Music Gets Me Through It.

Following on from the initial ideas for my still life shoot, I thought about including some songs that have helped get me through emotional times and given me inspiration:

Madina Lake - Friends & Lovers

The chorus in Madina Lake's "Friends & Lovers" has helped me through past troubles by reminding me that no matter what happens, i'll still always have myself.
The lyrics are:
"You can build a life and have it broken down.
You can chose a path and get turned around.
You can hate yourself and fall in love again.
As for me, I've lost friends lost lovers.
But I still got my soul."

My Chemical Romance - Famous Last Words

This emotional powerhouse is for me the ultimate "get on with your life and forget about the past" song. The song is filled with thrashing guitars, screaming vocals and the build up of tension before the first chorus really adds to the overall emotive feel to the song.
The lyrics are:
"I am not afraid to keep on living,
I am not afraid to walk this world alone
Honey, if you stay I'll be forgiven
Nothing you can say can stop me going home."

Motion City Soundtrack - Worker Bee

This song is a favourite of mine because of the explosive start and feel good, confident attitude that you get after a while of recovering from heartbreak. It's a song that for me, expresses moving on in it's entirety and finally being able to progress in your life after a failed relationship.
The Lyrics are:
"It's been a good year, a good new beginning,
I'm through with the old school so let's commence the winning,
I've been a good little worker bee,
I deserve a gold star."


These are but three of many songs I listen too that all fall within the Rock genre that have helped me get through previous bad experiences and I like to think they have greatly influenced me as a person in many ways.

Why I love Large Format.

Whilst I was in the darkroom printing out my first medium format photographs, I thought to myself:
"Why not print that large format negative while i'm here?"

So I did. and boy I'm glad I did. The detail is ridiculous! I just wish I had a decent scanner... oh well, better get saving...

Who Needs Digital?

Analogue FTW! (At least it is so far...)

My first B&W medium format contact sheet ^^

During the first month of this course I have learnt a great deal about using analogue film to take photographs instead of digital, and I can honestly say so far I absolutely love it! (I might not even go back to digital for a few years...)

The whole process of creating a negative, then processing this in the darkroom, and projecting the results onto photographic paper to create a latent image ready for printing is a real joy to do.

My favourite part of this process is the printing stage for black and white negatives, using various filter grades and exposure times to enhance the print really allows you to make the image your own and get the final print exactly right.

The pictures above show (albeit not very clearly - I took them on my iPad you see) the process and evolution of a print in order to reach the final image, I started off by creating test strips, the first of which featured test exposures of grade 2 at intervals of 5 seconds in order for me to decide which was the roughly correct exposure. Moving on from this I printed a full test strip of that exposure to get a closer look at both the highlights and shadows of the image. I found that the print was a tad overexposed and there was slightly too much contrast.

To counter the blown highlights, moving more of the exposure towards a lower grade filter to give them more time to imprint onto the photographic paper, whilst leaving a smaller exposure time for the grade 2 exposure.

I also found that the print suffered slightly because the shadows were slightly too light also, so to solve this problem I added a short, 5 second exposure with the grade 5 filter in place, this would give the blacks a much darker look, without compromising the rest of the image too badly.

I played around with the grades and exposure times a few times in order to achieve what I thought was the best possible print, a print which was pretty much ruined by the quality of my scanner:

Final Print, ignore the watermark, Lightroom exports all my pictures with one.