Cameras

Cannon T70

Lubitel universal 166

Fold out camera

Lomogrpahy Super sampler

Lomography 360 camera

Shoot 5 - Disposable camera in colour

Taking inspiration from the Youtuber Dottie I have taken a shoot with 2 disposable cameras over the course of 2 days, and when even I wanted to document anything I took a picture. This was to force me to use film instead of using it sparingly. The pictures were taken in and around Reading University on a weekend when I was visiting my friend.
Dottie is a youtube who is very artsy and talks about subjects in a poetic way, and in one video she set herself a challenge to use 3 disposable cameras in 3 days, so I wanted to link that into the idea of using film isn't as precious as I have been using it and not thinking about setting and just shoot pictures.
I found that as they were so easy to use I was able to easily take pictured quickly as there were no setting to mess around with apart from flash.
The whole shoot has a nostalgia feel, It looks like the pictures I saw when I was a child. It really captured this feel of the prime time of film use. A lot of the pictures has this grain on it when it was taken at night without a flash. I took a few selfies, which in the context of when it looks like it was taken the selfie wasn't as common as it is now. I think the shoot went well, I used 2 cameras in 2 days and I struggled to do this, as I wanted to get perfect pictures when using film as I was paying for the pictures, in the end I used it as i would my mobile phone camera. I also found that in some cases the focal length of the picture is about 1/2 a meter which meant a few of my pictured were out of focus.
This is my first shoot in colour using a film camera, I couldn't develop them myself as our dark room wasn't equipped to do so, but I have got the negatives back so I can create black and white images from them if I wish. I also found that you don't feel as connected to the picture when you dont process it yourself, Its really just like using a digital camera but less expensive if you damage the camera.
I asked for it to be cross proceed but unfortunately I don't know if it was or wasn't, I would assume not as there is no evidence from the pictures. This I will now go onto look into a company called lomography who are trying to bring film back.

Duck pond in Reading, It looks old from how the saturation of colours are. It looks  like old film, how I remember our family photo album.

Swan on the pond,  I managed to snap a swan, and after I took it it jumped out and spread its wings to Chase us, didn't manage to wind the camera in time for an after shot.

Shooting from the hip doesn't work as well as you hope, I got a rather shaky picture,  I like how it very 

Th thing about this picture is that it looks old, but we have added the twits that we are taking a selfie, which a modern thing that people use phones for. 

Running up the stairs so we could put pizza in the oven. The colours in the picture is very off what they were which adds to the old aesthetic of the pictures. It looks a lot like they could have been taken along time ago.

In bed watching youtube, This looks very grainy which adds to the old aesthetic with a person using modern technology. 

Thisbedottie- disposable camera

Thisbedottie is a youtuber, She makes video logs and posts them online. They are mostly poems and creative throughs that she has come up with. This video inspired me to do a shoot. She talkes about how she set herself a challenge to use 3 disposable cameras in a day to make memories, even if they were not good ones. That didnt work, she struggled to use 100+ pictures in a day, so she changed the goal to 3 days 3 cameras.
The idea behind her taking the pictures was that she doesn't normally take enough to preserve memory, I wanted to use this idea to go against my grain and use 2 disposable cameras in 2 days and not care that it is film. As the mentality with film is waiting for the right shot and to use it sparingly.
This inspired me to use a disposable camera and to use colour with will be different to all the black and white I have taken.


Video Here

shoot 4- Camera less photography

The idea behind this shoot was to attempt cameras less photography in the style of man ray, and so I experimented in the dark room with movement and different textures and different objects that cast shadows onto the page. I found that water creates a different effect to a solid object. Moving hands over the page creates shadows and less time exposed so the image is slightly washed out. I then wondered how man ray would experiment with digital cameras photography today and I thought scanography would be a good places to start mixed with photoshop to create a surreal feel. I found an artist who was very simple with how she used a scanner, called Roberta Baily , who placed flower arrangements onto the scanner. Thomas Mc Donald used a scanner in a very unusual was and managed to take pictures of the streets, a set of houses from a scanner, which suits Man Rays style of surrealism which he was developing. I was unable to reproduce Mc Donalds work. I found that suing the dark room to create photograms was very hit and miss with what I could do, and sometimes it would work the others it wouldn't, this was also the case with the experimenting with the scanner. I found the photograms to be more rewarding than the scans, Due to how it was more freedom to add movement, rather than being restrained on the direction of the scanners scan.

