10 Things List

At the beginning of the year we were given a weekend project to photograph a list of ten random things. To determine the list, everyone wrote a theme, object or idea down on a piece of paper and put them into a box, and 10 of them were randomly chosen. The list we ended up with was:

• Alcohol
• Something Gorey
• Chinese Food
• Park
• Trees
• Weather
• People
• Someone you live with
• Door
• Fence

Here are the images I produced:

Alcohol

At first I found it difficult to think of an interesting idea to photograph alcohol, as I didn't want to take a predictable close up image of bottles/glass etc.

Something Gorey

This idea was inspired by a stop motion film I made a while ago. I rubbed berries onto my hands to make it look as if blood was on them, this works quite well as the image does look gorey, especially when you don't know exactly what is on my hands.

                                                              Chinese Food
I went to a Chinse Supermarket to photograph chinese food. This image reminds me of Martin Parr's work with the bold bright colours and the repetitive patterns of all the food stacked up.

                                                                     Park
I couldn't think of an idea to capture the word 'park' in an image so I tried to be witty with this image and use a play on words for something to do with car parking.










Trees
When I took this image I just intended to include the trees and the sky in the background, however it was lucky that whilst I was shooting a bird came and sat right on top of one of the trees!

                                                                   Weather
I was also struggling to think of an idea to get an interesting photo of 'weather', however as I was walking back from my shoot, I found this broken umbrella on the floor.









People
This is probably my least favourite of the images, as I don't think it works well if you don't know the story behind it. I was in a supermarket as they started reducing all of the food that would have gone off by the end of that day, a lot of people were pushing at the counter to have a look, apart from the man in the foreground, who polietely waited until it was his turn.


Someone you live with

Although I quite like the ambiguity of this image, I don't think it works well in reflecting the 'someone you live with' title. I found these belongings on a field near my accommodation, and thought they might belong to a homeless person possibly living in that area, so I interpreted this as someone I live with, as although they could be essentially 'homeless', they still live in the same area as me.

                                           Door

                                      Fence

I'm glad I found this bright coloured fence as I think it creates an interesting subject out of something that could be usually quite boring and mundane

Overall I was surprisingly happy with my images, especially after I had the chance to edit the colours in a few, to make them brighter and more appealing. We viewed the images by each category and voted for the best in each one, and the winner got a roll of 35mm film. I won film for 'Something Gorey', 'Chinese Food' and 'Fence'.

Developing Darkroom/Technical Skills

First roll of 35mm film I developed and processed in Vernon Street Darkrooms.

Although I have worked in a darkroom before in college it was nice to refresh my memory on developing 35mm film, and get used to working in a new (and much better!) darkroom. These are some photos I took around Leeds city centre, we were given a roll of Black & White 35mm each and told to take photographs of people. I headed straight to the market to do this as I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get some candid and posed shots of people. When working in the darkroom there was a lot of new equipment to get used to, making me realise just how basic the previous darkrooms i'd worked in were! This included the filters on the enlargers to increase or decrease the contrast of the image, which i put up to number 4 for this contact sheet to increase the contrast.

120mm Film & Test Shoots
I took some test shots for my portrait brief using black and white 120mm, the medium we have to use to take the images. When developing the 120mm film I found it a lot harder to get the film onto the spool before the developing process, as expected, because of its difference in side and tendency to bend and curl up a lot more. However since then I have developed a few more rolls and improved slightly. When making test strips for the exporusre of the negatives I noticed that becaue half of my roll was shot with a white background and half with a black background, there was a split difference between exposures, so I decided to split the negatives up and do a test strip for each background. I shot these images in a studio which was my first time shooting in a studio using film, also with a camera I had never used before so I had my doubts about how the negatives would come out but I was pleasantly surprised by the punchiness of them.
Notes & Improvements

• Experiment & get used to using the filters on the enlargers
• Record all details for each print/contact sheet
• Be more careful with fingerprints on negatives & clean them