This week saw us all gather in the basement studios for the start of the day where we caught up with each other and had a chat about what we’d each been up to, in an informal way. There was some good chatter about a group of three or four who had been urbexing (urban exploring) in and old abandoned building in Digbeth, that sounded quite cool and I was looking at some of their images on Instagram. Some were amazing and some were a capture of the environment as it stood on the day, almost documentary in perspective.
Sam arrived to talk to us and told us that he’d been very unwell last week, that it was unusual to get hit hard with an illness, as he usually skirted around the edges of sickness without falling into the whirlpool. He briefed us into the fact that we could use the morning for production of our work and then at 2pm we’d be heading up to room 614 for a session of reviews where we examined our reviews that we had prepared last week.
Dark Times
With this I decided that I would enter the black and white dark room for some printing off negatives that I’d had back recently. I ordered a set of multigrade filters from Dan in the stores and then picked them up on the way. Dan also came into the room and mixed up a new batch of Ilford Multigrade Developer so that I wasn’t stuck using an old and tired mix.
With the enlarger set to f/8 and the number 2 grade filter underneath the lamp I began to print a negative of St Anthony’s College in Oxford, a marvellous concrete structure that had such amazing windows like a square version of a chameleon’s eye. To me this is what they reminded me of.
I began with a test strip of 2 second intervals, uncovering more of the paper strip every two seconds. This allows one test strip to show me the differences between 2 seconds and 14 seconds at the darker end. Once I’d chosen to replicate the 10 second exposure of the paper, I checked the focus, to see the grain, then popped another strip on the easel. With a ten second timer activation I grabbed it and dunked it for the minute in the developer tray. It came out of the process, post develop, stop, fix , wash and dry, as a bit too dark so I repeated the process with a 6 second exposure only. It was better, but the grain for the negatives was quite visible. It is a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 so I shouldn’t be too surprised by the amount of grain, but i do feel it impacts it greatly.
I then completed a Full Page print on a 10×8″ of Ilford MGRC paper and it was ok but still a little on the dark side. I figured I could drop the exposure down to 4 seconds and then burn the sky a little, as without the extra burn ( extra exposure of selected areas) the sky would have been too light and showed no detail. There was a few bits of dust and even a small hair of some sort that showed through on the print, and if I was making a print for exhibition I would have concentrated on removing these artefacts, wither by a quick wipe or blow off with a rocket blower.
With the final print done and time moving on I changed to another frame on the same roll of Delta 3200. This time it was a detailed shot of the windows, showing off the angular nature of the concrete structures with the glazing set back into it like the top of a hopper.
I completed a Test strip for exposures between 2 and 16 seconds then selected a 6 second shot to see what it resulted in. I wasn’t overly keen on the shot as it seemed too dark and the grain was a little too much for me. I’m sure that I will look back at this print again in the future and find the grain pleasing to me eye. It is possibly down to the fact that I might be averse to grain and noise in photos through the conditioning I’ve had in the early years of my photography learning.
I stopped playing with this negative now and started to work on another showing a corner view of the building, looking up at it with a point in the centre top of the image. The symmetry was in there and the windows also featured, which I think is my favourite part of the building.
I went straight in with a 6 second exposure on a 10×8 sheet and it came out looking ok but I’d messed up the framing a little so there was a bit of a black section at the top of the frame where the light had leaked past the negative in the negative holder.
I reframed it and banged out another copy, this time it was a little improved and I’d also thought to burn the sky a little too by holding the corner of a card over the building being projected, leaving the sky to receive a few extra seconds of light from the enlarger. I created a duplicate of this shot too as I quite liked it but there are still dust spots on the print caused by dust either on the neg or the negative holder in the enlarger.
Swapping to another negative on the same roll of film I chose a front view of the building that I’d previously been printing. I could see that there was a tricky job of the sky so I did a 5 seconds exposure with an additional burn across the sky to see if I could fetch some detail from it. It was ok but I was none too impressed with the overall print so I drew a line under this roll and moved on to see if I could do some prints of Dudley Zoo.
I chose to do a test strip of 2-14 seconds and then selected a 6 second exposure time. The first print came out well and I was happy with it, It looked good and I figured that this might be useful in the project of “Matter of the Black Country” if needed.
I didn’t do any further prints of this one as I was happy with it, so I switched to another view on the roll. I repeated this at six seconds and the print came out well with no further interference so I was happy.
Teh table below shows the settings and times I used for the above prints.
With this, the time came about to pack up and prepare for a quick drink and snack before the reviews at 2pm.
Present Tense
I sensed that a few of my classmates were nervous of doing a presentation for 5 minutes but Sam was insistent on all of us doing the job we were asked to do. He started up the presentations on the screen as had been submitted to him over the Canvas application and we were asked to talk through the slides one person at a time.
