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Saturday, November 10th, 2012
Oxford Fashion Week 2012 is currently on and I’ve been doing some backstage photography. Here are some images from the Elysium show held at Oxford’s Town Hall last night. Space was at a premium so it was extremely difficult to photograph there but I did my best to stay out of the way amidst the busyness that comes with fashion shows. I really wanted to do some stunning photography that completed some of the amazing outfits and styling but sadly I didn’t get the time I needed. At the very end I did get some help from designer Crimson-Rose O’Shea (who had designed the colourful outfits that were accompanied by big paper hats) which was nice. I especially liked the outfits from designer Chloe Reynolds (the black designs with lace across the models’ eyes) so it was a shame not to get a chance to make more shots of them.
I’ll add more images to this post when I get time to process them all. I shot both film and digital and a few shots on Fuji instant pack film (aka Polaroid).
Posted in Oxford, People | No Responses »
Tags: D700, digital, fashion, ofw
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
Recently I’ve been using quite a bit of Fuji instant pack film (similar to Polaroid) and while my go to camera is usually my Mamiya RB67 with the sliding Polaroid back that allows me to photograph diptych’s I’ve been missing the ability to shoot full-frame with a single image filling the print on a camera with manual controls. Enter the Mamiya Universal press camera. It’s certainly not going to win any prizes in a beauty contest but it is fun to use and delivers nice results. I’m still getting to grips with it, below are some shots I made on a walk near Hinksey lakes last weekend. The temperature outside was quite cold which resulted in some streaky/uneven development of the pack film. I’ll try to remember to take my cold clip with me next time.
[Tech info:] Mamiya Universal press camera, 100mm/f3.5 lens, loaded with Fuji FP100-c instant pack film.
Posted in film, Oxford | 2 Responses »
Tags: film, fujiroid, mamiya universal, oxford
Saturday, November 3rd, 2012
Despite the title of this conference it has nothing to do with models or modelling. One of the organisers had seen my photography on this blog and asked if I’d like to do some photography of the conference delegates. I agreed to go along and although I would have loved to have made some selective portraits on film I know from past experience that these types of events are very difficult to be selective at because for some reason people react with sheer terror if you ask them if they’d like to be photographed by themselves. Anyone know why? The venue was Oxford’s Town Hall, a venue that I’ve photographed in before so I knew from experience the available light there is not very good for photography which is why I took my own lighting along. There was a steady flow of people to photograph but towards the end it got a bit crazy with the groups becoming larger and larger. Overall it was fun. Any delegates wishing to order prints can do so directly from me, please get in touch via email: simplyoxford [at] gmail.com.
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Posted in Oxford, People, students | No Responses »
Tags: conference, D700, digital, oxford, people, students, town hall, united nations
Thursday, November 1st, 2012
The first roll through a Mamiya 645 Super camera that I’m testing out and unfortunately quite a few frames have focus problems. I was rushing to shoot the whole roll in my lunch hour so that has to be factored in but I have never had so many badly focussed pictures, ever. Another test roll is required for me to make any final judgements, I’ll be more careful with that one!
[Tech info:] Mamiya 645 Super, 80/f2.8 lens, loaded with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Rodinal 1:100 (semi-stand) for 1 hour. (3 gentle agitations after 30mins).
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 645, acros, film, oxford, people, rodinal, semi-stand
Monday, October 29th, 2012
These shots are my first attempts at experimenting with freelensing which is when you hold a lens in front of a camera without it being physically attached to the camera. The beauty of this is being able to freely move the lens around and create tilt/shift effects that you’d never be able to achieve if the lens was attached to the camera body. The images here were created 100% in camera on film, I haven’t applied any fake filters. Have you ever wondered where ideas for the looks you get in apps such as Instagram come from? These were the last three frames on the roll I happened to have in my camera at the time. Now that I’ve seen how good these shots have turned out I’m keen to try this technique on some portraits. Any volunteers?
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66 with an old Carl Zeiss lens that I transplanted from a 6×9 folding camera, Fuji Pro 400H film home processed by me.
Radcliffle Camera railings
Radcliffe Camera entrance
Side of Bodleian Library
Posted in Equipment, film, Oxford | 5 Responses »
Tags: 6x6, film, freelensing, oxford, SL66
Sunday, October 28th, 2012
My tests with semi-stand film development continue, this time I used a roll of Kodak Plus-X that expired in 2001. It came in a batch of random expired films that I bought a while ago and to be honest I wasn’t expecting great results but I was pleasantly surprised when I hung this roll up to dry. For this roll I used Rodinal because some of my research into stand development suggested it to be a good developer to reduce base fog of expired film, this information proved to be correct. The whole roll was shot during one lunch hour in some of the gloomiest weather/light you can imagine but you’d never know it from the images. These images are from the first half of the roll.
