Tintypes

I fell in love with these tintypes by Victoria Will. Taken at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

There's something especially piercing about the portraits of the actors with blue eyes like Elijah Wood and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Evokes that old time feel in the photos. And the soft focus of Glenn Close behind Elle Fanning, she appears almost spectre like. I love all the marks around the photos as well, the wet plate process making each photograph entirely individual.

There appears to be a lot more of wet plate photography appearing these days and it's something I find endlessly beautiful. If there's one thing I'd like, it'd be to have my own tintype portrait taken. I think it'd also make a really fascinating project for family portraits. A tintype a year to document a growing family.

You can see the rest of Victoria's tintypes on her website, http://www.victoriawill.com/TINTYPES.

Things to be excited for...

I unashamedly love Wes Anderson. Thus I am excited for a new Wes Anderson film. Even though a UK release date hasn't been given. Yet.

A pair of lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out and find them.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, MOONRISE KINGDOM tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore -- and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle. Bruce Willis plays the local sheriff. Edward Norton is a Khaki Scout troop leader. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand portray the young girl's parents. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, and Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the boy and girl.

If only life were as beautiful as a Wes Anderson film.

Laters,

P x

Photo Envy

I've been trying to get myself that little bit more involved in the Lomography community. What this means is that every so often I go on their site and randomly peruse the photos of far more accomplished Lomographers than I. This does little for my self esteem but plenty for my photographic inspiration.

Now I'm not normally one to single someone out and toot their horn but I cannot resist for this particular Lomographer.

I'll be honest I don't know whether Yochan is male or female but he/she is undeniably a cracking photographer. Here are some of my favourites.

These middle two shots get me so excited for snow this winter! I'm not one for being cold but who can resist crisp, white, beautiful snow?

Aren't these just gorgeous? I really need to get out there more with my Diana F+. Not that any of these were taken on a Diana F+. I think they've mostly been done on the LC-A+, my dream camera. But boy do these photographs make me want to go for long walks in the countryside armed with my bag of cameras.

You can see more of Yochan on Lomography. If you're a fan of Lomography in general then you should definitely be cruising that site on a regular basis. Despite the Lomography branding they're fans of all analogue photography so it's a little slice of heaven for film geeks like me.

Laters,

P x

Hoard.

Do you guys think I have enough film for my Diana F+ yet?

I may or may not just have bought another 3 films as well.

Laters,

P x

Film.

I don't know how many of you have heard of Lomography and this whole analogue love culture that comes with it but I've been a fan of it for years now. A few months back Groupon offered a voucher for the Lomography shop and I absolutely couldn't resist. I was utterly torn in my decision of what to buy because Lomography has such a crazy range of cameras that you kinda want to collect them all. But I wanted a good all-rounder so I went for the Diana F+ deluxe kit.

Now what I actually did was purchase the deluxe kit off Ebay as it was considerably cheaper than the Lomo shop even with the voucher. And I used my voucher to buy the RingFlash.

I love the look of ring flash in photography and the best thing about the Lomo RingFlash is that it works on both my Diana F+ and my Canon. Amazeballs right?

Now when I went to Seville with college I used only my Diana F+ much to my tutor's annoyance but I loved it. Walking round in the blazing sun all day, I didn't want to be weighed down by my Canon so I stuck to my perfectly lightweight Diana F+ and we had a lot of fun together. I'd changed the back from 120mm to 35mm the minute it arrived and I had 5 films with me. All purchased from Poundland before I went but they worked out nicely. I really believe that Lomography in general works better in those sunny moments as it adds to the captured atmosphere. I think in the end I used about 3 films and admittedly not all the shots worked out. That's obviously down to my inexperience with film and still getting used to the camera settings. But I like the shots that did work out such as the following, taken with the telephoto lens attached.



More of my Seville shots can be found on my Flickr, in particular in this set.

So now as I get closer to leaving for Portugal for the summer I'm looking again at my Diana F+ and thinking about all the shots we'll be able to get whilst there. However I didn't want to take a suitcase full of Poundland film. Don't get me wrong, it's a good film. Kodak ColourPlus ISO200 24exp and I've picked up 3 for those first few days, just to get me back into working on film. But I wanted to experiment with other films and see what results I'd get. Of course film isn't as cheap as it used to be but I made use of a Lomo 15% discount offer on their films as well as some cheap shopping on Ebay. So I've got myself a selection of the following films.

I'm really excited to begin shooting with these in Portugal and I really hope they work out. I'll have to pay a bit more attention to the camera settings as I don't want there to be too many messed up shots. But then again I've now got something like 30 films to take with me so there's plenty to work with. Just hope there'll be room in the refrigerator for them all. Of course processing when I get back will be a killer but I may just go for getting them developed then investing in a negative scanner as it's a fair bit more sensible than getting prints and CDs made for them all.

Of course a selection of my best shots will be posted on here when the time comes so y'all can see how I got on.

Laters,

P x