Our four-week analogue photography workshop started with an introduction to the workshop by Caroline Burke. She explained the schedule of the coming weeks and old us about the final outcome we had to come up with till the end of December. The assignment was to hand in three 10×8 inch photographs, one of which deals with some aspect of portraiture, one of landscape/seascape/cityscape and one which should recreate an existing photograph from a famous photographer.
Afterwards Helge Mruck introduced us to the control of the analogue 35mm SLR cameras. We learnt how to shoot with them, how to adjust the camera settings to get the perfect exposure and how to load the film.
In groups of three we went outside to share a film for our first photographic task: Each to us had to shoot 12 frames, half with the emphasis on portrait and the other half with focus on some aspects of cityscape or landscape. We came back with our film, rewinded it and took it out of the camera.
The next step was to process our film using the processing kit provided from the Media Hub. I liked to learn about all about the individual steps that are necessary to make a final print all by myself – just with chemicals and different techniques in the darkroom.
We left our film to dry for several hours, then took it home to keep it safe for the next week when we went into the darkroom. Helge and Caroline showed us how to use test strips to find the perfect exposure, how to print contact sheets and our final photo.
I liked this workshop the most so far! Maybe that’s just my personal interest in analogue photography, but I could spend whole days in the darkroom. It feels like magic to see your photo appear on the photographic paper when it is in the developer solution. Moreover, I am impressed by all the manual control you have. The chosen exposure time, the framing, the filters,… – every decision influences the final picture.
In the end, I ended up with this image: I printed it with an exposure time of 20 seconds (with f/11). I am happy with the result – the lighting conditions in this underpass were a bit difficult, so I am glad nothing seemed too overexposed or underexposed.
Documentation of MEDI512 "Experiment" 