My vintage Polaroid booth

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Jo and James wedding

Thought I'd finally share so pictures from Jo and James' wedding back in December. Hope you enjoy. All shot on Ilford and Kodak film.

Why?

Why? is a question I ask myself when I photograph, the answer might be as simple as money in my professional life. But in my personal work this question is harder to answer. In the past my work has been about the connection with the people and objects I photograph. With my new work on the streets I have no connection with my subjects. I photograph them because they look like they might let me photograph them.
I need a greater interaction with my subjects. My photograph have always snapshots and I have defended and championed the snapshot as the purist form of documentary photograph.

Darkness on the edge if town

Darkness is here all around us, within this dark we see differently. Photographing in the dark is not what we think of when we imagine taking pictures. Usually photographs are of light using the light to create beauty. At night I feel a certain calm come over me, I see more at night no one about to get in my way. The emptiness of the streets is comforting, I do not see the dark as something to be feared, it is something to be used.

Below is some photographs I took in this darkness, all shots are hand held and shot on my Fuji GW690 on HP5 rated at 1600. Why hand held? Freedom and I like the idea of night time snapshots.

By taking this picture I have noticed the lone figure, walking through the darkness.

The start of new work on the street

Finally started shooting a new piece of work. It has been almost 4years since I shot personally, a the moment I'm unsure of the direction this work will take, Lots of idea going round in my head.

What I do know is that I now free a freedom to make this work.

Here is the start of something I've been writing about this work, I feel writing is important in my work as it allows me to work through ideas and contextualise.

"Freedom is something we are all chasing, the freedom to work how we what to, do what we what to. Within my photographic work I have many factors governing how and what I photograph.
I feel everything I photograph is part of my work. However in the past photographing in this way hasn't fitted into the professional or academic box. As my work is a search a journey waiting for that moment of discovery. However I do not know what the search I for the search for the prefect photograph? If this is the case I feel that this will never happen, along the way this will produce great photographs but never prefect."

Here a few photographs from the last couple of weeks: (these are working scans, so please don't judge to much).

Fuji GW690

Here a shot from my new toy the Fuji GW690 amazing camera blow away by it and loving the 6x9 format.

This shot was taken using Ilford HP5 pushed to 1600 and developed in Rodenel at 1/100 for 120mins.

Pushing Kodak Portra

I've read a lot for posts on the Internet about push processing Kodak Portra film. So I thought I'd post some of my own images on the subject.

Kodak say that this film can be pushed up to 2 stops in development, this applies to both the 400iso and the 800iso films. The ability to do this and the quality that is achieved when pushing the film is amazing. The option of push processing with this film gives me the extra stop of light i always need at weddings when shooting with available light. I will now rarely put anything else in my cameras. (Maybe some Fuji 400H I need to use up but Portra all way).

Kodak Portra 400iso pushed processed to 800iso:

Portra 400iso push processed to 1600iso:

Pushing Portra to 1600iso produces ok results however I would only use if I had run out of Portra 800.