Week 1 – The Great Dust Bowl – Ilford Delta 100

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to the first official roll from the year of film project!

Ever want to know the fastest way to see how clean your apartment isn't? I would be willing to say it involves developing a roll of film after a day at work, and with no prior preparation. Then throw in a white fluffy cat who has more fur than I know what to do with (just for good measure). 

I am going to need to figure out a cleaner option for future development cycles. Or basically what I mean is that I have a week to figure this all out. I think I'll need to invest in a lot of canned air. Although Photoshop's automatic dust removal tool is pretty good at doing about 80% of the work in exchange for a little sharpness. I'm going to try and retouch some of these for the sake of the project, hell I may even try to re-scan them. But a fair warning these started out very dusty and covered in a bunch of junk.

Also this roll is also kinda a cheat roll. Since my chemicals haven't been delivered yet I needed a quick way to get something together. I also didn't want to have a roll of unprocessed C41 film just lying around for another week, and its far too early to break out the instant film yet. 

"I'm a fluffy cat, my fur gets on everything...especially negatives". I'm leaving this one specifically to shame both the cat and myself. 

(Not my cat)

Just a heads up, the next two images are NSFW.

I kinda liked this one with the dust.

Development Notes:

Caffenol Developer:
250ml Distilled Water
2.5 tsp Instant Coffee
2 tsp Vitamin C
2 tsp Washing Soda

18 Minute Developing Time @ 70 Degrees F

Standard Fixer 3:1 Dilution 

Negatives were a touch underdeveloped. But my scanner was able to get most of them scanned no problems. I would probably increase my developing time to 20 minutes to insure that everything was solid on the negative. 

 

Gallery below. Tumblr Viewers be sure to check out UNEXPhotography.com/52rolls

Week -1 – First 2 Test Rolls – Fuji Superia X-TRA 400

Hello everyone, so for this week I cheated a little bit. I didn't process these myself because the chemicals haven't been delivered yet. However I was able to pull a few of my favorite images from the last couple of days. 

It occurred to me as I was leaving my family's place and hit home after I got the scans back from the lab but South Georgia just looks very de-saturated this time of year. I did not change any of that in post. 

That also brings up a good point, I will be doing minor edits to the final files that you see. Nothing too wild, but just minor corrections here and there.

I will also include a gallery at the end of each post of the "raw" files for anyone that wants to see both how the negatives look out of camera, as well for anyone that wants to see any outtakes or files that didn't make the cut.

Tumblr users may need to visit the direct blog at UNEXPhotography/52rolls to see the gallery. 

2014: a year in review

Well its about that time again. In 4 more days it'll be 2015 and another year will begin. As always its a good time to look back over the last 365 days and reflect on what this last year has brought. 

All things considered I really didn't get a lot accomplished over the last year. I shot less than in most years previous. But I can say there were more than a few extenuating circumstances. All of that aside here are my top 5 images from the last year. 

 

Shortly after starting my new job I was invited to photograph one of the owners at a show he was performing at. This image was taken as part of a "contest" with him, and even though it didn't win overall he said it was his favorite of the bunch.

It wasn't until 4 months later that I picked up my camera, but when I did it was one of my regular models Nicolette that was the subject. I say it every year but I love shooting with this woman. She always has great ideas and is game for any position that I choose to put her in. 

As a quick aside I should mention that this is actually version 2 of this image. I saw that because until this last year I would have told you that I despised Photoshop. I hated everything about it. But since I have been using it every day for work purposes, I can say that it is a very useful tool that I am eager to learn more about.

My second time working with Hada Pixie came next. Another set for Zivity.com. Pixie is another great model that always comes up with interesting options to work with. This set was ranked "noteworthy" by Zivity staff members, and is another example of an image that I re-worked post photoshop hatred. 

Jason AKA Davinci Black, was a previous co-worker of mine a few years back. He wanted some new photos for an album he was working on. And I was very happy to hear from him and to get the chance to help him out. Keep an ear out for what is coming from this guy. 

Finally one of the many photos of The Imperial Opa that I took at their burlesque show earlier this year. I loved shooting all of the various acts, but I thought this photo of the whole troupe summed up things much better. 