[Tech info:] Bronica ETRSi, 75mm/f2.8 lens, loaded with Kodak Plus-X (expired 2001), processed in Rodinal (1:100) for 1 hour with 3 gentle agitations after 30mins.
Posted in film, Oxford, People | No Responses »
Tags: 645, black&white, film, oxford, portraits, rodinal, semi-stand
Friday, October 26th, 2012
These images are from the first test roll through a medium format camera I came across recently. It’s a Bronica ETRSi (6×4.5 format) and so far I have really enjoyed using it thanks to its small compact size and light weight. The weather this week in Oxford has been incredibly grim and gloomy but I was so keen to try this camera out that I decided to shoot some test shots regardless and after seeing these shots I’m glad I did. More to come.
[Tech info:] Bronica ETRSi, 75mm/f2.8 EII lens, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400, processed in Kodak HC110 (1:119) for 1 hour (20sec agitation after 30mins).
Richard the tailor, first frame on the Bronica.
Bike, Walton Street
Autumn leaves on car, Wellington square
Walton street
Construction worker, Little Clarendon Street
Construction worker, Little Clarendon street
Alex
Construction worker
Construction worker currently working on the big Walton Street project
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 645, black&white, film, hc110, oxford, people, semi-stand, Tri-X
Monday, October 22nd, 2012
Recently I’ve been doing a little research into semi-stand film developing and I finally felt ready to give it a try. First I needed a roll of film to process so I shot one during a lunch hour and headed over to the darkroom after work. The film expired in 2003 so I was half expecting a bit of a fail with this experiment but despite quite a heavy base fog on the film it seemed to scan quite nicely considering the age of the film.
[Tech info:] Mamiya M645 1000s, 80mm/f1.9 lens, Kodak Tri-X (expired 2003), processed in Kodak HC110 (dilution 1:119) for 1 hour with a few gentle agitations at the 30min stage. I used 6ml of HC110 syrup to make 720ml of working developer, this is what my research suggested.
Posted in Equipment, film, Oxford, People | 1 Response »
Tags: 1000s, 645, black&white, film, hc110, m645, mamiya, oxford, people, semi-stand, Tri-X
Sunday, October 21st, 2012
Some photography from earlier in the summer, made during my lunch hour photo walk around Oxford city centre. I planned to post these soon after processing them but they got a bit lost in the shuffle of my mountain of films to scan so I apologise for the delay. We had a bit of a wet summer as I recall and one of my favourite places to go when it’s raining is the University museum of natural history on Parks Road (the bottom four images). Not only does the building have an incredible interior but it’s packed with amazing things too. Well worth a visit.
[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66, 80mm Zeiss planar lens with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Rodinal 1:50.
Posted in film, Oxford, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 6x6, acros, black&white, film, oxford, people, rodinal, SL66
Saturday, October 20th, 2012
These shots were made earlier in the summer during one of my lunch time photo walks. Somehow they got lost in the shuffle and were scanned but I didn’t get around to posting them (that seems to happen a fair bit with me because I do so much photography). Apologies if you were waiting for these to show up.
[Tech info:] Mamiya M645 1000S, 80/f1.9 lens with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Kodak HC110 (dilution b).
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Portrait, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 645, acros, black&white, film, hc110, oxford, people, portraits
Monday, October 15th, 2012
Back in May I was invited to do some photography during the dress rehearsal of a theatre production called Killing Hitler by the director of the production. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it so instead I went along to the opening night to try to squeeze in a little photography during curtain up. You’d think I would have learnt my lesson from trying that during a production of Cabaret with not a huge amount of success but I felt it was worth a try. Needless to say the cast and crew had more important things on their minds than to make time for my photography so all I managed to get was these three shots. It’s a shame because the set for the opening scene looked really good with the lighting. My thanks go to the director, Lucie Dawkins and the cast and crew for putting up with me.
[Tech info:] Mamiya M645 1000S, 80/f1.9 lens, loaded with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Kodak HC110 (dilution b).
Posted in film, Oxford, Portrait, students | No Responses »
Tags: 645, acros, backstage, drama, film, hc110, keble college, o'reilly, oxford, portraits, students, theatre
Sunday, October 14th, 2012
More images that I made during St Giles’ Fair at the beginning of September. This is the contents of an entire roll of medium format film, 12 frames, none deleted. [Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66, 80/f2.8 lens, loaded with Fuji Acros 100 film, processed in Rodinal 1:50.
Posted in film, Oxford, People, Street portraits | No Responses »
Tags: 6x6, acros, black&white, fair, film, oxford, people, portraits, rodinal, SL66, st giles
