Final 20" by 24"

Because I had scratched my original negative and the second one I had taken wasn't in focus I decided for time wise to go with one that I already had. Out of the three this one was my favourite, even that the other two had better lighting I preferred the overall feel of this photo. 

 

This photograph was quite tricky to get the lighting right as the main source of light was behind him but the bottom half of him was stood in the shadows. This made the left side of him more exposed than the rest of him but at the same time the bottom looked under exposed as it's just black. I tried to burn out the bottom right so it was the same exposure throughout the print but it just didn't look right so I decided to keep it how it was seen.

Colour Portraits

I went out with my 35mm film camera to have a bit of practice with colour before I got stuck in with the Hasselblad. This ended up being my favourite photograph out of all of them. I didn't mean to do a double exposure as the film had got stuck, but it's always a nice surprise when a double exposed photo comes out looking rather good.   

The Big Print

It was time for me to do the exhibition quality print, I was confident that the photo I had chosen was going to work well for this.

This was what I had produced. As you can see it's a pretty horrific print to say the least. I had gotten a bit exited about finally getting to print and while I had done countless amounts of test strips it was only on the lower end of the print.

By doing this the entire top half of the print looks overexposed when it really shouldn't by looking at the negative. I was to hard to get a contrast on the print by just shoving a 4 filter in rather than checking what the overall print needed. If it even needed one.



As well as the bad filtering there was also so many dust spots on the negative, but agin this could be resolved. And finally I don't even know what the borders were doing! I checked what the settings were on and they were all the same so they could be that wonky unless I had moved the paper and that obviously didn't happen . . . . .

So by trying to fix all these problems I took the filter out, checked the borders and got a blower to get rid of the dust. As I was determined to make this the best print I had ever done so was really trying to get every bit of dust off. By doing so I slipped and scratched the negative from one side to the other with with the blower. I was not happy.

This made it that I didn't have a negative to use for my final print, unless I was to use one that I had already used for one of he smaller prints. I thought that this was not an option as the majority of the class was handing in 4 different images and there was no reason that I couldn't I just had to taken one more photo. Photo 21. From all the stress and nose bleeds the project had caused so far I found it really hard to get my mind into gear of going back out with the camera. But I finally convinced myself it's just one photo it wont take long at all. And if I got a tutor to help me focus then it will be okay.

I got my subjects to together, found the spot the I was going to focus on and asked a tutor to see if I was focusing right and I got the thumbs up. I then wen't and developed the film but before I got the developer changed for some fresh stuff so I could reduce to chance of messing it up. I developed the film for 8 minutes at 20 degrees. It had developed well until I had a closer look, the people were out of focus. I had, had enough.  

These are just a couple of test strips that I had done for this attempted print. The lightest one was using a number 4 filter straight away. The Darker one on the left was better and this was the one I had done just before I had scratched the negative. For this one I had done about 15 seconds two stops from the lowest with no filter and then put a number 5 in and turned the brightness of the bulb two stops down from the brightest.

David Bailey

As a young man Bailey worked with other photographers as their assistances, until he had made enough contacts and had enough experience to start getting his own workflow. As a young man with charm he bought sexiness into photography which was a big jump for photography at the time as people were use to seeing composed classy photos.

David Bailey also had a way of composing couples, to show joint personalities and individual ones. It wouldn't just be side by side saying cheese. For example the photo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They are composed in a way that is portrayed that they are one person, it is intimate but not feminine, as they are in a strong triangular structure.

By looking at this image of McCartney and Lennon by Bailey and how he composed two beings, it gave me an idea of how I could composition two young lads. And this was my version slightly different but keeping a similar structure with the arms. 

9 1/2" by 12"

These were the three negatives that I used for my smaller prints. I did try out different depths of fields but it just happened that these three were the best to use. 

  

Finally Some Negs

With not concentrating and slowing down with this project, I found that it wasn't just the taking photos I was struggling with. It was also processing that was proving difficult. The developer was getting a bit old by now anyway but I was also under developing but was still following the temperature chart and couldn't understand what the problem was.
 
But out of twenty negatives these were the ones I could use.  

Choosing some negatives

As I had been out shooting black and white for a few weeks I thought I would have had some success by now, but that was not the case. I had taken about twenty photographs yet only four were usable. I wasn't overly impressed by them but as time was running out for the projects I decided to go with them anyway.

Waisting Money

As if not getting anywhere with any successful photographs wasn't bad enough. I went and wasted 14 bits of film by exposing them in the developing room. So all together this would have put me on 34 negatives so far and I was feeling defeated, everything that could be going wrong was.

A Bit More Shooting

As I hadn't got very far with getting any decent negatives I could only do one thing and that was to just carry on shooting until I had something to work with. The problem that I had been having was either under developing or not focusing. so by slowing down and just taking my time focusing it looked like I was going to be okay. But my images were still coming out a little fuzzy. 

Group Critique

As I hadn't got to the stage of having any negatives to even start my smaller prints I turned up to the group critique empty handed and feeling like a slacker. But getting to see all the other large prints and how well they all looked gave me some motivation that if all the other people in the class could achieve it then why couldn't I. So I carried on taking more photographs.

looking at other peoples prints gave me some ideas on how I would want my final one printing.