Category Archives: photography

Happy New Year!

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Well hope 2013 is super amazingness.  I totally ran out of steam these last few months with blogging, but don’t fear I’m still photographing like mad.  Thought I’d post one or two of my fav photos of 2012 for your viewingness – and because its kinda that time of year for retrospection.

Copy of jjjj9

 

 

 

I love this shot, you might disagree but it was taken on a rangefinder and the framing and focus is kinda hard sometimes (It was the Rollei F and it didn’t have a funny little rangefinder double picture thingy.  And I was challenged by a fellow photographer to take a shot of some grand architecture.  I was happy.

 

1Then this landscape from near my house, bit gloomy, it was foggy, but this was one of the first few rolls I developed myself and it was taken with some old technical pan, well it was branded as something else though.  Maybe I should have developed it for longer, I dunno.  but I liked the magical science of it all.

misha04004Another shot I’m pretty happy with.  I booked this model to shoot an Edwardian style shoot, and my friend in Australia Peter had sent me a roll of technical pan that had expired in the 1980s.  I shot it in my 1949 Zeiss Ikon Nettar and then messed with the developing (even turned on the lights whilst it was in the developer) to get some cool distressed effects.  I was super happy!

hpqscan0006Then me and a model shot in a mad derelict powerstation.  That shoot was significant because I used some cool new stuff I was investing in – an OM camera with 50mm Zuiko f1.4 lens.  And because I loved shooting in a weird location and I’m gonna do that more in 2013.  Also because I developed and scanned old school on my bedroom floor in one of those light tight bucket things.  Whoop!

Overall a good year for experimentation and a few nice shots too.  2013 holds some exciting things I hope, well it flipping well should since I just shelled out on an OM2, a Contax 137 and a Minolta XD11.  No one reading has probably heard of those bits of kit, but basically if it was still 1985 I would be the daddy.

Get in touch if you have any photo or camera questions, and if you’re Vogue magazine and want to hire me for a cool retro shoot then drop me a line, I’m pretty cheap. x

admin *at* manchestersartisticson *dot* com

 

 

 

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Pinhole?

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Yes, pinhole.

It looks like this:

It’s a tin can.  Mac and cheese.  Yes, I love the tinned stuff, and whilst I know its easy to make I prefer the tinned stuff okay?

So you clean it out and you find a top.  this is from the top of a poster-parcel, you know when you buy a print or a poster online and it comes in the tube, this is one of the two plastic end caps. then you get a sharp thing and you bust a hole in it, it doesn’t matter what size.  You can see the hole.  then you get some thin card and pin prick a tiny hole in it and stick it to the inside of the bigger hole.

Paint the inside of your tin can black by the way to stop light bouncing round and reflecting.  Then put a piece of black insulation tape over the hole.  That was easy, and free – so the next bit is the only difficult bit.  You need to buy light sensitive paper.  I found some amongst my step-dad’s things from the 70s.  Yes it was in the shed, damp, and had lost its label and protective box and was in a light safe bag but the end was open.

You need to buy fixer (if you know how to make cafenol which is basically coffee, vit-C tabs and cleaning soda) or fixer and developer if you don’t wanna make cafenol.  You’re supposed to buy stop as well but I think water suits fine, or maybe water with lemon juice in, but I never tried it.

Then you get three small sandwich boxes and pour the diluted chemicals in, developer in one (label it) stop, or water in the next and fixer in the next.  Then you do like 10 minutes research regarding your papers and chemicals to find out your time.  I guessed my dodgy damp paper was RC, resin coated, because I liked the sound of that.  I went to the website I’d bought the chemicals from (AG Photo in Birmingham UK) for £27 and I searched around a bit and found the info I needed on the Ilford website.  The times were pretty simple, 2 minutes in developer (but really you gauge it by eye) 30 seconds in the stop or water, then a minute in the fix, at room temp.

So I basically put the paper in the can (in the dark!) took the can outside with the top on and tape over the hole.  I sat it on a chair on my deck and took the tape away for 20 seconds (rough guess) it was pretty sunny.  I came back in.  Like I say it was pretty sunny so I went under my duvet because even with my curtains closed it wasn’t dark enough.  I lined up the 3 tubs and dipped the paper in, swishing it around with tweezers.  Then after the fix I washed it in the washing up bowl.  pretty low tech.

This happened:

Possibly the least amazing picture ever seen.

