In lieu of any content here’s a picture of a fern in Nottingham’s arboretum. Lots of stuff on at the moment with M208 TMA03, 2 audax gps routes to sort out (Lincolnshire Cross 200km, and “Moors and Wolds” 400km and lots of chances to spend longer than expected at work have contrived to make life a bit duller than expected. Hopefully sorting out the first 2 of those will provide some interesting posts, and unless I really want to become know for Dynamics CRM and SQL Server clustering, I’ll keep the last one to myself.

And we’re not talking about policemen trying to be environmental activists either. Plant growing in Nottingham’s Arboretum park last summer. Taken with Canon EOS 3, 50mm f/1.4 on FP4 @64 ISO and developed in ID-11, scanned on Epson V500

Another one from the rainy afternoon in nottingham. Just down the gutter from the other photo (here). A bit more swirling and motion in this one, and a little leaf holding on

So which trusted construction material do you think this is?

Despite all appearances this isn’t wood. It is in fact concrete. To be exact it’s concrete somewhere on the Royal Festival hall. Looks like someone decided the concrete montser would look better if they tried to make it look like wood.

You can see some more of the texturing in this photo:

So, it looks like they decided to use it quite liberally over the whole building.

This weekend sees a jaunt up to Infest to take some band photos, it’s been a while so hopefully I can remember which end to point at the stage. Debating whether to take the film camera as well. And then there’s always the change of  getting some reportage shots as there’ll be fuckwits protesting as well in the city centre.

(photos taken with Canon EOS3, Sigma 24-70 EX 2.8 on Ilford FP4+ @125 iso, developed in Ilford DD-X and scanned on an Epson v500)

Canon EOS 300, Canon EF 50mm 1.4, HP5+ @ISO400, home developed with Ilford DD-X, scanned with an Epson V500

Minor amounts of work after scanning, but nothing that couldn’t really be done in a darkroom. Contrast increase, slight dodge and burn

So finally I’ve taken some photos with my new camera, developed them and then scanned them. Here’s the first:

Pretty happy with that. There’s definitely something satisfying about working with film. There’s the mystery about what’s actually on the film after you’ve taken the shot and the timing and skill in getting the film developed properly. It’s almost a bit of an anticlimax once it’s been scanned, just a little bit of levels and sharpening to get over the film->image artifacts and it’s all done.

Anyway, a little bit of Nottingham urban decay with a tagged switch box at the top of the Forest Recreation ground. Not the most original compositions but the bright white tag caught my eye nestling in the trees.

Snowy lampost in York, February 2010

Another one of my first film images, processed by boots (and scanned by them).

A really quick snap in the Museum Gardens in York while I waited for some friends to catch up. Not the greatest exposure, was still getting the hang of the meter on the new camera (24 hours old at this point), so there’s not much detail in the snowy areas.  Should really have dropped the exposure down a bit to compensate. Or had some filters to hand. That’s something else to read up on and learn.

That said I do like the composition.  Shame I’ll have to wait till next year to have a chance to try it again.

So having bought a film camera, the obvious next step was to start processing my own film.

First up was some research. Rummaging around on the Internet provided some very useful video:

Due to how easy it was to get hold of I decided to use Ilford films and chemicals. This came in handy as Ilford have a huge range of helpful documents on their website, this step by step guide being particularly useful – http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/200629163442455.pdf

The photo.net and flickr forums also came in very handy.

Part 2 will cover  the equipment I decided to get.