Lomography

Lomography is also something that I am very interested in. It is defined as being a "new take on an old style of analogue photography". It takes its name from the Lomo L-CA, a camera produced during the Communist period in St Petersburg, Russia, although the design has been recently brought up by a Swiss company who have marketed it as a "fashion-camera" (sold in places such as Urban Outfitters and vintage camera shops).

It has had a bit of a resurge in the past few years, particularly the Diana camera which was originally produced in Hong Kong in the 60s and 70s as a toy camera, as its body was made entirely of plastic except for the lens. The flimsy nature of the plastic body and the sub-par lens meant that light often leaked in to the camera damaging the film, and producing a dream-like fuzzy image with little contrast.

The ten golden rules of lomography according to lomography.com are as follows:

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don't think (William Firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don't worry about any rules

These are a few photographs I took with my Diana F+, which takes 120 roll film letting you create panoramic shots and multiple exposures.  For more see my Flikr

The Diana is a great camera and extremely simple to use. It has two settings, automatic and a B setting, so that you can hold the shutter open for night time exposures. This is a great website for explaining all about Diana cameras and various items that you can get for them (such as an instant back, a 35mm back, flash, splitzer and clone cameras).

The Lomography.com shop charges about £45 for a Diana F+ as standard, and comes with an instruction manual, a book and a leaflet showing examples of shots taken in various different methods so all in all it is a very good value camera. 120 film is about £3-£4 a roll depending on where you buy it, Lomography produce their own film which i've yet to try, although I bought some 35mm lomography film a few days ago which was £7.99 for 3! They sell a lot of different types of film including red scale (which adds a red/yellow tint to the negative), and when you click on the type it shows a selection of photographs taken with it so you can see the results. The Lomography website is great although you can get second hand versions of a few of the items on ebay if you want to get them a little cheaper.

Developing the film is a little more difficult, 120 film is pretty hard to get developed unless you have a specialist shop nearby, although you can send off to get them done from a few different places. This site offers a few links to some places that develop film both in the UK and abroad, and also offers links to places where you can buy your own chemicals to develop your film yourself! I live in Liverpool and I go to a great place called MPS Imaging. They charge about £3.50 for dev only which is what I usually get as I have a negative scanner, but prints aren't much more. They have a full price list on their website.

Sharing The Wealth; Polish Photographer Pitor Zgodzinski

I was on Flikr the other day searching for photographs taken with twin lens cameras and in particular, the Rolleicord I got as an early Christmas present. I came across THIS photostream by a Polish photographer called Pitor Zgodzinski. On his profile, he claims to "paint with light, not with the Photoshop" which is exactly what I try to do with my photographs. People seem to have lost the whole concept of how to use the available light to your advantage, as the common view held today is that they can just edit the photograph later. This is one of the reasons why I love film photography in its purest form, with little editing except that done in the dark room.

These are NOT my photographs, click here for Zgodzinski's photostream 

Those are just a few of my favourite photographs from his photostream, they show the beauty of analogue photography, as well as TLR cameras. On almost every photograph he states which type of camera was used as well as the film type, the aperture and the type of lighting, which is usually always the available light. A lot of photographers today are very reluctant to share their secrets which is a great shame, and the ones that do show a true passion for photography and a willingness to teach others.

Expired Film

Expired film is something which I have been interested in using for a while. I acquired two rolls of expired film yesterday from The Real Camera Company in Manchester, one from 2008 and one from 1981. Expired film can produce a variety of results depending on how it has been stored. From THIS website, I found that undeveloped film changes over time. The results of different storage methods are as followed:

•  High storage temperatures accelerate change;
•  Low temperatures slow it.
•  Freezing stops it;
•  Humidity accelerates it.
•  Dry storage helps minimize it
  
  

Expired polaroid film from this blog about polaroids and analogue photography
(which is extremely interesting)

 The "use by" date is, typically, two years from the month in which the film was packaged, although the factories must assume that a lot of the film is going to be stored on a shelf in a warm shop (when it should be stored in a fridge) and so the "process before" date is actually many months before any deterioration is likely to be visible.

This website suggests that film stored at room temperature is still likely to produce excellent quality images long after its expiry date, and that film only stored in conditions which are higher than room temperature will give a deteriorated image. However, exposed film will deteriorate much more rapidly, as exposure causes a physical change to the silver halide in the light sensitive layer, which slowly spreads to the near by crystals in "a kind of chain reaction". If you cannot process your film promptly, it is suggested that you store your exposed film in a fridge or freezer as it can show loss of colour quality as soon as six to ten weeks after exposure.

So what are the benefits of using expired film?

Well, as expired film can change the colour quality and contrast, you can produce some pretty weird-looking images with an antique feel.

These images are from this Hemmings Car Collectors blog

The photographer used a Holga and some expired Fuji Pro film. He "yanked the mask" from the camera to create the unpredictable light leaks, less defined boarders on the frame, as well as the blurring and vignetting. As you can see, the colours are slightly off, which is the result of using the expired film.

I love the look it creates, as well as the unpredictability. I'm very excited to try out my expired film!

Liquifying and Airbrushing

I recently watched an online tutorial on liquifying, which is something I have never tried before. Liquifying is a Photoshop technique which is used to make objects or people larger or smaller.

I found this tutorial to be extremely useful. These are some of the images that I practiced on yesterday:

Click on the images to see a larger version

The first image is just a self portrait taken a while ago. I used the liquify tool to make my nose slightly smaller, my top lip a little fuller and my cheeks narrower. I also used THIS airbrushing tutorial to make my skin smoother. The second image is of my friend Allie. I took this photograph as part of a set when I first got my studio lighting equipment to test them out. I used this photograph because I wanted to practice on full length model shot, NOT because I thought she needed to look any smaller! I also used the airbrushing tutorial again, and altered the levels to make the black areas a little more dramatic.

The Improssible Project

The Impossible Project is the company which took over Polaroid after it's closure and effectively saved instant analogue photography from becoming extinct, which would have meant over 300,000,000 polaroid cameras would have become obsolete.

The Photographer's Gallery Book Shop in London is somewhere which I definitely need to visit. They have the UK's largest collection of photography books, magazines, merchandise and unusual cameras and looks like somewhere I would absolutely love!

Introduction

Yesterday I went to Manchester with my mum so that we could go to the Real Camera Company for my christmas present. I found a beautiful Rolleicord TLR, which I fell in love with instantly. Rolleicords were produced between 1934 and 1976, by Franke & Heidecke and were a slightly less expensive version of the Rolleiflex.

Although I had originally wanted a Rolleiflex, the salesman explained to me that the Rolleicord was much simpler and was a better choice for a first time TLR user. He also told me that although this particular Rolleicord was slightly more expensive than the two Rolleiflex's they had in the shop, it would increase in value over time if its condition was maintained. The knowledge of the exployees at Real Camera was excellent and you could tell that they had a passion for cameras, unlike a few of the shops in Liverpool I have previously been to and would not go to again.

I was given 3 free rolls of film, as well as the camera strap and the manual which was in perfect condition. Two of the rolls of film that I had asked for were expired, one was from 1981 and I am extremely excited to see the results as I have always wanted to use expired film and have not been able to get hold of it for a reasonable price. (Real Camera charge £2 for a roll of 120 expired film, and I probably should have bought more than two!)

Real Camera is an amazing shop and I would reccomend it to anybody looking to purchase film, cameras, lenses and pretty much anything you could think of to do with analogue photography.