To add to my experimenting of cameras less photography I used some light sensitive paint that works similarly to the dark room but requires the sun to use. I placed objects on tit and it came out as slightly lighter outline of the shape. 

Overall my shoot and experimenting worked well, I think it showed that there is a big difference in digital and film. I preferrer to use the dark room with cameras less photography as there is a lot more experimenting and different techniques that are not realistic to recreate using a scanner.

In the dark room I spent some time experimenting with photograms which was influenced by man ray. I found that just placing object on a page on nearly any exposure would produce a photogram that had very defined white patches and very dark blacks. This is where I started moving the objects in the frame or adding my hands into the mix to create shadows.which brought out some very strange and cool effects for showing motion. Other things I discovered are using object that refract light differently can cause different effects. So water  creates a ripple effect due to its refractive index , which is much the same with glass as well, and would imagine other object that are opaque would do something similar

I have experimented with light sensitive paint which is where you use a special pain on a piece of fabric and wet it with a sponge, then you place objecs on it and leave it to dry. This worked quite well for my first attempt at it, capturing the outline of the objects, much like a photogram but without a dark room. Also the paint was orange. This added to the more exciting look, only difference is it takes a long time so you cant use movement in the pictures.

I also looked into scnography looking at artists such as Roberta Bailey who both used the scanner in a different ways. I have also done a few and have looked at using peoples heads, and looking into objects and moving them around, much like I did with the photograms. This method of camera-less photography has the most colour as it scans in colour, which produces more of a contrast and real life feel than the photograms

Shoot 3 - Vian Maier using a TLR camera

This is my third shoot it was taken on holiday in devon, in and around sea side towns. I shot 2 rolls of 120 film with a TLR camera. I was shooting in the style of Vivian Maier which was to get candid pictures of people in the streets living there life. I got a few good pictures that worked well with the candid look, but I struggled with the focus point on the camera. This was due to how hard it is to quickly focus the camera. I was using a Lubitel 166 
 which is a old TLR camera make in the USSR. It was one of the better cheap TLR cameras that didnt cost a fortune. Like my first shoot I was suing Maiers idea of documenting her life as she goes. I found that using the Lubitel, it was hard to accurately focus the lens accurately when trying to get pictures of people. I found that guessing the distances was a far easier option. 
On the contact sheet there is a few scratches which is due to the glass cover on the frame when you are making the contact sheet, hence it is also on the other 120 film contact sheet.
Over the week I was taking pictures there was a mix of weather, I used my phone as a light meter so could get the aperture and speed on the camera right as I have not quite yet got the hang of guessing the settings for the camera, which is what Maier would have done. I found that using the camera to had to hold it at your stomach hight to use the view finder, It made it less obvious that I was taking pictures as I was walking. Which meant it would be easier to take pictures. They mention this in the documentary about Maier, and how probably the reason she used a TLR. 
I think that over all It was a very good shoot. The negatives look very good, although the prints were not as I thought they would be. Due to the size of the negative being 6 x 6 It meant I had to crop them. I found this harder to do than I thought. This didn't stop me but I found that I will have to think about my composure next time I use this camera. 
My favourite picture that came out well as a negative and in print was a picture of the harbour, In the picture the clouds are really defined and look very real.  It  was taken at a speed of 1/60 with an aperture of f 18  Due to the sun being behind the cloud giving a lot of light into the lens. I like that it is in black and white as I was able to print it myself, which adds to the excitement of a good picture coming out. 

This is a strange picture, It came out like this as when I placed it in the developer I put it upside-down and it came out very different to how I thought it would. I found that when the face of the picture scrapes against the side it with rub at the chemicals and wont come out as planned. It was a picture of 2 people walking off a boat. It came out a bit darker in the negative than I would have liked but I gave up with printing this picture.

We went to a wild life reserve and the penguins were apart of the enclosure. I wanted to get a contrast between the black and white penguins, It was harder than I thought to get the contrast. In hindsight I am now a lot better at making the white on the pictures white. I may try this again. I found it hard to take this picture as to use the view finder I had to be looking down. This was hard as there was a rail around the enclosure the same hight my camera was at.

