughts are any clearer later.

This was taken with a ZeroImage 6×12 pinhole camera. It was the first picture I have ever taken with this camera and so, although I worked out the exposure, it was still an experiment. I had no idea what the field of view would be, or what the quality of image would be. The rest of the roll was pretty bad – this is the best frame. I like panoramic images very much and am searching for a camera that will allow me to take good quality panoramic images. This is one way to do it – a grungy, gritty, fuzzy way – but still interesting. My search continues for a camera that can do it well that is less than £4000.