Here nice and early and set up on the table near the radiator. I was able to write up these notes after the conversations, as well as publish the artist research on Stuart Whipps, I also started writing the next post about Artist Research on the recently deceased photographer Martin Parr. I discussed the projects with my coursemates and what they have been up to. A few of the group have gone over to Liverpool today to take photos of their surroundings. A couple of people in today had been to Manchester yesterday on a school of art trip to a few museums too.
Redscale Discussion
Euripides and I talked about the redscale films that I’d just shot. We discussed how I’d taken the photos and he then told me some facts about using redscale film
Colour on holiday photos was always a bit dour and a lot of photographers used to change their cameras to overexpose by one or two stops to make the colours pop
There is a lot of latitude with colour film and overexposure is difficult to do with it and most issues are avoided.
He mentioned that there is different reciprocity with colour film and that shooting it over a second is to be avoided. Exposing for four seconds will lead to some strange results. Looking at the datasheets it recommends that the 400 film isn’t recommended to shoot past 16 seconds.
He mentioned that you get some odd results and this is down to the light sensitive chemicals in the emulsion layers having different sensitivities to light once you get past a certain time. This makes sense to me as the chemicals will react to the light in a uniform or linear manner for a short period before tiring and then having different characteristics that mean it takes an increasingly longer time to have the same impact on the chemistry. The film emulsions will have been designed for the usual times that shutter speeds are used at and this Reciprocity is a normal part of film usage.
Euripides also said that lower ISO films are better to use for the Redscale effect as they are finer grain and more dense, seemingly easier to control. He said that he would not really use Kodak Ektar for redscaling though as it is designed to be used for portraits and is not ideal for redscale usage.
We discussed how there were no chemicals available to develop the film, Clare also has some films to process, and that I had sent mine off to AG Photographic on Tuesday morning so it should be back soon. Euripides is keen also to see what they look like on the negatives and I’ll scan them in once I have them back. I showed him the table of the exposures on the two films from my shoot this weekend and he seemed to be ok and never said that I’d done anything really wrong. The only thing that he mentioned was using a shutter speed of over one second. See previous paragraph on reciprocity.
From the Fujicolour Datasheet for 400 Pro H
Datasheet For Fujicolour 160 Pro NS
Review Week
Next Wednesday is the group review of the projects so far and should entail a 10 minute presentation showing the conceptual and visual development of the project documenting influences, references and any issues or concerns involved in the project thus far. We are to provide a view of the future too as we move towards the end of the year.
Hopefully my redscale negs will be back by then and I’ll be able to slot them into the photos that I have already made from the inside of the building, the outsides and even the aerial shots I’ve captured. It will be a peer review and we must answer any questions, being careful to make notes that will help with the continuation.
Resident Not Evil
On the ground floor of the University there is a base room and the door was slightly open, the top half of the stable door was open. I stuck my head in to say hello and ask her about her practice. Her name is Sophie and is doing a residency with the Blast Creative Network (BCN) Residency, she runs Hybrid Art Journal and is a multi-media artist who deals with film, sculpture, mixed media, and even playing with cement and balloons. She is based here for a while and is just setting up her room to be her studio for the next short while. I’ll keep my eyes open for any of the events that it mentions on the website and see if I can attend any of the screenings that are coming along.
Civic Exhibition
Today was also an opportunity to send an email to the organiser of the Shirehall exhibition taking place in a couple of months time. I’m supposed to have sent off the details of the piece of work that I will be exhibiting, but I really want to see if any interesting results come back from the redscale experiment. As soon as I have these, I may choose one to get sent to Jim in the Print Support Hub for printing in a bigly manner.
Conclusion
A good and productive week this week. I got some written work done and a chat with Euripides that I found extremely helpful. It was good to get one and a half artist research posts written too as I more often than not use loads of information and work from other artists without ever really taking the time to document more information about them. I will sometimes refer to other photographers and artists but seldom dig deep enough to document the relevance and their link to my own practice.
It was also great to learn about the way colour film works with reciprocity and how it affects the final image, big up to Euripides for sharing his knowledge with me.
It was also nice to see a person in the base room too, doing a residency and I’m looking forward to seeing what she gets up to.
I feel in a good place and ready for the review next week, with a small powerpoint to write ahead of the session. Hopefully my redscales will be back too.
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