New and Original B&W / Colour Photography

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. Blah blah blah.

I wanna start with some talk about a new plug-in for Photoshop that I just heard about called Exposure by Alien Skin. I heard about it over at MJR and it's capable of replicating the look of various colour and black and white films. Now, I haven't shot much film personally but I do know that I love the look and "feel" of images caught on celluloid over those created digitally. I can't really vouch for the accuracy of the results but I do know that one for Ilford HP5 is pretty good and I've heard that the Tri-X is pretty darn accurate too. What I do know is that it's made my workflow a lot easier and I love the outcome of the images at the end.

Until I can afford another 35mm camera, this has definitely made me a lot happier with the digital images that I shoot and I definitely recommend it.

Anyway, on with the photos. Slightly eclectic mix today:

Worked for a day at some posh toff farmer's fair in a town near where I live. I took a few shots during my lunch break. This man more or less sums up my sentiments regarding the event:

This is how he rolls with his homies in the hood.

This made me laugh. Shame there wasn't any live ammunition in there, the kid would have been knocked right on his ass.

Because I'm Cpt. Supercool, I made two frames.

This pooch was the only one not going crazy at all the kids running around

Yours truly in my friend's dorm room.

This is one random frame from my mate's police induction ceremony. The room was packed full of people and hot as hell. This woman's family somehow managed to rope her into fanning them for a good 30 minutes or more.

More or less the rest of the images coming up are from the graduation days held at my university recently. I was covering them as part of a project I was working on. Starting off with a detail shot.

I can't really take credit for the idea of this photo as it was heavily influenced by one of Mr. Weeks' photographs but I still like it. It was interesting getting the woman with the camera to pose as she barely spoke any English but I feel I managed okay.

I made friends with another pooch!

Every single area of campus was being turned into impromptu photoshoots . This is without a doubt a big part of graduation day and I wanted to capture it. It also saves me having to pose people myself ;)

This guy was staring me down the entire time I was walking in his direction so I made a frame just to annoy him ;)

Nothing says "You've Graduated!" like overpriced promotional alcohol.

I took some time out to shoot some of the non-graduates whenever things started to calm down because of new ceremonies starting. This guy had been here by himself for about an hour, as far as I could tell, and was on his second or third packet of crisps. Nothing like a healthy lunch.

I liked how oblivious this guy seemed of what was going on around him.

I could have made a side project simply of the interesting hair styles I saw that day

Sniped a friend of mine, Steph, as she came out of her ceremony.

She very kindly posed for a second just before she melted into the huge crowd of smiling, tearful parents.

I dubbed this girl "Marshmellow Lady".

Apparently Jesus was graduating today too

Around the lake there was a whole plethora of parents posing and bossing around their associated graduates for photo time. I decided to go for another session of "stealing" other people's photos while they took them.

Decisive.

I find it slightly amusing that I can pull off headshots of similar or better (normally better) quality in a fraction of the time, and without any specialist equipment or even the subject's notice, than the overpriced hacks doing the "official" ones.

This photo more or less summed up the entire graduation process for me. At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with the students, really. The day itself is all about the parents refusing to treat their children as adults for one last day, squandering them for one last day before they properly move out into the real world. All I saw throughout the whole thing was parents bossing their kids around, telling them where to go, where to eat, fussing over their appearance....and students getting more and more agitated over this almost forgotten level of attention. Anyway, I feel the expression and body language in this picture really sum that up. It's one of my personal favourites from the event.

Speaking of agitated children...

One of my friends gave me a little flak for this, saying it was cruel to take a photo of a disabled woman. My views on the subject are firstly: No. Just no. She's a person just like anybody else and I was there to make photos of the people at the event. I'm sure she would have been more offended had I treated her as if she were something to be shied away from rather than a normal person. Secondly, in the split second of making the photo I barely even registered that she was disabled. What caught my eye was the overwhelming sense of pride for her son that her expression showed.

I feel the same way about photographing homeless people, although disabled people are less likely to beat me up if they take offence to it :P

...I'm so going to hell for that one.

Some graduates really knew how to work those robes...

