Recently I’ve been having lots of fun experimenting with using black & white paper in my large format cameras instead of film and so far I love the results. Photographing with paper is one of the earliest photographic processes dating back to the 1800’s (Google: Calotype photography) and a huge advantage over using film is being able to see what you’re doing whilst in the darkoom because you can handle the paper under a red or amber safe light. It’s also fun to develop the negatives and watch the image slowly appear in the developer which is not possible when processing film.

I’m still experimenting with this but I hope to use it for portraits soon. One slight problem is the effective speed of the paper is very slow (ISO 6) which means requiring lots of light (i.e. a sunny day) or slow exposures which requires staying very still during the exposure.

My very first paper negative shot made with a 10x8 large format camera. The detail in the original is amazing.

The 4 seconds exposure for this has resulted in the water looking very smooth.

These two models are always happy to stand in for me when I'm testing lighting. I love the quality of this image which I made in my studio with one studio flash.

Some neighbours walked past as I was photographing the weir (off to the right) so I asked them to stand still for a quick shot with my 10x8 camera. The exposure was1/2 sec.

This is a test shot made with my 5x4 Speed Graphic camera in Radcliffe square. I wanted to see how the paper reacted to contrasty sunlight.

As I write this we’re minutes from the end of 2011 and as this is the last blog post of the year  I thought it appropriate to show something from the 1st day of this year. When the year began I was a 100% digital photographer. I hadn’t used film for around 7 years and had no intention of doing so but by the time March had come around I had been seeing more and more work from other photographers that I admired and the quality of their images had a look and feel all of their own, they had soul and the thing they all had in common was film. I’d spend hours working on my digital files with Photoshop and filters, trying to get the ‘film look’ but no matter how close I got, the images lacked a soul, that organic look and feel that you only get with film. In the end it dawned on me, if I wanted the film look then why not just shoot on film?

I learnt photography by using film in the mid 80’s so using it wasn’t anything new or scary and fortunately I had kept all of my old cameras. Going back to using film is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and it’s given me a new love for photography and the craft of creating images that I never had in the 8 years I’ve been using digital. It was like coming home after being away for a very long time.

I’d like to thank everyone that’s visited this blog during the year, all of the people that have been kind enough to stop and be photographed and to all of the photographers out there that have inspired me to get back to the root of photography and to fall in love with film, again. I’m excited about 2012, there are still tons of films in my backlog that haven’t been scanned yet so apologies if you’re waiting to see your portrait. I’m working on it 🙂

1st January 2011 (Nikon D700, digital).

Last portrait of 2011 (Mamiya RZ67, film).