This is my best print. I haven't done any post production, But the picture looks far better physically, the scanner quality doesn't do it justice. I like the picture a lot. I like how its done in 3rds and how the clouds look alive. I used a high f stop with this picture which would around for the wide range of detail in the picture. I think the focus was also in inmate setting so that would also add to the depth of field in the picture.

Richard Long

He is an english sculptor and photographer, He is famous for his use of land art which he started to develop with lines in the grass from where he was walking then take a picture of it. Such as 'A Line Made by Walking"  in 1967 .

Small White Pebble Circles- Richard long
1987

He first became well know in the 70s due to his epic walks, which he would create art from long walks sometimes lasting days, and would from stone circles to paining with mud in the 80s.  He would walk and produce art from it. The work always looks natural with one sculpture or other sort that he had made. A lot are circles made from wood and bits he had found on this walks. He has walked to some of the most remote places to make his art.

His other works also included sculpurs such as Small White Pebble Circles which isnt what Im looking at.  

This is what I want to take from this artist. Im interested in his process on how he conducted his art more than his work he produced. I want to use the theme of walking as an influence to my work with how I will conduct my comparison shoots. This also links back to Vivian Maier, who would walk in Chicago and New York when she was working there and looking after the children she was a nanny for.

Experimenting 360 film camera

We used a 360 film camera that spun around when you triggered the camera. We used an old film in our cupboard, to our surprise it wasn't a fresh film. It had been used by another group of students about 8 years ago. This was an interesting occurrence, as its something that can only happen with film. It is one of those things that is very unique to film, taking 2 pictures on the same negative and finding that they match up in some ways.
Along the picture you have people that look like they have their foot in someones face, and there are times when there are whole people within other people which wasn't planned but looks good. The lighting required for the 400 iso film was very high so the only picture that came out well was the one taken outside. I found that the struggle was to line up the pictures while printing them. It was hard to line them up after I had developed them but worked well enough to produce a picture.

Shoot 2-Comparison

This is my 2nd shoot it was taken In the Forrest linking it to the artist Richard long who created his art around walks where he would pick up objects every 20 steps to create some art at the end of the walk. I used 2 cameras so I could directly compare film and digital .A Nikon film camera and a Cannon D1200 Digital, which both used a 50 mm lens, this was to get the cameras the same opportunity to take the picture.  I went down to the forest and walked and every 100m I took a picture. This was so I would take pictures of lots of different things. Some pictures on the film came out very under exposed which was due to the lighting in the forrest, Where the digital camera has a built in flash, the film camera did not which was a disadvantage, but is a feature in the digital camera. I found that over all the quality of the digital camera was better but the process of film is more involved and what you do in the dark room which shapes the final product of the picture. My favourite picture was one of the first I took, which was the one with the  tyre hanging from a tree. Originally when I developed the picture I put the negative into the projector back to front, so the picture came out very different to what was planned. This is something that can be changed in photoshop, but is also something that can only happen in film accidentally. I also found that the way the pictures are printed are different, with the projector stretching the picture with the film vs the digital picture. This is probably due to my ability to use the projectors to I don't get a distorted image, this can be seen in the picture of the wooden structure. The film camera was a 35mm film which is a compact film format. It produces average quality negative resolution which I would get a better quality if I used a 120 film camera, which I will use in my next shoot, by using a TLR camera, taking influence from Vivian Maier. 

The picture is taken of a structure that was found in the forest. It was taken with the 2 different cameras at the same distance with the same type of lens. It was a surprise to see that the results of the pictures was very different. I like that the colours in the digital creates a modern look while the film is very washed out and makes it look very old. I found that when I was in the dark room the grey scale contasted well, but the scanner doesn't do the photos justice.

This is my best shots from the shoot. I haven't edited them but I have been fair to both sides of the comparison and have left them in the state I shot them in. I found that the film camera had a smaller focal length than the digital. There is a lot more detail in the digital than the film. I still prefer the Film as it feels satisfying to get a picture out of the dark room. Even though the quality of the digital looks nicer and more professional. I like how in the film the picture isn't as cropped as the digital. This also allows you to see the refection in the water more clearly, which adds more context to the location and what is around the tyre