I won’t lie, this Weekend’s been a disaster for my film photography. Whenever I begin to believe in myself, I am slapped down by the most schoolboy errors. On other occasions, it’s an odd issue that nobody seems to have mentioned on the internet before, but thousands of people should have encountered it during their journey with film. There are days when I do question the relevance of film when I seem to find ever more ways to fuck it up. My latest screwup isn’t entirely resolved but I appear to have light leaks on either side of every image, or uneven development where each image has more development on its sides than in the middle.
After a few hours of educated guesswork, I have a prime suspect; the medium-format stainless steel developing tank I recently purchased. Like many developing tanks, it’s for two 35mm or one 120 format film. If using the 120 format film, the spiral seems to drop an inch up and down when agitating (turning the tank upside down and upright again) the film in the tank. I feel this may cause a surge of developer to hit the top and bottom of the real most intensely, which corresponds to either side of an image. Spirals in plastic tanks have a design that prevents them from moving up and down when the tank is inverted. Even as I type this out, I've doubts about this hypothesis, but light leaks would show on the film borders, which are clear, and the main variable that changed was that damn tank.
Compounding this new cockup, I seem to of underexposed many images (At least in the centre). Luckily this issue should be more straightforward. I suspect that I need to run Ansel Adam’s film testing process to determine optimum film speed and development time. Whilst I’ve done it for Ilford Hp5 35mm, I probably should do it again for the 120 format film used on another camera. As a final kick in the teeth, I ran out of film halfway through.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been adding to a growing list in my Evernote app. Titled “Bodies of work” I have been noting down as many ideas for various mini-series of images that fall under a core theme. I’ve been making my ideas less ambitious to the level where I could simply walk out the door and start.“Fields” is a theme close to my heart. There is something hard to explain about the emotional response of walking through a field. Fields also play an important part in a uniquely British hauntological vibe that few people would understand unless you happen to be a fan of “A Year in the Country”. English fields with their hedgerows, hawthorn and oak, rolling hills and history have a unique character. I’m also a massive fan of the Detectorists and the Film “A Field in England”.
One image from my disastrous weekend offered something new. I wanted non-standard landscapes, to simplify and distil core elements that make up the feeling of a place. The idea of “simplification” was the main vibe I was after. Picturesque wide vistas showing mulitle elements for every image, such as rolling hills, trees, fences and grasses using a full range of tones was to be avoided. That would make it very hard to become novel when relying on the stereotypical concept of a landscape photograph. This mutant image I'm slowly falling in love with, or at least where it could go, seems this specific image bolloxed up.
From my experiences of shooting mulitple images of various other elements, all the time trying to simplify and distill, the results are wildly different. This brings me to the thought, what if this subject shown above, its composition and tonality was the only style of image I could ever make? If limitation is the mother all creativity, I'm already starting to see beyond this image into the body of works total impact. The tiniest variations and desperate acts of freedom to try and break out and vary the strict self imposed syle of imagery. It may be shit, but I'm inspired by what I can see beyond it.
Shown here printed it a bit too light, as mainly I couldn’t be arsed fine tuning it considering the rather shitty uneven development. But damn, I love those tones, I didn’t even have to cheat anything, it just happened. Narrowing down the view and the tonality of what I photographed, I’m left with a very delicate tonality. I can imagine experimenting in the darkroom to optimize prints without going too far into a full range of darks to light. It isn’t perfect but If I’ve learnt anything, it’s to go with your gut feeling and ignore the gremlins trying to persuade you back to conformality. This brings me to another dilemma, should I post it on social media? I think I’ll leave that for now, for that’s another killer of the gentle seeds of uniqueness in otherwise shitty images.