I knew I would love this the second I pressed the shutter, his laugh was awesome. Also, the more I look at this the more and more he looks like Chandler from "Friends".

Mischevious children were amok. Amok I say!

There was very little hat throwing, surprisingly. Apparently it was discouraged due to some health and safety bullshit but I was still surprised at how little I saw. I really had to hunt to find some people doing it, as I really wanted a shot of it for my project. Fortunately, these guys took a few tries at it.

Waiting on the ceremony to come out

I spotted this guy below me while I was waiting

And this guy to the left of me

Finally the procession started

Our elusive Vice-Chancellor

My mate's girlfriend Lucy making some adjustments.

And that's the end of graduation. The last few frames are more or less for the project.

Hipshot. I think I'm getting better at them.

And finishing with a frame of two of my climbing buddies

Thanks for reading, hope you've had a good week.

Very little has been happening recently, beside a short trip to Amsterdam with my housemates, detailed later. I shot a couple of rolls of Hp5 with the Pentax shown in the last post and discovered that most situations I find myself in are either too light or too dark for it's limited exposure range. I did love shooting and developing film, and managed to make myself a couple of semi-decent prints from one or two of the negs too which was a bonus, not to mention a fun (and messy) learning experience.

I'm planning on picking up a rangefinder when I work up the money, most likely a Bessa. I doubt anyone actually reads this thing but if you do and you happen to have a Voigtlander for sale, drop me an email at demonic.rabbit at gmail dot com.

Anyway, photos.

Waiting for briefing on a climbing related job. The woman was 40 mins late.

Next up: Drive by street shooting.

These shots are from around the start of April. It snowed for two days after a week of sun. The weather here in England likes to keep you on your toes.

My first time in the darkroom on campus, which apparently hasn't been used in years. Busy developing my first roll of film. Excitement.

Waiting for the roll to dry.

And on my way home.

Trying out something after seeing a frame by Severin...

But to little avail.

Okay, now that crap is out the way, the next few are from a trip to London to try out a new climbing centre that's just opened.

If there were a photographic army, this guy would be a machine gunner.

Must be embarrassing to show up both wearing the same costume.

Lunch break at the climbing wall.

And then it rained. In England. The media was all over it.

Wish I'd waited a second here, but I still like it.

We went for drinks afterwards in what turned out to be a gay bar. It's not often that I'm the eye candy of an entire bar.

I challenge any street shooter to walk past a convex mirror and not make a self.

Some amount of time later, photo boredom.

Seems everyone but me is doing revision. I guess I'm cool like that.

Atleast it was sunny.

Start of the Amsterdam photos. Lady airport worker surveys her kingdom.

Getting drunk at the airport is standard fare.

Again, because I'm 5 years old.

You know you're in Amsterdam when the first bar you go into has this on the wall. Insectiality sure is big over there.

I got charged 20 cents for this shot so appreciate it.

This guy was a walking acid trip.

The view from the hostel was pretty nice.

If time were measured in beer, this would be around Lost-all-sense-of-balance 'o clock.

Finding something that even closely resembles flash sync in this state ain't gonna happen. I do remember this being pretty representative of how I felt though.

Apparently we met some sailors.

This was in a chinese place called Wok to Walk. I highly recommend it if you're drunk and in Amsterdam.

Probably around 1/8th. I'm really surprised that it's relatively sharp considering that my centre of balance was currently doing laps around the room at that point.

Next morning. Kitty gets on it early.

We hung out in 'Dam square for a while, partly because we were tired but mostly because the mushrooms we ate in the morning were kicking in. So, I took photos.

Possibly the cheesiest frame I've ever made.

I can only hope that one day I'm half the man that he is.

This guy seemed highly suspicious of the mayo on his chips. Probably a good thing he didn't see the logo for the chips company (which, by the by, was a cartoon baby masturbating onto some chips)

The next few shots I'm pretty proud of because what normally annoys me most about my street shots is how uninvolved and distant they are but with these I challenged myself to get out of my comfort zone and get a little more in the scene. They're not perfect, but I'm still happy with them.