Up first was Joe who had chosen to focus on his “View of Black Country football” Influences he mentioned included Stuart Roy Clarke, Peter Robinson
Joe said he couldn’t take a big DSLR into the game as the security would stop him and he’d done a Test shoot at the West Brom vs Cardiff match. Sam showed him his little compact camera that he takes everywhere. He also recommended to Joe that he looks at Alec Soth, a portrait photographer, who captures more of the subjects and their context in the frame rather than being too close.
Angus came second and showed his take on the Black Country, he had photos of Industrial factory chimneys and outlets around Wolves and Tipton and wanted to capture the industrial landscape of where the industrial revolution was central to.
Courtney remained at her seat like the rest of us and discussed her take on Black Country foods
Minimalistic and comical was her idea and she had some test shots of the close ups as well as portraits of people in the Bilston outdoor Market, especially a woman called Julie. She was being inspired by a photographer called Louise Hagger.
Brian discussed his thoughts around Black Country water and displayed images of some of the local canals , Lichfield reservoir. Lichfield reservoir , although outside the Black Country was where all the water originated from and helped with sanitation and hygiene of the area during the blackest of time. Sam suggested that there is a photo of a lock gearing machine and that Brian could use some Macro lenses to capture more detail on this rather than a wider view.
Sophie had a project or two on buildings around Wolves and the Black Country although it caused som econtroversy as to whether Wolverhampton was in the Black Country. She had also been to Walsall market and had some great portraits of market traders and visitors.
Clare is heavily influenced by Lana Astor and Todd Sipo (not sure I got those spelt correctly)
Urban exploring and night shoots with some light painting is where she had gone and she had a good few photos, some with her hair on fire too. Whoops. Clare had also thought about ways of using photos from previous shoots and overlaying them in a multiple exposure style.
Evie had originally started taking photos of the Black Country’s canal system as it was the spinal system of the transport of goods in and around the area. But then it locks morphed into something else, “urban banality” with photos of normal everday items and locations. She said that she was being inspired by photographers such as Richard Bellingham, Aaron Siskind, Stephen Shaw. Billingham is ar Wolverhampton on the 16th November in a conversation with Tom Hicks (@blackcountrytype)
Lilly spoke about post industrial landscapes and had a photo or two of an area whilst it was still in the middle of the busiest of times alongside one of their own photos of the area today, showing the spoil heaps having been returned to nature. Inspired by photographer Phil Loach, Lilly wants to use large format on ilford fp4 film to capture the shots for the project.
Grace had borrowed the Hasselblad from Uni and shot around the Black Country Living Museum, capturing portraits of the actors and staff around the streets of this amazing attraction which is next door to the Zoo and Castle that I’d been visiting recently. Evie said that she had been inspired by photographer Vivian Maier.
Dani was the last person to do her talk in front of the rest and showed us photos from her shoots of people sitting down around the Black Country. People jsut sitting down for any number of reasons, with no way of knowing why they had chosen there and then to take a seat. Dani was also inspired by Vivian Maier.
I had done my presentation in the middle of the group as I had described in the previous post here. It seemed to go down well and Sam said he was looking forward to seeing the Redscale images I got back from the zoo, saying also that Euripides loved playing with redscale and other film technologies. The “Shit Names For Shops” was ok but I don’t feel that this is something I want to continue with. As I was talking about mine, someone said that they’d been to Zoo back when they were very young and that they remembered the Kiosks being used for refreshments and sweets etc. It goes to show that even the young members of the group are being taken back to their youth with the images, and this set of Tecton buildings has been there since 1937, before World War 2. So there will be many more elderly people who had been there as a child or even as a parent of a child that might be taken back to the past by some of the photos.
Museum
After the end of the day I wandered over to the Art Gallery to see of there were any new exhibitions and I wasn’t disappointed. In the smaller gallery by the main entrance there was an interesting piece of work “A Perfect Sentence” by Oliver Frank Chanarin. it consisted of two robotic devices hanging on the wall that moved along and changed over photographs from the piles on the floor to hang on the wall. It didn’t seem to have any order but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t random. It was moving photographs that had been produced in an analogue darkroom and some were obviously test prints and studies of how to produce the final print and it spoke about the way that we are consuming photography in this digital age. It was an interesting display and I was intrigued by the method of using suction to pick up and hang the images.
As I left the room and went upstairs there was some works by Evelyn De Morgan that was titled “Painted Dreams” and that is exactly what was being portrayed. Her dreams made real on canvas. Many of them riffed on the renaissance style paintings and religious imagery to tell her story, and I was impressed by the contents and the quality of the works. They were very good and although this sort of work isn’t really my bag I came away glad that I had seen them and had a view of the inside of someone else’s mind.
Conclusion
It was good to see everyone’s projects getting along and some of their ideas coming to fruition. I was heartened by the effort that everyone seemed to have put into it. I stopped after the session outside and congratulated a couple of people on their ideas as I really found their photos to be wonderful. I also had a couple of nice compliments about my work which I was grateful for.
I’m eager to get the Redscale photos back to see how they got on and whether they’re any use to the project,
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