photography

Back in 2011 I set myself a list of goals for my photography. It has been two years now, and the goalposts have obviously moved as I have strived to reach them. How well do I feel I have done?

relax, don't be in such a hurry

I still work pretty quickly, especially in post-processing, but I think I spend more time on each shot. Of course, film slows me down and the new large format camera will slow me to a near standstill.

use humour

The idea is simple: bring your face, bring a camera, bring a friend... we're here to make new profile pictures! Fans of photography — behind the lens or in front — are invited to come along and meet people, take pictures, and hopefully end up with some fantastic new portraits. Who cares if your Facebook profile picture is awesome already? This is your chance to get another! And you also get to practice taking photographs of people, become a bit less shy about having your picture taken, make new friends, and generally just have a laugh.

I decided to push my photographer self a little further and do something a bit more conventional (or unconventional for me): a "fashion" shoot.

I'm currently emptying my fridge of expired and exposed films. Towards the end of the week I sent nine such films for developing and scanning (on the cheap) and this is one of them that came back. It's always a little strange coming across pictures from the past that you've not seen before. It's also a bit strange when you find photographs of someone you lived with and loved for many years. What surprised me most, however, was the fact that I shot some portraits and didn't remember it!

I shot three films today with a view to testing the use of paracetamol as a reducing agent in film developer. The two I ran off in Southern Cemetery (36 exposures of HP5+ and 36 exposures of Delta 400) were both developed in the following solution, following a Tylenol recipe on the ascorbate-developers blog:

• Na2CO3 (anhydrous) — 24g
• Vitamin C — 7g
• Paracetamol — 1g
• KBr — 1g
• Water to make 650ml