So that's it. That was 2014. Onward to new projects and new photos. If you haven't read recently I have started my 2015 project blog over at UNEXPhotography.com/52rolls where I will be shooting a roll of film a week for the next year. What would you like to see? Let me know below!

Until next time, thanks as always for taking some time to see what I have been up to.

-B

A Year of Film

So I guess now is as good of a time as ever to announce (officially) my first project for 2015. I have been hinting at it for a while, but now I am ready to talk about it.

We live in a very digital world, this is pretty clear to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock. The invention of digital photography has been a great one. It is easier than ever for anyone with access to anything from a consumer smartphone to a high end DSLR to take and share photographs with the world. When I got my first digital DSLR in college, it opened my eyes to a new world (or at least one that was cheaper and didn't require spending hours a week in a darkroom). I became comfortable. In a way I became complacent with my skills because I knew that I could shoot faster, trim down accidents, and still have deliverable photographs. It was too easy to just "spray and pray".

A few years ago I found and blogged pretty extensively about my experience with Caffenol developing. It was an experiment that resulted in some fun time figuring out how I could take film and produce images in my own bathroom. Some with great success, others not so much.

Good or bad, I had fun.

If you have been following some of my other blogs you may have noticed a lack of content and updates. I wrote an update earlier this year talking about how I feel, and how I have not had much drive to create. I hope to change that, and learn something in the process over the next year. 

A Year of Film:
 

The Challenge: Shoot and develop 52 rolls of film (or packs...I'll count instant film as well).
The Tools (and a not so brief history): I have a few options at my disposal.

(Not mine)

The first is a Minolta Maxxum 5000, my first 35mm camera I ever used. It was (if I remember right) originally my grandmother's, which became my mother's, and when I started college and needed one for class it became mine. This has been my workhorse 35mm for many years. Its not particularly a hard camera to use, and it has a manual mode, so naturally it served my needs. However I still find this camera a little "too easy" for all of what I want to accomplish (and I'm a little ashamed to say that I have never really experienced using a full manual camera before). However I have another option–

Until a few hours ago this bad boy belonged to my dad. Who knows when he bought it, when I asked about it all he could tell me was "I haven't used this since the late 90's, if you want it, Merry Christmas".

It came with just a few more pieces than what you see above

After I dusted it off I threw a new set of batteries into the meter, I loaded a fresh roll of generic drug store 400 ISO film into this beast and have shot a few frames over the last day.

I may or may not use those photos as a first entry into the project.

Finally we have a set of 2 Polaroid SX-70 instant cameras. With a little help from The Impossible Project I will count at least two of my "rolls" of film to be coming from one or both of these cameras. Although I'll try not to make it my primary option.

The Stock(s): 

Until this project I really have only had experience with a limited number of black and white stocks (Ilford 100 Delta for life!). But I hope to change this. As you can see above I just placed my first orders for some various film stocks. Hopefully it won't be too long into the new year before I am able to crack everything open and make something happen. I still need to order a Color C41 developing kit. But those still seem to be pretty easy to come by, so I'm not too worried. 

The Process: It's pretty obvious that I like to explain things in more detail than needed sometimes. But I will be sure to keep that up. I keep pretty copious lab notes on my process and hope that I can maybe pass some of that along. I will be posting those notes along with the results for the week. 

I haven't quite decided how this blog is going to work yet, but I have a feeling it'll go something like this: A brief (yeah right) paragraph about the week including any issues that may have come up. Images from the roll of film processed (probably both working and failed...or some anyway). And finally any "lab notes" that I have taken.

I have also created a gallery which I may or may not use to post my favorite images as they happen as well. But one step at a time, no need to put the cart before the horse.

The Goals (aka TL;DR):
1) Shoot more (Period. End of story).
2) Experiment with various film types by shooting 1 roll of various film each week.
3) Slow down and re-learn the basics of shooting photographs, and hope to learn something new.
4) Profit? Take over the world? Make a book? Who knows?

So without further ado, I welcome all of you into my journey. Hopefully you can be inspired and learn something too. See you all in 2015!

 

© 2006 – 2026 UNEXPhotography and Blake Griffin.

Privacy Policy