Conclusion

Through my research I have discovered a lot about the differences between digital and film, I like how with film it is a physical thing. It is something you have to craft from when you buy the film to when you produce an image in the dark room, which has many possibilities to manipulate your image pre and post production. Unlike digital I have found  that it is far easier to use as its available to more people and far easier to get started in photography due to the digital age. The different experimental techniques that have been used are so specific to the media of film and digital that its hard to directly compare what you have found out. Experimenting with chemicals to affect the colour of a picture is similar to the filter and the use of post production software such as photoshop,  you may get similar effect but they are very different. I like how using film gives you a different creative movement in your photography than using digital. There are more decisions that can be made to change the final outcome of the picture. Film and digital are very similar and it all comes down to preference and situation, where I prefer film now, I would say that I didn’t last year, I have discovered that he different styles of camera with film compared to the very generic digital camera set up is why I prefer film as it gives people a chance to choose different types of focusing such as range finders, to guessing or external ones, and you learn your cameras quirks, where as digital they are all so similar. It all comes down to your preference and what you want to achieve with the medium.

I think that the way I will use the artist is by directly comparing them in a shoot, and choosing and artist then directly compare it to the digital image. I think that I could do many things such as look into cameraless and directly compare the 2 different types of work. I think it will work well. I will need to learn how to use the dark room better that i did, and work on how I use it. I think I will be a learning curve to initialy use film and get a good comparison but by the end I think I will have a good grasp using film in the dark room.

Initial shoot- 35mm

Over the summer I had a few rolls of film to experiment, At this point in time I was documenting my summer, and doing artist research on the side, so my initial shots linked into Vivian Maier, Who in essence documented her life, which is what I was tying to do over the summer. She would take her camera where ever she went to document where she was. I was also just starting to use film, finding how to use the cameras and how to develop and print the pictures in the dark room.

In a lot of the shots it looks very washed out, this is due to the fact that a lot of the pictures were darker which means I had to expose the picture for longer when crating the contact sheet. I used an automatic cannon film camera for this shoot, which used 35mm film. I had no theme but to attempt to to document what I did in the summer. The locations was a mix of Ireland, the New Forest and Greenbelt Festival. ( I have only shown one contact sheet but I took 3 roles of 35mm film and 1 role of 120 film) 

In a lot of the pictures taken with the 120 camera you had to guess and judge distances which was a struggle, so a few are out of focus, further more the 120 film camera had no lock to stop you from taking double exposures, which caused problem as on a few occasions I took double exposures so the picture was then over exposed.

I used a film with a 100 ISO which for the time wasn't the best, so a lot of my pictures have got camera shake or are under exposed. 

Vivian Maier Street Photography Vs 21st Century News Photographers

Vivian Maier was  photographer from the 1950s. She bought her first camera in 1952, which was a rollefelx TLR camera. She was only discovered after she died, Her stuff was sold off at auction and in her possessions, John Maloof bought a box of negatives and undeveloped film, and later acquired the other boxes. Around 100,000 negatives and slides were discovered and John Maloof set to work scanning in all her work and eventually got her discovered. He produced and directed a film, which is titled “finding Vivian Maier” which gives an in depth look into how Maier was discovered.

With Maier her work is was questionable to whether it could be considered art, due to how in photography there are vital choices the artist makes, e.g. what paper to print on, what chemicals where being used. Majority of her wok was not developed by her, and the work that was she got sent to France to get printed in he town she grew up in. In the documentary you see them visiting the shop and talking to the owner, who was the son and grandson of the person ho printed Maiers work. This was all explained by her letters which were sent to the shop.This gave Maloof a good idea and specifications to create the rest of her work how she wanted it. This discovery showed how she actually wanted her work to be printed and shown, instead of initially thinking she didn't want them shown. 

Before Maloof discovered her work, not a lot  was known about her. Her parent were European and they were out of the picture early on into her life. The information that we now know came from the fact that she worked as a nanny in Southampton NY, and in 1956 she moved to Chicago where she had her own private bathroom which she used as a dark room, so when her film reals were found all the negatives where from 1956 to the early 70s where the children she looked after grew up and she found a new job. This is when she switched to colour film. Also her box of undeveloped films started to build up due to not being to easily develop her film.

She chose the job as that enabled her to have accommodation and the availability to explore to take pictures. There is also a lot of evidence o show that she has traveled the world. Where she took pictures , trips to Canada in 1951 and 1955, in 1957 to South America, in 1959 to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, in 1960 to Florida, in 1965 she’d travel to the Caribbean Islands. Where ever she went she was always drawn to the less fortunate in society. She felt she could relate to them.

1973 - Chicago- Vivian Maeir

The first picture was taken in Chicago in august of 1973. It was taken when Maier had moved to colour film as she was not developing them herself. Its a picture of the news paper. The main headline in the news paper was about Nixon claiming that the boming over Cambodia saved American lives. I think that the idea that Nixons eyes are covered was also a reason for her shot, we are told that she is very political and the eyes being covered could relate to how Nixon is blind to collateral damage that he is causing in Cambodia .It is a strange picture to take for Maier. This is because she kept hundreds of news papers piled up in her room, she kept them every day as she always though it would come in use or she wanted to save the article. To take a picture of this news paper meant that it must have meant something to her. 

May 1955 - NY - Vivian Maier

This picture is of a man in May 1955 in New York was taken on one of Maier walks around New York. The picture was taken with a Rolieflex and would have been in the moment. She use to take pictures by just walking up to people and taking pictures. She would focus the camera and then walk up to someone and take a picture. You can see this because the man is looking at her in the eye and at this point in time doesn't know is picture is being taken. She managed to do this on many occasions. The shadows on the mans face are really defined which shows how old he is. The subject is unknown, and will probably never know who he is. The photo was taken in black and white and was most likely been a negative scanned in my Maloof in the early days of getting Maiers work know.

The fact Maier wasn't a journalist gives us an insight into the everyday life in the 50s to 70s America in Chicago and New York, and in the country's she traveled to. The images she takes are often the lower class which is who she identified with more than anythingelse which is why there are lots of images relating to that, and because its not as well know to us this type of life as its not shown in the mainstream media, she had an importance because she was discovered in the way that she was.

I will be using a TLR camera like Vivian Maier did. This is also because I can used 120 film which gets a higher quality of pictures as you can make it larger before you lose the quality of the picture. It also is an excellent type of camera to take pictures in the street due to the location of where the camera hangs and you can still see what you are taking a picture of. Although the focusing will be hard.

The comparison I am making to Maier is the modern-day photo journalist, this is because Maier documented her life much like photo journalists documents events which get put into newspapers. An example of a famous photo journalist was Tim Hetherington who covered the Libya civil war, and many other evens in Afghanistan, Cambodia to London and demonstrations and other events. Where he takes pictures of the lower class and connect with them in an attempt to get there story across. To make shocking images for the news or some other form of media.

The picture that I want to look at from Hetherington was a picture taken in a hospital in 2011, It was taken with a digital cameras , which will be due to how many pictures a digital camera can take. The picture shows a man in a hospital bed on the bottom 1/3 of the image, splitting it up into thirds. This picture is meant to shock. It is meant to show how the war is effecting people and how there is a lot of devastation due to this war. There are  other pictures in a hospital where there are many people in the room with all minor injuries.  

I find there is a difference between the 2 types of mediums to documentation. I feel that Maier was far more everyday and small time photography, whereas Hetherington was big scale news papers but less known to the public. I think It would be more appropriate to compare Maier to a street vloger, who runs a small time blog and documenting their day through the camera with pictures or video. Although Maier became famous after her death