Dead Cities

  This is the result of that most treasured of things - free time!  Jess was out for the day with her mum and i had hours to do whatever i wanted - a joyous rarity!  I hadn't really shot any new pictures for a while so i decided to do a little photoshoot i had been planning.

  Recently a family friend had given us a new TV.  One of the old, huge Sony ones that were top of the range just before flatscreens became such a big deal.  This nicely replaced the old box we already had.  My plan was to dismantle the old TV, rip out the circuit boards and shoot some close ups of the dusty innards under "studio lighting"  I put studio lighting in quotation marks because i don't have any studio lights, just some room and desk lamps which were perfectly adequate for this task (it's not all about expensive gear).

  So, i unscrewed the shell, cut out all the cables, removed the screen and setup the "studio" which basically comprised of some wallpaper backing paper as the background, a large living room lamp to the right, a small desk lamp to the left and the camera straight on/above.  I used a variety of close up filters on the front of my lens to get in close and used the aperture to control depth of field (as close up filters give a super shallow DOF unless you stop down a lot).

  Once the film was finished i decided to develop in PMK Pyro.  I hadn't used this developer before but i remembered that i had been given some when i bought my enlarger so i mixed it up and gave it a try.  I have to say i love it, if only for the fact your negatives come out with a greenish/yellow cast.  I'm sure i'll talk more about PMK at a later date but for now on with the narrative.

  Once the film had dried i printed it onto some Fotospeed RC paper and toned it blue but i wasn't really happy with any of the prints.  I decided to try and lith them and i much prefer them this way.  I printed onto Fomaspeed N 313 which gave them a golden yellow tone and then gave them a little blue toning.  Blue + yellow = green and the final prints have this greenish cast which i must confess i rather like.

  I'm currently working on a printing tutorial as i realise i haven't done one on this blog yet and there may be some of you out there who are curious about the process but aren't sure what to do.  I'm hoping to have that up in the next week or so but until then happy shooting.

Large Small Things

  After much 'um'ing and 'ah'ing i decided not to get a macro lens but fork out the vast sum of £11 for a set of close-up filters for my Bronica SQ-A.  While i can focus up to half a metre with my lenses i have always been keen to get that little bit closer.  I wasn't sure how sharp these filters (lenses to picky people) would be so i thought id run a test roll of black and white through the camera to see.  Armed with my £3 Ikea lamp and a huge reflector from ebay i setup my tripod.

  And i was rather pleasantly surprised.  Whilst a little blurry in places due to my own focusing error i really like how the shots came out.  It was fun to play with such a narrow depth of field, and the depth of field preview switch on my lenses was invaluable to say the least.  Im hoping to use the filters lots, especially for close ups in portraits.