Hey everyone! I'd like to talk about film photography this month.. I will try not to bore you with the nitty gritty details but let's take a step back into the early 1800's for a moment.
Film basically began in 1839, with the invention of the Daguerreotype which was a rather large, bulky camera that people loved to capture portraits and objects such as vases and trinkets.
From there, it blew up into something else that it is today! It's quite amazing how advanced cameras have developed. From camera phones to incredible professional cameras, it's rather incredible how advanced you can get with taking pictures.
Let's talk about the dark room process. One of many ways to print photos from a camera is to use a dark room to expose your negatives aka opening up the film to light and bringing your photos to life!
This technique is used for cameras that have a roll of film or even other cameras like the 5x4 camera, that takes film inserts you can photograph and develop in a darkroom.
I find using film cameras so unique and fascinating, as they capture such raw beauty and an essence that digital cameras can't necessarily produce.
Film is a very unique feature to photographers as I feel that it can rapidly improve your photography work with precision and learning from what you'd like to change. A roll of film has a lot of different layers to it, especially colour film. It's made of a transparent plastic in a shape of a strip or slide with one side covered with light-sensitive silver halide crystals made into a gelatinous emulsion. When the film is exposed to light, it chemically changes depending on the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. So depending on how long the shutter is open and the other settings of your camera, it absorbs what you create.
Printing photos, whether it be film or digital, is an amazing process. Of course printing from film requires a mixture of the right chemicals and it's so much fun to produce, can be a struggle to print and get accurate but in the end, is always worth the hard work and dedication.
I think I've said this before in a previous blog, but having my own darkroom to create prints from film would be incredible!
Some of my personal favourite black and white photographers are; Dorathea Lange, Vivian Maier, Ansel Adams, Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier Bresson and Man Ray. They are very talented artists that created amazing work from landscapes to portraits using film and old techniques.
All of these artists above are definitely worth a google, they are/were really good inspiration for me, so I hope that can help you out with your own photography journey
Anyways, I think I've mentioned all that I can within a small blog space, so that I don't ramble on too much haha but I find film photography and the whole process quite fascinating.
If you have any questions or anything, don't hesitate to contact me via email
Have a wonderful day!
Ebony x
