Contact print for 35mm film

Contact prints are a good way to see what photographs you have taken. You do this by using a contact board which has slides you connect your negatives to. Before i use a full piece of photographic paper i always do a test sheet of 5 second intervals. To do this you need a back board preferably A4 size. I think it is up to you in what way you do it but i got shown when i attended Southport College to start by exposing the light by 5 second interval and every 5 seconds move your black piece of card through the paper then expose the hole piece of photographic paper for 5 seconds. You can do it the other way around to.  This is what mine looked like when doing so:

5 second intervals. The darker it is the longer it has been exposed to light, so you would count up in 5's, the darker part at the top was exposed for a total of 30 seconds.

In this case i thought the best exposure time would be 15 seconds maximum exposure time.

This it the result of a 15 second exposure time.

After doing this print i drew on it showing what photographs i intend to use for the project by drawing round the picture. 

Here is another contact print of more photographs taken. I couldn't fit all the negatives in to the neg board so had to do to contact sheets.

Nots i have but down showing me what thoughts i have on the shot and also the settings i had at the time of the shot taken as a reference for me in the future.

Using different cameras

Usually i photograph most things with a Canon EOS 40d with a 17-85mm lens but I thought I would try using a 35 mm film camera called the Nikon fm3a. I find this camera great and easy to use. The nikon Fm3a has a Hybrid shutter speed control system and a aperture priority auto and also fully manual. Also has 1/4,000 second shutter speed and 1/250 second top sync speed. I think using a camera like this is really enjoyable and you can have lots of fun with it. For this project I have found it hard to keep motivated and haven't had many ideas for the places brief. I started thinking about documenting Blackburn as it is new to me and gives me a chance to see the city. 


I really like the idea you cant see the photograph until you have developed the film so you never know what the photograph is going to look like and I like that idea. Personally I think you cant get the same effect using I film camera compered to a dslr camera. Next I am going to use a medium format camera and see how I find using it and also get to grips with how it functions as a camera. 


Here are some photographs i taken in Blackburn:


This photograph was taken on my way to Preston and at the time I was on a double decker bus. I love the tone of this picture and also the slight reflection from the glass. It was a lovely day for taking photographs because it was really sunny. Again this photograph was taken on my Nikon Fm3a and I used Ilford HP5 400 ISO and black and white film. Before I exposed this picture I had to make a contact sheet that shows me the good to the bad images. I did this by doing a contact sheet of my negatives. In the dark room you have to make solutions up in to three trays. The first solution is the development and your negative goes in the tub for 3 minutes and 30 seconds. From there you have to pore away the development and then pore 1000 ml of water in the bottle. The water has to be room temperature of 20c. To make sure the temperature is right you pore 900 ml of cold water and 100 ml of worm water and with your thermometer it will show up red where it gives you a reading. The tub with the water in stays in for a further 3 minutes. After that you pure away the water and put the fix in the tub for a further  time of 5 minutes.    

This photograph below is from the same negative shot on the same film camera and I really like this shot because of the texture of the grass and the contrast used. I also like the simpleness too. I think it is a good photograph that represents time in away no one thinks about. We all die eventually and we never think about it. In the processing room I used an enlarger that exposes light on to the negative which then shines down on to the photographic paper. From lots of test sheets and patients I eventually exposed the light for 15 seconds maximum and the test sheet I did was on a 5 second interval. I used Ilford photographic paper with a matt look and think with this image above worked really well. I don't think glossy paper would of looked as good because in this case i was after tones and contrast also i was thinking about the subject and just felt it would of suited the matt paper better. 

Here is another picture i took on the same day.

Corporate Photography

Corporate Photography, i am not to fond even though that is where i make my money from doing. The thing is with Corporate photography is i find it boring because its all staged and you have them were you want them and everything is done like that.

Here are some scanned in pictures from one of the lectures with Adrew and we had to find images that went with the total like for instance: Candid we had to put a Candid photograph under the title Candid just so we understood what photography is what, th others where Corporate, Fine Art and Journalism


Here is some of my Corporate photographs done from 2009 to 2010

This is a friend i photographed at home. iI got him to put my hat scarf on and do something. He new i was taking the photograph and to me this is a Corporate image. (ABOVE)

This person above was standing on the street and makes money buy standing very still until someone drops money in the the bucket. I gave him 30p and he did this.

This is a builder i photographed when we was asked to go out and photograph Builders, Police man, Traffic warden and people that work in an invariant. This was to give us confidence to go and ask someone if we can take there photograph and also to get to use are cameras. For this photograph we used a reflector. (ABOVE)

This person again i asked if it would be ok to take his picture he said yes but looked away just after i taken it, he wasn't the nicest of people.

