Well hello there.
It’s been a little while since I wrote anything on here, I mean what with the end of the world and whatnot having a quick burst forward of thoughts from myself onto a diary entry on this website felt like one of the least important things to be doing. BUT I guess now that things are slightly less terrifying than they have been (don’t get me wrong the world is still scary broken) I thought perhaps I would put something up here and tell you all what I have been doing.
Spoiler alert; Not actually that much since like most of you, I haven’t left the house a lot.
Home developed Fomapan Classic 100.
Firstly, as some of you may be aware from my last post here way back in April, I have started to develop some of my own black & white film at home. After the ease I had in developing the first two rolls of film with my Labbox and Cinestill Monobath chemicals I decided to buy myself a nice big brick of Fomapan and just shoot a lot more. As you can probably tell from the images I share I tend to shoot in colour and I tend to shoot medium format BUT since none of us have really been able to travel particularly far and I’ve had some spare time on my hands the idea of just documenting daily life on easy to develop black and white film has really appealed to me. The main inspiration came from Matt Day who always says that as a catchphrase “document your life” and it makes sense, one day we’ll all be gone and no one is ever going to see a hard drive full of images on a broken computer but a big pile of physical negatives…..that’s forever. I keep telling my girlfriend what I’m ending up with is the largest personal collection of photo’s of her, because that seems to be the only person I am photographing at the moment.
Next up, well i wrote a little something for Emulsive about how awesome Ektar is. Again if you’ve seen any of my work you can probably tell I am in love with that film and I rate it as probably, nope I am definitely going to say it, THE best film you can buy today. It’s not a long article, in fact it’s probably shorter than this diary entry BUT it does have a few pretty pictures so go have a read of it if you’d like……and while you’re there read some other stuff because Emulsive is a great website.
One thing that passed me by recently was the fact that this website is now a year old. Yes, one year of an actual proper website with bells and whistles and bits and pieces of my own that replaced the WordPress one I used to have. I think that still exists so click the link above if you want to see previous stuff of mine in a much more……amateur capacity (I am well aware this whole website also is amateur as hell too). I would say lets have a celebration of some kind but instead I’ll just say thanks everyone who actually visits and reads these things, I’m sure it’s more people than I actually imagine so it is nice to know that people out there care what I have to say and what I have photographed.
One of the images from My “Un Giro D’Italia” series. A street in Torino, Yashica D, Kodak Ektar 100.
I think it may be a good time to plug the fact that my Etsy store still has tons of copies of zines I’ve made with images from my Un Giro D’Italia series. As the trip I had planned for earlier this year got cancelled because of the whole pandemic situation it looks like any new addition’s will be put on hold for some time, in fact I am considering stopping adding anything new to Un Giro D’Italia as maybe it has run it’s course. Maybe. Let me know what you think about that? I mean I have made three zines, published an in depth article on Emulsive and written about it for Lets Explore Magazine and I just feel that perhaps this has reached a natural conclusion. No ability to make new images to add to it, maybe just close it and say that’s it done and move onto something new.
Regarding that, my Youtube channel has been getting quite a lot of views since I started it a few months ago and what stated out as me discussing photo’s from Un Giro D’Italia has developed into something a little bit more. If you haven’t seen the channel please go take a look, I’ve made a few videos that are more in depth than just talking over photographs and I have some different style content planned for the near future too.
One of the images from my Hometown of Cardiff that I’ve been documenting for some time. Yashica D on Fuji 400H.
I have decided to release into the wild a few images from a series of work I have been shooting and planning on doing for sometime. Due to the whole, you can only leave the house for short periods of exercise in the local area my photography has been really concentrated on that. The local area. So a series documenting my hometown of Cardiff has ballooned in size and is currently on somewhere between 200-250 images of just various places and scenes around the city with more to follow. I’m not sure what to do with this stuff yet but a zine probably seems sensible and will appear at some point and then beyond that…….who knows? Anyway I’ve been releasing images from it across my Twitter and Instagram for the last few weeks so if you haven’t sen any of that go check those out.
AND FINALLY………
I have given this a lot of thought and I am considering making a slight change to this website to include something new. Something not photography related.
So I have been writing a lot over the last year or so and a lot more since I had the whole enforced extra time stuck at home time on my hands kind of thing. So I am thinking of creating a separate section that would feature some of my writing, mostly fiction and mostly short stories. Let me know what you think about this idea?
Anyway thanks for reading through this, I appreciate it’s a longer one than normal and has been quite a while since I last did one of these.
As always.
Keep Shooting Film Everyone.
The 6 Million P Man