The past few days have been pretty good quite frankly. I had my college taster day on Thursday (for any American readers, I’m refering to college as 11th and 12th grade), which has really given my enthusiasm a big boost for my Psychology and Photography As-Levels in September.

First the college gave us a welcome talk about the amount of work that comes with college studies, how many hours a week students can expect to be in college, what is expected from and and what we can expect from the college. It’s mostly stuff I’ve learnt from the past two years I’ve spent at Sixth Form. Then I went and had taster sessions for Photography and Psychology.

My Photography taster was really interesting. We spent about ten minutes talking about the course. The lecturer, Roary, asked us all if we’d taken GCSE Art, which most of us had, and what cameras we all had. I was the only person in the small group that had a film camera, everyone else had compact digitals apart from one guy, who had a DSLR. We were then shown the darkroom and taken through a light trap, which spooked the girls in the group slightly, which is a rather weird experience.

While we were in the dark room, we were shown how to produce Photograms, images made without a camera. We were given a piece of photo paper, some assorted objects and an enlarger. We placed the objects over the photo paper and exposed them to light from the enlarger for about six seconds, then went through the process of developing the photo paper ourselves using trays of developing, stopping and fixing chemicals. The transformation of a blank piece of photo paper into a black and white image, even a simple one such as my photogram, was amazing to see for the first time. We then went back to the classroom where we were set our summer project.

Roary told us to see this as a guage of how well we will enjoy the course and that if we saw this as a chance to get stuck in and get started on our course, we would enjoy it. If we saw it as a chore and put it off until the last weekend of the summer, we wouldn’t enjoy ourselves and that we shouldn’t take it.

Our project for the summer is to choose a theme to explore, take at least 36 photos using either a film or digital camera that explore the theme we have chos. We then have to pick about six of those photos and display them in a way we think is effective and then write about the photos saying why we chose to make them, what we wanted to show and how sucessful we think we have been in achieving our aim for the photos. Then we have to find another photographer who has a similar approach to our chosen theme and display their work alongside our own, saying what we like about the image and how we think the photographer has been successful making an interesting image. This summer project forms will form a portfolio that my entry to the photography course depends on. If the powers that be are satisfied with the quality of my work, then I will be accepted onto the course.

Since then, I have been mind mapping ideas for my theme, going through ideas such as Food, Nature, The Urban Environment, Light + Dark and Water. I was leaning towards Light + Dark, because I could explore ideas such as shadows, silhouettes, contrast, lines, Night and Day and Black and White and Water, because I could cover water in different environments, such as at the beach, falling rain, rivers, lakes, puddles, oil in water and my cat drinking from our kitchen tap. I’ve deicded to run with Water as a theme and to shoot my images using black and white film.

The black and white film has presented a challenge. Because I don’t curently have access to a dark room, nor suitable skills to produce high quality images, I need to get my film developed at a commerical Mini-Lab. The lab I use can only develop C41 films instore, traditional Silver Halide films need to be sent away for processing, which takes 14 days and costs £10.99 for a 24exp film, whereas a black and white film that can be processed using C41 chemicals can be processed instore, can be done between 24 hours and three days, and costs £4.99 for a 36exp film. Unfortunatley the only C41 black and white film I can lay my hands on is Ilford XP2 Super film, which is ISO400, higher than I have used before, which could present me with either new opertunities or challenges, depending on where I take most of my photos. I’m also going to be shooting in black and white for the first time and as I have to consider that my images will be tonal not colourful, I should get some interesting results.

Tonight there will be a fireworks display in the city for the Lord Mayor’s celebrations, launched from the battlements of the castle in the city center. I’m hoping to be able to get down there and take some good photos using some colour film, hopfully if I can get down there, I’ll be able to get some nice shots of the trails left by the exploding fireworks above the castle. It should be pitch black by the time the display starts, so I probably won’t be able to get the castle in the image properly, but maybe I can get the castle as a silhouette against a red/orange sunset someday.

I’ve read mixed reviews about this concept online so I decided I needed to try it myself. I chose Ilford XP2 Super and Kodak BW400CN, both in 35mm as test films. My results were mixed…the Ilford out-performed in my opinion the Kodak (with regards to tonal range as the Kodak was much harsher) but was anything gained over say TX or 125PX in Diafine?…you be the judge. I will say that the look of a print made using this technique is different and in some cases could be used in a very creative way. The test image was shot with a LOMO LCA+ with the Ilford XP2 Super rated at EI 200. Be sure to click on both images to see them at a larger size.

Tech Notes:

• EI Range for full expressive negatives: 100 – 200
• Diafine Developer at 80F!!!!
  
• Part A for 5 Minutes with two inversions at the start of each minute.
• Part B for 5 Minutes with two inversions at the start of each minute.
• Wash for 2 Minutes
• Fix: 5 Minutes or package suggestion.
• Wash 5 Minutes
• Perma Wash: 2 Minutes or package suggestion.
• Final Wash, LFN and Dry!

I have also found that these negatives scan really nicely using most generic gray scanner profiles and the grain is there but acceptable for a process such as this. Give it a try!

Viva la Revolution!!!!

Final Note: The LOMO LCA+ is a Zone Focus camera and as such comparing the sharpness to say a Leica is a real mismatch…but the LOMO has an amazing quality all its own!