Candid Photography

Candid photography i really enjoy because i like the idea people don't know you are taking there photograph. I think street photography and photographing people either on the streets or indoors is recording something. I look back at photographs of the family of when my mum was younger and you see how different the clothes are and how the attitude has changed.  I think its a lot harder now to photograph in the street because people now want to know the reason for having a camera. Now candid photography personally i think is when you are taking a photograph of people or someone without there promotion. Lots of times i have had people confront me over taking there photograph and making me delete the image. I just like coming back from photographing the outdoors wether its photographing people or things on the street.

Here is a shot i taken in preston bus station waiting for the x59. I like taking pictures there because its full of different people and strange characters.

      
 This person above after taking the photograph run towards me and its funny thinking back at it now but at the time it wasn't. He run towards me shouting and was really angry i had taken a photograph of him and he come right up in my face an said 'did you just take a picture of me?' and i said yes its for a project in uni and i hope you don't mind and he smiled and i taped his back, smiled and walked off. The thing is, is if you ask someone if you can take there photograph there most likely going to say no because they feel embarrassed or intimidated so you cant win. I think the best thing to do when photographing people is doing it without there permission.

Here is another photograph i taken in preston bus station. Again this lady doidnt know i was taken her photograph but thats what makes the image i think. If she was looking at me would it be a better photograph? Personally not with this one i don't. Depending on how you go out and take photographs is up to you but i go out with a mind of just snap and shoot and i seem to get more people coming up to me and not liking the fact i had taken there photograph. I do think you need confidence to go out and take photographs of people on the street and thats why i like it so much because not only will i get good photographs, you are trying not to be caught out.

Here is another one of my photographs i had taken at my home in southport. I was taking pictures in my room messing about when my friends where about to leave and with this shot because they was so used to me taken there photograph it looks like they didn't know i was taking it. Because i was messing with my camera and taking random shots they left me and i taken a photograph of them. I think i caught the mood really well.

Here are some more candid photographs taken around Preston bus station.

                                                         

Workshop Lecture. Capture to Print

We was giving the task of taking a photograph in the studio and then inporting the photograph to lightroom. Once edited and ready to export we inported the image in to photoshop and went through a step by step on how to change the size and the save type. This is a Pro photo format and was done through lightroom by entering the preferences. This photograph was shot in raw and was taken on a canon 40d sigma lens. ISO 400 and at f2.8      

Pro photo Format 

Adobe RGB Format

sRGB Format.

Places Research Idris Khan

Idris Khan


Idris Khan was born in 1978 and was born in Birmingham and is an artist based in London. When looking at his work it starts to look like charcoal drawings and you could imagine his work would be really big sized canvases.
Idris Khans work combines with digital photographs and get superimposed in to layers so his work looks like pencil drawings. Khan has a BA Honour were he studied at The University of Derby in 2000 and a MA in the Royal College of Art. What kind of mood or meaning does this work communicate? I think Khans work communicates with buildings being strong and had a mood to them this photograph below looks like it is under construction. Is Khan's Art work is challenging or assumption of the media? His work can be in words of in drawings about music. 
Personally i am not fond of his work because i proffer street photographs and landscapes but i do find his work interesting. I like the detail and the way it looks pencil like.


Idris Khans Work.

Homage to Bernd Becher, 2007
Digital Bromide Print mounted on Rag Board enforced by Aluminium, 76.2 x 86.4 cms 30 x 34 inches

2004
photographic print (framed)

208 x 160 cm

Places Research Michael wolf

Michael Wolf Photography

Michael Wolf was born in Munich, Germany. He spent most of his life in America but moved to Germany studying in the UC Berkley University of Essen in Germany. He has been working as a photographer and an author in China for ten years. Michael Wolf is a great landscape photographer and thought he would be a good photographer to look at on the places project.

When i photograph places and landscapes i am always thinking about Michael Wolf. I think his work is very good because of his crops and lots going on in the frame. some of his photographs have lots of colour and my favourite photographs of his are the Hong Kong sets he done.

Here is some of Michael Wolfs work.

    

Restoring old photographs

Gray scale scans you will find greater detail. 

Paper types- Glossy prints or glaze print will work nice.

Nuton rings. Service of the glass.

Dust and scratches filter makes the image softer and reduces detail from the photograph.

Un sharp mask gets detail and less detail .

[ ] makes the brush tool small and big.

original photograph

 Edited

Original Photograph 2 

Edited