But I mean, I made it with a frickin mac and cheese can! it’s the trees at the bottom of my garden by the way.  And yes, practice will eventually make perfect.

Pinhole experts feel free to educate me on my mistakes.

My fav photos, part 1

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This is a break from my usual stuff, as this blog is for my own work.  But I’m getting bored of uploading my photoshoots, so here’s something different.  These, in no particular order, are my favourites in terms of photographers and photographs.  It was a series I thought of for my account on 365 project, because I wanted to take a break from uploading my own pictures, and I thought I’d do a little summary here.  There’s some great photos out there, and a rich history of photography and I study it whenever I can to try to compensate for not having any formal training in the medium.

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Quick Update

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This year seems to be less productive than 2011.  I mean, I’m not disappearing altogether, you can catch my published work still around the place. 

I assumed the role of a soldier with combat experience to squeeze out a tale of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and was featured in an anthology in the US which you can find here.  I was interviewed by the very cool London/Paris magazine Structo which I helped edit for their eighth issue here.  And finally a story published by echuk is now available from itunes, see my profile on their site and read a short sample here.  Nonetheless I’ve sold no stories this year, nor have I really submitted any, and I’ve sold no photos or art.

Still the last 10 days have seen three photo shoots come to fruition.  I’ll upload some shots from my shoots with Melissa and Eva in the next few days.  I’ve also planned a couple of shoots and a photo-walk for August, with a new camera to boot.

Well summers here at last, and I should really start thinking about my dissertation module which starts in September, I need to start writing again instead of watching old Father Ted DVDs and taking photos of beautiful women!

Thanks for keep up with the old blog, pictures to follow…and have a nice week.

Back from Hols

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It was pretty hot when I left the South of Spain this week.  I mean squirt your factor-fifty on five times an hour hot.  The sky had been perfectly blue and sun-filled for a full week. The sea was pretty warm, the breeze was warm, basically everything was warm.  Beer cost less than a pound, and a four course dinner with drinks was 9 euro 50.

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Sunshine Nostalgia

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So summer is here in the UK.  Or Spring.  Or that weird spring-summer thing we have every year in May after the snow and before the rain – and the cloudy school holidays. 

It makes me feel nostalgic.  I smell coconut suncream and meaty barbeque smoke and I’m transported.  I’m a boy cycling up and down the street in front of our old house in Daisy Hill.  Those long summer Sunday nights before school, and the long weeks once school had broken up.  Or I’m a teenager in an un-tucked school shirt kicking a football around.  Or chatting up the girls and swigging beers at messy house-parties trying to look cool.

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Shoot a Roll in a day

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All the cool kids are doing it. 

What do I mean?  35mm of course.  Remember that stuff we used before there were phones that could make toast, give you relationship advice and clean your car on a Sunday morning?  I love some stuff about the 2012-World.  The fact I can get out of bed at 3am, if I so choose, and go and buy authentic ingredients to make a lamb Tikka Biryani.   The fact I don’t have to read complicated small-print timetables anymore because Google tells me when the train is coming.  And that I can go to the pub for an evening without getting COPD.

But then I dislike some stuff too.

The fact nobody can spell anymore.  That I have about forty TV channels and there’s still nothing on, and that petrol costs more than saffron infused angel’s tears.

And the death of film.

Film photography is still cheap despite what Jessops tells you, I buy film for less than a pound and process it to CD for £2.  Film photography is a 150 year old tradition, making images the way our grandfathers did.  We can even use the cameras they used, got off eBay for £2 instead of the hundreds they spent.  It’s science happening in your hands, its magical stuff.  Light burning into chemical emulsion, a moment, an experience recorded.  Not for your computer screen or a low res Facebook album, but to slip into a book or bottom draw to discover in ten years time, so you can spend a Sunday afternoon remembering the fun you had.  So shoot a roll in a day.  Buy a film camera for a pound, get some film from the pound shop and go on a picnic with your family.  One of the nice things about photography is you can’t take any photos sitting watching TV, you have to get up and go out and do something relatively exciting.

Here are a few I took today.

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Cutaway For Sale!!

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Well folks, it’s here!

Cutaway Magazine is available to buy!  We have collected together the poetry, prose and photos of twenty one contributors from around the world to make, some might say, the best literary magazine ever made!

Please purchase, £6.99 plus postage!  leave comments below if you have any comments about the magazine!!